Where to host my blog
-
If I cannot have my blog on my main site, what is the second best option? It is currently on Blogger, but I am wondering if it would be worth it to move it to blog.mainsite.com.
Thanks!
-
I would be moving my hosting.... or getting a new CMS that allows my blog to run in a subfolder.
-
If you can't have it on your www subdomain then the next best thing is to have it on a blog.mainsite.com or other subdomain of your main site. This is the SEO perspective, however Loren Strand makes a lot of good points about other considerations for hosting above.
However, the best option for SEO is to host it in a subfolder, like www.mydomain.com/blog. This way your blog posts contribute to your domain rank for your main website. Is this technically not possible on your site, or some other reason you're not doing this?
-
The subdomain choice is yours. blog.[domain] is common. If you are asking what hosting service to use, it depends on your requirements. For example, shared, low-cost hosting at hostgator.com may be a fine place to start.
Let's say that site performance is important due to the visitor experience you desire to deliver and you have a lot of traffic. Shared hosting is probably a poor choice. Pay more for a hosting plan that gives your blog dedicated resources.
You may require root access to tweak certain settings. Some hosts offer at a good price, others do not.
If you are using specific software (Wordpress, etc) then maybe a host that has experience with the install and support of that platform?
Customer service is one of my highest considerations in hosting. A low cost never outweighs down-time or slow/lousy/rude customer support practices. Read customer reviews for positive/negative experiences. Try out customer service line yourself.
Last, think about backup and recovery of your site. Some hosts help really well with backups and ports of your blog elsewhere. It's so hard when I hear stories of blogs created at cheaper hosts only to lose very valuable content because there was an implied (but never tested) backup and recovery plan.
Let us know what you choose and why.
-
In the interests of not starting a subdomain vs subfolder flamewar, I'm going to say: it depends.
Same branding as the rest of your site? Want to treat is as part of the whole? Go with a subfolder.
Different brand? Different style? Different purpose? subdomain.
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
-
Impact of Medium blog hosted on my subdomain
I am using the Medium blogging platform to blog, but it is pointed to my site and appears at blog.mysite.com. Since the content is hosted on Medium and pointed to my subdomain via an A Record / CNAME / etc... 1. Will my domain get credit for backlinks to the blog content? 2. If Medium changes in the future and no longer points to my subdomain, will I lose all of the backlinks I've built up?
Technical SEO | | davidevans_seo0 -
Bolt on Blog Software
We have several large eCommerce websites built on Cold Fusion. It is running on IIS, not Apache. We are looking for a blogging package (CMS) that we can bolt on to the website. We don't want the blog residing in a sub-domain. The blog needs to reside in a folder. NO => blog.mydomain.com YES => www.mydomain.com/blog/ Has anyone ever adapted Wordpress for this type of situation? Can WordPress reside in a folder? Are there any other suggestions?
Technical SEO | | AMHC0 -
Multilingual Blog Structure
Hi I have a domain in 20 languages. I want to integrate a wordpress blog (in subfolders) in the 3 most important languages like EN-ES-FR (actually they will be 3 independent blogs) and I want to know which structure is the best one. OPTION 1 domain/en/blog/post1 domain/es/blog/post1 domain/fr/blog/post1 OPTION 2 domain/blog_en/post1 domain/blog_es/post1 domain/blog_fr/post1 Last question. For the rest of the 17 languages of my domain, can I put a link the english blog or is not recommended because maybe too many pages will be linking to the blog? Thank you
Technical SEO | | andromedical0 -
Cloud Hosting and Duplicate content
Hi I have an ecommerce client who has all their images cloud hosted (amazon CDN) to speed up site. Somehow it seems maybe because the pinned the images on pinterest but the CDN got indexed and there now seems to be about 50% of the site duplicated (about 2500 pages eg: http://d2rf6flfy1l.cloudfront.net..) Is this a problem with duplicate content? How come Moz doesnt show it up as crawl errors? Why is thisnot a problem that loads of people have?I only found a couple of mentions of such a prob when I googled it.. any suggestion will be grateful!
