Blog separate from website?

[Arukor]

I have 2 domain names - 1 for a blog - the domain name contains key words related to the main subject of the blog. The 2nd is the main website with a domain name = company name - no key words.  The blog and main website are about the same subject.

SEOMoz link analysis indicates that the main website is getting domain authority credit from the large number of links from the blog to the main website.

The blog website gets more traffic than the main website and Google Analytics data indicates that we are getting a low number of referrals from the blog to the main website.

If I can increase the referral traffic from the blog site to the main website do you think the link credit from the blog to the main website warrants keeping the sites separate or do people think the blog and the main website should be under the same domain name?

Please share your thoughts - I need advice!

[Zachary_Russell]

If your trying to market the blog as a part of the company, i'd personally just move everything over to a subdirectory. In my case before, we physically can't move the content over to a blog because of a bunch of complications.

[Arukor]

Thanks Zach,

Thanks for the response.  I would not have set these sites up like this - but I inherited this situation.  I am trying to weigh the disruption of going to a single domain vs keeping the sites as is and just trying to get more traffic from the blog site to click over and visit the main website.  I have researched this and most everyone seems to agree that if you are setting this up that you should have the blog and the main site under the same domain name. But every post has at least one person arguing that the linking between domains makes it worth it to have two domain names. So I am trying to understand if the linking benefit is true and if I should stay the course or bite the bullet and make the change.  Also if any one has pointers on the signs to look for to indicate that I should go to one domain name that would be most helpful.

[Zachary_Russell]

it gets really tricky interlinking two domains, even if it's just a blog on a different domain. I'm not saying that it can't or shouldn't be done, but Google, can view it as a method of artificially attempting to boost Page Rank.

I'm not an expert on this, but most large sites that I see keep their corporate blogs on the same domain, for example SEOmoz they have their blog, and the UGC blog as well (YouMoz).

By keeping both sites (corporate and blog) on the same domain, the domain as a whole will increase their Domain Authority, which will help both parts of the site (theoretically) increase in rankings.

Be aware if you move the blog to the corporate domain, you'd need to implement a 301 redirect all the urls to their new url on the corporate site, and, you would lose 1-10% of inherent link value,

It really depends, however on the individual domain because all situations are different. I have an acquaintance who has a main site getting about 200k visits a month, with a blog on a wordpress.com-type site that is getting about 250k views a month, and it is best to keep the blog on it's existing domains because it's not worth it to lose the link juice.

Hope this helps

Zach