How to best host a blog - standalone or on the site?
-
HI
We are redesiging our site currently - at the moment we have a low key blog on the site which is pretty well hidden (to be changed with redesign) but is hosted as brand.com/blog name. I have been advised it might be a good idea on relaunch to have the blog as a standalone blog linking back to our main site but also having a graphic on the site that promotes the blog. The blog does not currently have the same name as the website so would work as a standalone site but I understand it would not have any seo benefits from the original site. I have seen on previous posts here that the best practise is domain.com/blog but wondered if anyone thought different?
Hope someone can point me in the right direction.
Thanks, Penny
-
I agree with Jesse and Jonathan that you should usually have your website connected to your blog in some sort of "brand.com/blog" fashion.
The only situation where I would argue different is if plan on creating a lot of content and you are imagining your blog as a movement or other subculture, that will market your brand. For example the company Citrix blogs at WorkShifting.com, which is their blog about working "outside of the office" which overall helps them since all of their tools are based around work shifting.
-
"domain.com/blog" all the way. Jonathan was spot-on.
-
I always do blogs on the same site. The reason is that good content will give the site a freshness boost, plus if you really focus on content you will also get natural backlinks, and social media signals coming back to your site.
The reason why someone might suggest doing it the other way is to get free backlinks to your site, but I don't think this will be any where near as affective as producing the top quality content for your site, and getting a buzz on social media, and backlinks from third party sites.
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
-
Traffic to blog home page is going down after changing my WordPress Theme
I recently changed my wordpress theme from a standard free theme to a newer theme. The home page I switched up a bit adding more calls to action to some of our top posts and leading people to popular categories and so on. This greatly improved the usability of our site as it allowed us to highlight new posts. The previous free template simply listed 10 of our most recent posts on a page with small snippets and then you had to move to the next page to keep reading. Since switching my theme the blog traffic has stayed relatively level. That being said, the specific posts traffic is going up a lot whereas the organic traffic to the blog homepage is now nearly depleted. Is this a common thing to happen or is there anything I can do to fix this issue?
Content Development | | saultienut0 -
Blog or article length and SEO value
Why do different blog lengths affect SEO differently? Is it directly affected by Rankbrain or the Google Algorithm, or is it more because of user engagement?
Content Development | | CyrusDariusXerxes0 -
Are press releases that could end up being published with duplicate content links point back to you bad for your site ?
With all the changes to the seo landscape in the resent years im a little unsure as to how a press release work looks in the eyes of Google (and others). For instance, you write up a 500 word press release and it gets featured on the following sites : Forbes Techcrunch BBC CNN NY Times etc ... If each of these cover your story but only rewrite 50% of the article (not saying these sites wouldn't re write the entire artcile, but for this purpose lets presume only 50% is rewritten) could it be negative to your backlink profile, ? Im thinking not, as these sites will have high authority, but what if once your press release is published on these sites 10 other smaller sites re publish the stories with almost no re writing, either straight from the press release or straight from the article in the mainstream news sites. (For clarification this Press release would be done in the fashion of a article suggestion to relevant journalists, rather than a blanket press release, via PR Newswire, mass mail out etc. Although i guess the effect with duplicate content backlinks is the same.) You now have c. 50 articles online all with very similar content with links pointing back at you, would this have a negative effect or would each link just not carry as much value as it normally would. By now we all understand publishing duplicate content on our own sites is a terrible idea, but dose have links pointing back to your self from duplicate (or similar) content hosted on other sites (some being highly authoritative) effect your site 's seo ?
Content Development | | Sam-P1 -
How does WordPress 3.5.1 impact site rankings?
We have a user interested in having a WordPress 3.5.1 blog on their own existing, robust site. There is a blog module available in the CMS but the user feels more familiar with WordPress. It will be set up at the root as a subdirectory. Based on the URL structure, Google should see the WordPress blog and the user's website as the same website. (www.website.com/wordpress). There will not be a 301 needed. Does using the Wordpress module impact rankings? We've understood that Google doesn't care for Wordpress because 99% of spammers use it... is that only if it is hosted on WordPress.com? Also, are there any other reasons that our user should use/avoid WordPress?
Content Development | | dianemahan0 -
If you were guest blogging would you prefer a link or revenue share
I am looking at ideas at the moment, we have been getting a large number of guest bloggers wanting to write for our site but i have to say we are turning down around 90% of the articles as they are low quality. So i am just wondering, to attract high quality articles, should we carry on offering a link in the articles or offer them revenue share by asking for their google adsense code and putting it somewhere on the page. If we did offer this, how would we impliment this, we work on a joomla website and have read about rev share but not sure how we do this correctly. Would like to know people's thoughts on this
Content Development | | ClaireH-1848861 -
Best way to get my Blog traffic
I've recently began blogging on my site. The content is all unique and useful and written properly without keyword stuffing... My question is, how do i go about getting people to see the blog (getting traffic to it) so that it can get linked to. I've created content that i believe people will naturally link to, the only problem is they're not finding my blog. Any advice on how to get my blog out into the world?! thanks
Content Development | | Prime850 -
Any article sites that actually still rank welll?
Hi All! After the havoc of Panda and Penguin - are there any article sites that still rank decently for the articles within? I'm not talking about using articles to get backlinks - I want to attract visitors to the articles themselves because of the message within the article. Yes, I know that for lots of reasons my own blog would be better. In addition to that, if you want to spread the message - which sites are recommended? Thanks! Aviva
Content Development | | debi_zyx0 -
Transfer existing blog to wordpress.org or start a new blog
My blog sits on the wordpress domain http://gardenbeet.wordpress.com/ - it has good page rank and has around 300-400 visits per day - should i move it to my website or Should I start a new blog? i have a page set up for it on my website but it now has good rank http://www.gardenbeet.com/content/design-blog.html - and now want to keep this URL am a bit confused - what is the best strategy in terms of SEO?
Content Development | | GardenBeet1