Blogs: Hosted vs. Off-Site
-
What is the latest opinion on whether to have a blog hosting on your primary domain or on an outside domain (either Wordpress or just another URL).
In the past we have done the former and it's been a great source of fresh content and organic traffic. Wonder if there is good argument now for not having it on the domain. With this new site we're working on it logistically would be more challenging given their tech resources, plus they already have thousands of pages.
-
The challenge is we are speaking in general terms. It would help if you shared a lot more specifics.
Generally speaking, if the blog content was directly related to my domain, I would want the blog to be on the main domain. If I had corvettes.com and I wanted to add a blog discussing corvettes, I would choose something like corvettes.com/blog.
If I had corvettes.com and I wanted to add a blog discussing cars in general, I may wish to separate the blog from my core site by using a subdomain. There will certainly be some relevant opportunities between the blog and the main site.
If I wanted to create a blog to discuss unrelated matters, then I would pursue a different url altogether.
-
Great inputs. Turns out this client has some roadblocks with load balance systems, so it won't be easily feasible to have site.com/blog
Options are blog.site.com or a completely different domain. Since inbound links won't be worth much to the primary domain (if the blog is on a sub) I'm pondering having on an external domain and branded differently. Any more thoughts?
-
Just a additional thought. We use both, for different topics. Our on domain Blog will focus on one theme. and we can wonder around a bit on the word press hosted blog.
-
It really depends on the content of your blog. I have seen a few blogs from various companies that we have worked with that have blogs that have a lot of content that is not related the rest of their site. Because the content is not related we have seen how the blog is bringing in the wrong kind of traffic when it starts to rank for keywords that are unrelated to the main site. Also, all of this unrelated content could hurt the site by causing the search engines to miscategorize the main purpose of the site.
A added bonus of having an external blog is that you can create quality external links to your site from your blog.
All that being said, generally I suggest that companies have their site under their own domain like www.mysite.com/blog
-
For an individual who does not have a website and is a casual blogger, then using an established domain offers the advantage of a stronger domain authority. In any other case, I prefer using your primary domain.
You want to control your traffic. There are a few nightmare stories where the blog host, such as blogger, closed the URL of a user. In each case the user lost years of value they built up. This reason alone would lead me to always using my primary domain.
Additionally, a key reason for providing a blog is to generate site traffic. If you offer high quality content in your blog, then you want visitors linking to your site, and not wordpress.
-
I would suggest that it would be beneficial to have the blog on your own domain unless there is a very valid reason not to. By bringing the blog under your own roof, you're adding fresh content regularly and should the content be linked to or tweeted/ shared, you're domain will get the love.
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
-
Find blog post idea
How do I find blog post ideas for my website blog when there are only very few questions people have. I am a tour operator operator and the the keywords I target are Provence bike tour, Normandy bike tour , Tuscany bike tour and so on. I am trying to to find blog ideas to create a topic cluster for those pillar pages. Any advice on how to find blog ideas that could boost my pillar pages. Thank you,
Content Development | | seoanalytics1 -
Duplicate content on the same site
We have a client who wants us to use the same piece of copy twice on their website. Once to promote a workshop and once to promote a conference talk. We feel this would be bad practice from a user perspective, but we were wondering how search engines would regard this? Thanks Ian
Content Development | | Substance-create0 -
B2b services site, deep long tail services or flat and broad
Hi all, i have a small internet agency with services in several area's.
Content Development | | mdkay
Currently i structud my services in 2 different area's.
General services and specialized products with services underneath. like so:
domain.com/services
domain.com/services/service1
domain.com/services/service2
and so on. domain.com/product
domain.com/product/service1
domain.com/product/service2 domain.com/product2
domain.com/product2/service1
domain.com/product2/service2 But now im thinking of create loads of different services i provide,
there are some overlapping content of course, but all services are still individual.
But i can write a lot of unique content about all the services. But is it smarter to make just a few big pages with the services more bundled.
Or really long tail. Now i have around 15 services pages.
when i make it a lot deeper im talking about 40 pages. Currently my complete website is around 35 pages.0 -
Updating blogs - SEO best practice
Thinking of new blog content and one option obviously is to check out historical popular blogposts via Analytics and do fresh versions of those. So my question is what is best practice: 1. Copy and paste the old blogpost copy but edit it to be slightly different while still having the old blogpost live or 2. just update the old one and re-promote I assume it's better to have a new version of the blogpost?
Content Development | | digitalbua1 -
How do I properly sitemap a site with static pages + Wordpress in it's own directory?
I apologize for the awkward wording in the headline. No to the issue, I have a site with static pages that are created as follows: url.com, url.com/page1, url.com/page2, etc. I then have WordPress install at url.com/blog. What is the proper method for creating a comprehensive sitemap for my entire domain. I like the sitemap feature provided by Yoast SEO plugin but I assume it will only index the wordpress directory (url.com/blog). Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Content Development | | Qcmny0 -
What is your take on using Google images for blogs
In your opinion, do you think it is okay to use Google images for your blog posts as long as it credits or includes a link to the site in which you located it? We tried looking at stock art for some license-free photos and had no luck in coming up with good pictures. What rules or guidelines do you follow when looking for pictures for your customers blog (or your own)? A lot of our posts have to do with "what to do in this city" or "Where to go in this city". Do you think it's okay to use Google images for these types of posts?
Content Development | | qlkasdjfw0 -
Evergreen content: Dedicated section or blog posts?
As part of our content strategy we are creating an ongoing series of articles to help both our potential buyers and our users learn about our product and improve their knowledge of industry best practices in general. Internally, we've had some debate as to where we should host this content within our site. We've identified two approaches: Series of blog posts Dedicated knowledge section of the website If we go with the first approach, we would created a dedicated section that indexed all the blog posts. If we went with the second, we'd create blog posts for each of the articles announcing their addition. Is there any difference, SEO wise with the two approaches? What would you recommend? Thanks, Darren.
Content Development | | dgibbons0 -
Posting youtube videos on your site-use irframe or "old embed code"
If you choose "embed" now, youtube gives you the choice of using an iframe: <iframe width="430" height="352" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/0-nKXALtHWs?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe> or, the old embed code: <object width="430" height="352"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/0-nKXALtHWs?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/0-nKXALtHWs?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="430" height="352" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></object> Is either better when it comes to seo?
Content Development | | MarieHaynes0