Technical SEO | | henya0 -
Internal Blog - Embed Categorized RSS Feeds into Site Web Pages
I am thinking about additional ways to repurpose blog posts through out my website. I have a blog - http://www.domainname.com/blog I would like to use the blog categories, which are aligned with the site structure, and create on-page RSS Feeds for my regular web pages. Anything here that might not be good for SEO? Thank you
Technical SEO | | evereffect0 -
To integrate a blog tool onto site - or build a blog solution - what's better for SEO?
Currently looking at adding a blog to our company site subdirectory and wanted to know if there was a SEO distinction between the following methods: Integrating a bolt-on blog tool with the site to create the blog VS. just using the current site infrastructure to build blog functionality. What's better for SEO? (and if tool integration is the overwhelming response - which tool?). Cheers.
Technical SEO | | Oxfordcomma0 -
Wordpress site, combine Blog without hurting SEO - Need Expert Advice
Hi, I come from the old html days of Frontpage and then moved to Dreamweaver. I first worked with Wordpress at version 2.7 and was not all that impressed, but then recently I worked in the new version and was extremely impressed. So my knowledge of Wordpress is VERY limited and plan to build future sites with it. I need to know the best way to solve an issue for a customer. The client is http://www.nextgenrestoration.com/ Site was built years ago with Frontpage. The popularity of Blogs was hot so someone told them that if they add new content it would be better to use a blog, so they added a blog. So you have the following: www.nextgenrestoration.com (main site) then they installed wordpress in a folder (blog) www.nextgenrestoration.com/blog Original person that built the site quit. New person took over and said the main site needed to changed to Wordpress because they did not have Frontpage and all they knew was Wordpress. Main site was converted to Wordpress. They wanted to keep the original design so they did not use a stock template, they just built it with their design. I guess from looking at the Editor, they manually went in and put the design in to match. Now.. this last month, the person that had changed
Technical SEO | | Force7
the site to Wordpress quit. So I got involved because the new person they hired could not add content to the main website. If you add a page, it does not show up, you have to manually go in the php and add the link to the category. The new person knows how to use Wordpress but she knows nothing about PHP so is lost when it comes to manually adding content to the site. Here was my Thoughts. The main site needs to be rebuilt in a stock template so it automatically creates new pages, blog posts. I have to make sure that if we change the
main website that we could keep all the same links and page names. The girl
that built the site, if you hover over the links that she put it under ‘florida’,
that must be a category. But we would need to keep the same page names. I know
we could do a 301 redirect but this guy cannot lose traffic. He is already down
in hits after the last Panda update. My thought was, rebuild the main site in a stock template so
someone can actually add content easily to the site. Also build a new blog
section so it all matches. (personally the existing design looks old and dated and needs updating) If you look at the site now. The blog looks totally
different and it is not helping if a customer comes to the blog but cannot see
the navigation for the whole site. My thought was to just leave the old blog, it has a LOT of backlinks. But just add a new blog to the main site and all new content goes there. The old blog would stay just make sure we did build in some call to action so it sends them to the main site. Also, we found we cannot create a Blog on the
wordpress we have installed in the main directory. I am guessing because it
wants to name it /blog? I want to be sure we give this client the best advice on what to do without
hurting his existing seo and traffic. As you can tell, I am not qualified to really give the best advice since I am so new to Wordpress. This is a small company that really needs some help. Thanks in advance for your time! Force70 -
Blog Setup
A client has been blogging for about a year on http://blog.abccompany.com/ and has a page authority of 37. With it's built up past history, should we change the blog to a subdirectory, http://www.abccompany.com/blog ? Obviously thinking what is the best long-term strategy / benefits. Thanks, Chris
Technical SEO | | evereffect0