Internal vs external blog and best way to set up
-
I have a client that has two domians registered - one uses www.keywordaustralia.com the other uses www.keywordaelaide.com He had already bought and used the first domain when he came to me I suggested the second as being worth buying as going for a more local keyword would be more appropriate.
Now I have suggested to him that a blog would be a worthy use of the second domain and a way to build links to his site - however I am reading that as all links will be from the same site it wont be worth much in the long run and an internal blog is better as it means updated content on his site.
should i use the second domain for blog, or just 301 the second domain to his first domain.
Or is it viable to use the second domain as the blog and just set up an rss feed on his page ?
Is there a way to have the second domain somehow 'linked' to his first domain with the blog so that google sees them as connected ?
NOOBIE o_0
-
Thanks Everyone. I think for the ease of set up - and so the client can do it himself a wordpress is going to be the way to go. We only really got the second domain so that no-one else can and we maight as well use it I figure.
-
Thanks Ryan,
I also use Joomla and AceSEF looks perfect!
-
It would entirely depend upon which software you build your site upon.
I use Joomla and AceSEF is one example of an extension which provides automatic internal linking. There are numerous other extensions which provide that functionality as well.
I would guess all major CMS solutions have at least one extension which provide that functionality. I know Wikipedia uses MediaWiki and all of their articles use automatic linking.
-
Thanks Ryan.
So basic rule is - If at all possible, keep your blog within your domain.
On a brief aside, you said in you last post "With a single site, there is software which can automatically generate all your internal links as appropriate."
Are you able to tell me which software?
-
An offsite established blog such as Google's blogspot or WordPress.com can benefit your site. Those types of sites overcome several of the challenges which arise when you try to set up a blog.
Advantages: quick and easy to set up, a unique C block for hosting, no worries about site maintenance, etc.
Disadvantages:
-
your blog content would not be on your site so would not benefit from the main site's DA. Also, your main site wont benefit from the links your content will hopefully generate. While you can link from your blog to the main site, it is not as beneficial as having a direct link to your site.
-
as Alan shared, your main site would also lose out on the freshness benefits a quality blog can offer
-
internal linking is also a fantastic means of properly directing the flow of PR throughout your site. With a single site, there is software which can automatically generate all your internal links as appropriate. For an external site, you would need to manually create all the links which is a lot more work.
Overall the best results should be achieved by integrating a blog into your existing site. You could choose an external blog and it can benefit your site, but not as much as an internal blog would.
-
-
Hi.
Sorry Cassi, my post doesn't answer your question for you but raises another one based on Ryan's answer.
The main attraction for using 3rd party blogging solutions is the ease at which they can be set-up compared to setting up a blog on a domain from scratch even with the help of wordpress.
Some blogging services such as Posterous will allow you to use a sub-domain address for your blog. Would this help? or would this still be classed as splitting the blog away from the site?
-
Hi Cassi.
My highest recommendation is one site owner, one content focus = one site. By keeping the blog and the main site on the same URL, you will have the benefit of building up domain authority. Higher DA will allow all of your content from both sites to perform better in search results.
Maintaining one site is usually cheaper and easier then multiple sites. You have one set of software, one host and only one place to look if something goes wrong.
If you attempt to split the blog and main site, Google will recognize they are both owned by the same person and your interlink value will be diminished. It also can cause confusion for visitors, along with the natural loss of link value as sites links pass from site-to-site.
You can establish relevancy for a given area with your content and backlinks without depending on your URL.
-
sites need regularly fresh content and inbound authority building. So in this scenario, an internal blog would make sense and provide more long-term value than an external blog unless you've got another plan for a high volume of long term content freshness on the main site.
The exact match keyword domain aspect isn't as important as it used to be since Google has slightly devalued exact match domain importance. Even when it carried more weight, it shouldn't be a primary means for long term success because it causes the illusion that a diverse strategy isn't as important as it in fact really is.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Best way to change URL for already ranking pages
Hello. I have a lot of pages that I'm optimising. The ones I'm focusing on right now is already ranking, but the URLs could be better (they don't include the keywords right now). However I'm worried that if I change the URLs they will drop in rankings or have to start over. I would of course set up 301 redirect, but is there more I need to do? What is the best way to change URL for already ranking pages?
