Are you sure moving a wordpress blog to a main website is a good idea?
-
Sorry to ask this question again but I left out some background info......
My blog sits at www.gardenbeet.wordpress.com
I have been using the blog as my main linking page for my main website at www.gardenbeet.com - the blog links to relevant sites in both blog articles and on the side of the blog.
The blog links to industry websites that in turn link to my main website at www.gardenbeet.com.
If I was to move the wordpress blog to my own domain will my mainwebsite loose its strength. Will all those blog links pour my link juice out of my website?
Will the current three way links become two way links and thereby lesson their linking importance?
Is the previous recommendation (combine the blog and the main website) still the best course of action?
Should I keep the two sites or perhaps close entries on the existing blog and start another on my own domain?
thanks for your time AGAIN
-
I would definitely create a new blog at gardenbeet.com/blog. This will drive traffic and links to your main site, which appears to be your ultimate goal.
Do not worry about linking out. If the link goes to a relevant site, linking out can actually be a good sign of credibility for you. Not to mention link karma.
What you do with the old blog is up to you. I would recommend moving the content and 301ing the URLs to the new domain. Here is a link to help you out. http://en.support.wordpress.com/site-redirect/ This would result in the current links pointing at the blog to pass juice to your main site.
Simply put, optimizing one site (gardenbeet.com) is easier than optimizing two (gardenbeet.com and your wordpress blog).
-
Hey Felicity
If moving the blog is a huge problem, then keep the existing one, and just start blogging and concentrating on your main site. There really is no good reason to maintain two sites and all you are doing is doubling your work.
Concentrate on making one site that is a great resource for your visitors and don't worry about cross linking, linking out and all of this other business as long as what you are doing is intended to create a great experience for your site visitors.
Hope it helps
Marcus -
I absolutely agree that linking out is not to be feared and the benefits may outweigh any dilution of link juice. However, I would never use keywords (that I am competing for) in an external link anchor text - that's feels like just giving it away.
-
hey thanks - perhaps this is a grey issue? I have been told that I should not link from my mainwebiste to other sites - when I look around at other e-commerce websites I see very few links on other e-commerce main websites either -
-
On my blog I link out to six to ten websites every day. I believe that those links do very little damage to my rankings. In fact, I believe that making my website a great source of information is far more valuable for attracting links and repeat visitors.
Also, if google would compare two identical pages, one with links out to great sources of supplemental information and one without, which do you think would rank higher? My vote is for the page with the outlinks.
I believe that linking out is powerful and it often add keyword rich anchor text to your pages. Whatever you might lose in linkjuice comes back to you in many other forms. "The Web" is all about links, not hoarding.
-
hey thanks for the reply - yes i understand your point but my concern is that perhaps all my linking out to other websites from my blog may remove the strength of my main webiste (if I were to combine the two websites).
-
If you have the blog on a separate domain then links into the blog will not benefit your main site (except in just a small way through links between the blog and the main site).
However, if the blog is on the main site then links into the blog will empower both the blog and the main site.
The result will be like uniting the clans.
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 a good idea to publish a list of players in my industry, including competitors?
I am working with an e-commerce site that does mostly B2B sales in a very commoditized industrial product segment in which very few manufacturers sell direct. It's all done through distributors and resellers, like our site. We don't often win on price, but we do win enough SERP battles to get the visitors and provide great customer service, so we have gained a following and we do compete well for some very large orders. We list several thousand products and in a given month, visitors regularly hit over 1,000 different landing pages. While we make most money from relatively few items, most items are sold only once a year, maybe twice. It's a very longtail business, and therefore tough to do a great job optimizing all pages down the tail. So, one thing I'm doing is building out a set of resource pages with common questions, terminology and other useful bits so the site gains more traffic and authority, in the hope of boosting product pages. e.g., an in-depth category definition in the glossary could link to all the items in a category. In addition to adding content that augments product pages, I'd like to create basically a map of the whole industry, including brand name manufacturers, white label manufacturers, distributors, etc. If it's going to be a truly comprehensive list, it should include my competitors. Given that I have never found such a list, it feels like this could be a good page and earn some links. Since it's unlikely much traffic will even find that page, compared to product pages, are there potential pitfalls I should be aware of? I get the feeling if I create a page that others bookmark and visit when hunting for products in our market, we win, even if most visitors to that page won't buy from us. I've been in this industry for four years now, and it's amazing how hard it is to find some companies. Only a handful even think about SEO, since they sell through other channels. Should I link to all my competitors (which is only about a dozen) among hundreds of other industry links?
Content Development | | Mike_Sobol0 -
I went and added a H1 on my posts, but it is saying the issue was not fixed. Any ideas?
