What's more valuable, a Blog or a Forum, and how to integrate?
-
We want to start a blog or forum (maybe eventually both) and are unsure what is the best way to publish it from an SEO standpoint.
If the blog is published on our domain, like domain.com/blog then that obviously helps the site but if the base site is a for-profit business wouldn't it get less credibility, eyeballs, links as opposed to if you started the blog as it's own separate community on a separate domain and then just strategically linked to the for profit site (sponsorship links)?
Essentially the question is, if I'm the Lucky Soday Company, do I start a Blog on the Lucky Soda website, or do I start a separate website to grow a soft drink enthusiast community blog / forum?
I would guess a blog has more SEO potential than a discussion forum?
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
-
Is it worth keeping a decades-old domain that's merely 301 redirecting to the main domain?
Hi fellow Moz SEOs, We have a bigger client who we just did an SEO Site Audit for, and it was discovered that they have several domain names that are simply 301 redirecting to their main domain name. One of their domains in particular is decades old, and the client is asking if there is any value in keeping it (and the others), or simply leaving them as-is. Considering the domain age, does anyone have any recommendations? Much appreciated, Zack Barton
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Zack
Barton Interactive
(833) 442.6853 // office
(408) 910.7750 // mobile
https://bartoninteractive.com0 -
When does it make sense to make a meta description longer than what's considered best practice?
I've seen all the length recommendations and understand the reasoning is that they will be cut off when you search the time but I've also noticed that Google will "move" the meta description if the search term that the user is using is in the cached version of the page. S I have a case where Google is indexing the pages but not caching the content (at least not yet). So we see the meta description just fine on the Google results but we can't see the content cache when checking the Google cached version. **My question is: **In this case, why would it be a bad idea to make a slightly lengthier (but still relevant) meta description with the intent that one of the terms in that description could match the user's search terms and the description would "move" to highlight that term in the results.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | navidash0 -
Looking for good examples of website's geotargeting
I am looking for some examples of sites that handle their global presence well (geotargeting and languages), ideally from a single .com domain thanks! Stephen
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | firstconversion0 -
Anyone managed to change 'At a glance:' in local search results
On Google's local search results, i.e when the 'Google places' data is displayed along with the map on the right hand side of the search results, there is also an element 'At a glance:'
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DeanAndrews
The data that if being displayed is from some years ago and the client would if possible like it to reflect there current services, which they have been providing for some five years. According to Google support here - http://support.google.com/maps/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1344353 this cannot be changed, they say 'Can I edit a listing’s descriptive terms or suggest a new one?
No; the terms are not reviewed, curated, or edited. They come from an algorithm, and we do not help that algorithm figure it out. ' My question is has anyone successfully influenced this data and if so how.0 -
Wordpress.com content feeding into site's subdomain, who gets SEO credit?
I have a client who had created a Wordpress.com (not Wordpress.org) blog, and feeds blog posts into a subdomain blog.client-site.com. My understanding was that in terms of SEO, Wordpress.com would still get the credit for these posts, and not the client, but I'm seeing conflicting information. All of the posts are set with permalinks on the client's site, such as blog.client-site.com/name-of-post, and when I run a Google site:search query, all of those individual posts appear in the Google search listings for the client's domain. Also, I've run a marketing.grader.com report, and these same results are seen. Looking at the source code on the page, however, I see this information which leads me to believe the content is being credited to, and fed in from, Wordpress.com ('client name' altered for privacy): href="http://client-name.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/could_you_survive_a_computer_disaster.jpeg">class="alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-2050" title="Could_you_survive_a_computer_disaster" src="http://client-name.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/could_you_survive_a_computer_disaster.jpeg?w=150&h=143" I'm looking to provide a recommendation to the client on whether they are ok to continue moving forward with this current setup, or whether we should port the blog posts over to a subfolder on their primary domain www.client-site.com/blog and use Wordpress.org functionality, for proper SEO. Any advice?? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | grapevinemktg0 -
Can literally any site get 'burned'?
Just curious what people think. The SEOMOZ trust on my site has gone up, all while Google is dropping us in rankings for lots of keywords. Just curious if this can happen to anyone or once you are 100% 'trusted' you're good. We went from 120,000 page views down to about 50,000. All while doubling content, improving the design(at least from a user perspective), and getting more natural links. Seems counter intuitive to Google's mantra of ranking quality. I would guess 'authority' sites never get hit by these updates right? So when you make it you've made it.(at least from a dropping like a rock perspective, obviously you have to keep working). I'm guessing we just need a bunch more quality links but would hate to work on building links, quality content, trust etc for it to be something so finicky long term.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | astahl110 -
Inspiration from today's WBF!
Hello and Welcome MozFriends! so I watched the WBF this morning, and I got the idea of making Keyword Tiers for a site like so. Site Products- wheelchair, Powerchairs, Hospital Beds, Lifts, Lift Chairs Specific Items- 16" wheelchairs, 4 wheel power chair, Patient lifts and such. The Keywords for the Front page would be very general not referencing the sites specific items at all. Like Medical Equipment, supplies things like that. Keywords for products would be the Manufacturers names, and the category name. Specific Items would have specific keywords to draw an audience that has a goal and is searching for that specific product. So my theory/experiment is this. Instead of making the whole site generate traffic for one type of audience, I am making certain tiers for certain audiences. The higher up in the Site Hierarchy the more global the keywords are designed for. It may just be complete and utter non sense but I would like to hear any thoughts on it if it works. Thank You Friends! Justin Smith
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FrontlineMobility0 -
Culling 99% of a website's pages. Will this cause irreparable damage?
I have a large travel site that has over 140,000 pages. The problem I have is that the majority of pages are filled with dupe content. When Panda came in, our rankings were obliterated, so I am trying to isolate the unique content on the site and go forward with that. The problem is, the site has been going for over 10 years, with every man and his dog copying content from it. It seems that our travel guides have been largely left untouched and are the only unique content that I can find. We have 1000 travel guides in total. My first question is, would reducing 140,000 pages to just 1,000 ruin the site's authority in any way? The site does use internal linking within these pages, so culling them will remove thousands of internal links throughout the site. Also, am I right in saying that the link juice should now move to the more important pages with unique content, if redirects are set up correctly? And finally, how would you go about redirecting all theses pages? I will be culling a huge amount of hotel pages, would you consider redirecting all of these to the generic hotels page of the site? Thanks for your time, I know this is quite a long one, Nick
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Townpages0