Technical SEO | | GoMentor0 -
Internal link structure, find out if there are any internal links to this page
When i use this url in open site explorer it says that there are no internal links:
Technical SEO | | wilcoXXL
http://goo.gl/d2s6tJ
Page Authority is also 1, it should be higher of there are any internal links to it right? But i am very sure there are links to this url on my website. For example on this URL:
http://goo.gl/ucixRH How certain can i be of this? Because if i can be very certain, than we have a internal linkstructure problem on our entire site i believe.0 -
Blog RSS behind https
Hi, I'm finding our blog's RSS feed won't be recognized by various websites. The feed is on a https url. Is this the most likely problem? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | OTSEO0 -
Internal search : rel=canonical vs noindex vs robots.txt
Hi everyone, I have a website with a lot of internal search results pages indexed. I'm not asking if they should be indexed or not, I know they should not according to Google's guidelines. And they make a bunch of duplicated pages so I want to solve this problem. The thing is, if I noindex them, the site is gonna lose a non-negligible chunk of traffic : nearly 13% according to google analytics !!! I thought of blocking them in robots.txt. This solution would not keep them out of the index. But the pages appearing in GG SERPS would then look empty (no title, no description), thus their CTR would plummet and I would lose a bit of traffic too... The last idea I had was to use a rel=canonical tag pointing to the original search page (that is empty, without results), but it would probably have the same effect as noindexing them, wouldn't it ? (never tried so I'm not sure of this) Of course I did some research on the subject, but each of my finding recommanded one of the 3 methods only ! One even recommanded noindex+robots.txt block which is stupid because the noindex would then be useless... Is there somebody who can tell me which option is the best to keep this traffic ? Thanks a million
Technical SEO | | JohannCR0 -
Best Way To Handle Expired Content
Hi, I have a client's site that posts job openings. There is a main list of available jobs and each job has an individual page linked to from that main list. However, at some point the job is no longer available. Currently, the job page goes away and returns a status 404 after the job is no longer available. The good thing is that the job pages get links coming into the site. The bad thing is that as soon as the job is no longer available, those links point to a 404 page. Ouch. Currently Google Webmaster Tools shows 100+ 404 job URLs that have links (maybe 1-3 external links per). The question is what to do with the job page instead of returning a 404. For business purposes, the client cannot display the content after the job is no longer available. To avoid duplicate content issues, the old job page should have some kind of unique content saying the job is longer available. Any thoughts on what to do with those old job pages? Or would you argue that it is appropriate to return 404 header plus error page since this job is truly no longer a valid page on the site? Thanks for any insights you can offer.
Technical SEO | | Matthew_Edgar
Matthew1 -
Singular vs plural in urls
In keyword research for an ecommerce site, I've found that widget, singular gets a lot more searches than widgets, plural AND is much less competitive. Is it better for SEO purposes to have the URLs (and matching title tags) in the catalog as /brass-widget.html, /steel-widget.html, etc., or /brass-widgets.html, etc.? I'm worried that a) searches for widgets will pass by the singular urls but not vice versa, and b) the singular form will strike visitors as bad grammar. Any advice?
Technical SEO | | AmericanOutlets0 -
Syndicating With Blogs
Hey all, The idea is that whenever i post a new article on my blog on my "money site" would it be OK to syndicate the same article to all of my other blogs like wordpress, tumblr etc? So for example the exact same content that is on my website will be on myblog.wordpress.com and myblog.tumblr.com but with a URL at the bottom pointing to the original source. (the money site article URL) Are there any foreseeable problems with this? The objective being having the content distributed across the web as much as possible I apologise if this has been asked before, i could not find the answer. Regards Greg
Technical SEO | | AndreVanKets0 -
Best Dynamic Sitemap Generator
Hello Mozers, Could you please share the best Dynamic Sitemap Generator you are using. I have found this place: http://www.seotools.kreationstudio.com/xml-sitemap-generator/free_dynamic_xml_sitemap_generator.php Thanks in advanced for your help.
Technical SEO | | SEOPractices0