I "thought" I fixed a bunch of missing H1's on my blog, but when recrawled said the issue is still there. Any ideas on what I may be doing wrong or how to fix? I'm not sure what to do other than put in an H1 heading-which I did. Thanks! Jamie
Content Development | | JamieReinhart0 -
My keywords have low search volume - is it still worth starting a blog?
I'm thinking of starting a new blog, but when I did my keyword research I found that my keywords all have low search volume (under 100 searches per month, with the occasional keyword having 480 searches a month). Is this a deal breaker? Any recommendations would be great - thanks everyone!
Content Development | | Trevorneo1 -
Can We Publish Duplicate Content on Multi Regional Website / Blogs?
Today, I was reading Google's official article on Multi Regional website and use of duplicate content. Right now, We are working on 4 different blogs for following regions. And, We're writing unique content for each blog. But, I am thinking to use one content / subject for all 4 region blogs. USA: http://www.bannerbuzz.com/blog/ UK: http://www.bannerbuzz.co.uk/blog/ AUS: http://www.bannerbuzz.com.au/blog/ CA: http://www.bannerbuzz.ca/blog/ Let me give you very clear ideas on it. Recently, We have published one article on USA website. http://www.bannerbuzz.com/blog/choosing-the-right-banner-for-your-advertisement/ And, We want to publish this article / blog on UK, AUS & CA blog without making any changes. I have read following paragraph on Google's official guidelines and It's inspire me to make it happen. Which is best solution for it? Websites that provide content for different regions and in different languages sometimes create content that is the same or similar but available on different URLs. This is generally not a problem as long as the content is for different users in different countries. While we strongly recommend that you provide unique content for each different group of users, we understand that this may not always be possible. There is generally no need to "hide" the duplicates by disallowing crawling in a robots.txt file or by using a "noindex" robots meta tag. However, if you're providing the same content to the same users on different URLs (for instance, if both example.de/ and example.com/de/ show German language content for users in Germany), you should pick a preferred version and redirect (or use the rel=canonical link element) appropriately. In addition, you should follow the guidelines on rel-alternate-hreflang to make sure that the correct language or regional URL is served to searchers.
Content Development | | CommercePundit0 -
Guest Blogging
If I am looking to guest blog for back links, do I need to reciprocate and provide guest blogging opportunities for them on my site? OR is it better to ask other site's to link to articles on my client's page with the understanding I will link to their page (if they are not competition)? I am trying to do some link building for a bankruptcy lawyer and I am considering possibly searching out guest blogging in different cities/states. Bankruptcy is primarily a federal matter, so reaching out to neighboring states. Not sure the client will be interested in this or not, but it's something I am considering. A lot of law firms have contact information Thanks everyone!
Content Development | | DigitalEnvy0 -
Archiving old blog posts - yea or nay?
I'm building up my personal website. When I moved from my old domain to my current one a few years ago, I had moved a folder with all my old blog posts (from an old blogger.com account) to an archives called /blog/. It's bad enough the entries just text and nearly all the images aren't there but because of the way I moved over the posts, I have 200+ duplicate page titles with no meta descriptions. Is it worth saving these posts ? (putting them into an archives.mysite.com sub-domain?) I already have the folder disallowed in my robotos.txt file and there's nothing really incredible content-wise in the archives, though they are some of the oldest pages on my current (3 years old) domain. There's no real SEO thought in them as this was just a fun personal blog at the time. Thoughts?
Content Development | | JamesDziezynski0 -
Images for WordPress
I'd be grateful for any advice regarding sourcing, adding & attributing images/photos for my WordPress blog. Budget is tight so have to rule out paid stock libraries, but I heard that Flickr images can be used under Creative Commons providing they are correctly attributed. eg. http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/business-of-it/2011/04/07/mps-criticise-bbc-siemens-38m-contract-failure-40092428/ eg 2. http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/networking/2011/10/05/bt-lines-up-300mbps-broadband-launch-40094109/ Example 1 does not seem to link back but example 2 does. Are there any rules on this? I have looked at some plugins: Insights, iFlickr, WP Flickr Manager, Photo Dropper. Looking to save time by streamlining the process of adding images, resizing and attributing. Many thanks.
Content Development | | martyc0 -
For a consumer facing blog, how often do you recommend updating content to develop good rankings? I understand that it's really dependent upon the niche/competition, but what are some best practices? Content is expensive. Thanks
For a consumer facing blog, how often do you recommend updating content to develop good rankings? I understand that it's really dependent upon the niche/competition, but what are some best practices? Content is expensive. Thanks
Content Development | | CSOD19990