Blog for SEO: embedded in the site or separate
-
Hello,
For both ecommerce and sites that sell services, I've seen a lot of people recommending a blog for SEO.
Should this blog be inside or separate from the main website for the most results?
I can see how adding one to a site would create more unique content and an opportunity for link bait, but perhaps there is a reason to have a blog separate from the main site
Thank you.
-
I agree that it's better to add it to your own site. What if people like your blog and link to it, but it's not on your site? You've lost some link juice there. You can submit it to blog directories too - more direct links to your site. For ecommerce sites there's a lot of content duplication with other sites when the same products are sold, so like you say in your last sentence, a blog adds regular unique content.
-
Without a doubt add it to the main site under a folder like /blog. As John Barth mentioned, using it as a subdomain will pass all the domain authority value to the subdomain and not your main site, so its functionally equivalent to hosting it on a different domain.
-
Weikelbob,
Personally, I would do the following for e-commerce sites: Create a blog using a popular platform (which gives the client ease of being able to add their own client), where you are capable of changing the background to match the websites look and feel (this all depends on the client and how they want their blog to look). Once you create the blog and it's design is as requested by the client, link it to the website by adding a blog button to the header, footer or main navigation (you do want people to find your blog and to add comments and for them to share it with their friends). The blog should have a domain of the site followed by the name of the blog or just blog: "http://domain.com/name-of-blog" or "http://domain.com/blog".
Also, if you have a facebook page, you can add the blogs feed into that page (there are apps for it).
Hope this helps!
-
Add it to your site. You want people to know the blog is part of the site, and you want people to be able to get from your site to the blog and vice versa easily. Also, you want your site's rankings to benefit from the traffic you bring in via the blog, and vice versa.
To make it be treated as part of your site, you should set it up under a URL like mysite.com/blog, vs. blog.mysite.com. The subdomain approach will get your blog treated like a new site.
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
-
SEO for international bloggers
Hi I'm brand new to SEO stuff, and I'm trying to monetize my blog. I have a Q from you about optimizing my blog for an international audience. So I thought where is better to ask my question 🙂 My q is: Does the country that you are living in and publishing your post affect your SEO if you blog in English? For instance, if I live in turkey, but I publish my whole posts in English, will Google hesitate to show my content to an English audience? In other words, Does the publishing source country make it harder to contest with native English bloggers for google's page 1? Thanks in advance for your attention
Content Development | | Nilss4 -
New blog contributors
For context my website is a content resource portal. In SEO training I have been told that it is a good SEO move to have as many content contributors as possible. As a result we are pushing to recruit new content contributors so they can be listed as new contributors/authors on our site alongside their valuable content. Would this move be good for our SEO rankings and is there anything in particular to consider with this?
Content Development | | Chanice0 -
Starting a Blog. New Domain vs integrated in a shop domain?
Hi everybody, We are going to start a blog for posting about topics related to our online shop and its products. Our question is... what is better in terms of SEO.... Creating it in a new domain and linking to our online store when neccessary, or integrating it in our actual online shop and take advantage of our visitors? Thank you very much in advance! Best Regards
Content Development | | fogar0 -
What are the advantages/disadvantages of a blog residing on a website as opposed to free-standing and linked to site
I have a cleint with a web site and with 3 freestanding wordpress blogs - should we be housing those blogs on the site? should we combine them (its an insurance compnay with several business units). thanks
Content Development | | thirsty30 -
On-Site Blog or Blog Service for Best SEO Results
I had a blog associated with my site, then I had to merge two Google accounts and to make a long story short, my old Blogger page won't transfer to the new account. So, I'm starting fresh. My Question: Would I benefit most from an on-site subdomain blog, adding content to my site on a weekly/monthly basis, or an off-site blog such as Blogger, linking back to pages and resources on my site? Then, any other juicy tips would be great. Honestly, I won't expect a large subscription base. There will be a natural draw for some trade associates, and I'll be linking and promoting them as well. Thanks for any input. I'm new to the community, and SEO, but really impressed with this community.
Content Development | | honestabejosh0 -
Is my SEO guy bad news?
Hi All... I have had an SEO guy doing some work for us (link building etc) over the past few months. In the last week or two, I have been receiving emails from a few website owners complaining that our SEO guy has been spamming their sites (either through blog comments or forums posts etc). Now, to clarify, it's not spam as in "come and buy our awesome product" - it is spam as in he makes (for example) blog post comments that are relevant to the topic, that sometimes don't make perfect sense (due to his english skills). So, they do seem perhaps, extra spammy... (it is all hand written... not an automated scripts) My questions Im not out to do the wrong thing, so, is this approach bad news? Apart from annoying people, are there are other downsides? If I were to pre-write him comments/posts that actually made perfect sense, would that be a better approach? I don't want to annoy people, and I don't want to do the wrong thing, and I don't want our rankings to be effected, so... what is the consensus?
Content Development | | blitzna100 -
Looking for advice on blog implementation...
I am getting ready to implement a blog for my company. We have our website controlled through a commercial Content Management System that has a blog feature, but it is cumbersome to use and doesn't have all the bells and whistles of a Wordpress blog for example. I know for SEO purposes that we would be better to use the CMS blog and make it a subfolder (www.mysite.com/blog) instead of using a subdomain (blog.mysite.com). However, we would like to use the hosted WordPress blog and find a way to retain the same SEO value for our www.mysite.com site that it would provide being a subfolder on the site. Any suggestions? Installing Word Press CMS on our current web servers is not an option. We would have to use Wordpress hosting services for the blog.
Content Development | | KHCreative0 -
New blog not TopDomainName, do I wast my time?
My eCommerce site is: http://www.furnacefilterscanada.com to provide informations a create links for SEO, i launch http://www.furnacefilterscanada.info/ over WordPress. After ready the new SEOmoz book, I realize .info is not a TopDomainName and it might be see has spam. What do you thing? Should I keep the domain spend time on this blog or should I go a buy a new domain? Since I learn it this, my blog was lauch, but i didn't post on it, I'm affraid I will loos time. Thank you for your advice and recommendations, Jean Nichols
Content Development | | BigBlaze2050