Off-site company blog linking to company site or blog incorporated into the company site?

[TheKatzMeow]

Kind of a SEO newbie, so be gentle. I'm a beginner content strategist at a small design firm. Currently, I'm working with a client on a website redesign. Their current website is a single page dud with a page authority of 5. The client has a word press blog with a solid URL name, a domain authority of 100 and page authority of 30. My question is this: would it be better for my client from an SEO perspective to:

1. Re-skin their existing blog and link to the new company website with it, hopefully passing on some of its "Google Juice,"or...
2. Create a new blog on their new website (and maybe do a 301 redirect from the old blog)?
3. Or are there better options that I'm not thinking of?

Thanks for whatever help you can give a newbie. I just want to take good care of my client.

[TheKatzMeow]

Thanks very much to all you for your thoughts. Very helpful indeed.

[Chris661]

This is a great response an I love the advice about "over-thinking". Well said. Move on.

There are a great deal of wordpress self hosting options and themes out there should you chose to stay with wordpress. We chose Genesis from Studiopress and have been very satisfied. But there are many other great choices.

Best!

[DennisSeymour]

I would put the blog on the domain of the company.

Since the blog is on Wordpress.com, I would just move it even if it has little traffic. The PA 30 is generic wordpress.com blog PA. Nothing really important with that. Keeps things simple and you'll have more freedom. Overthinking this will just make things harder and since you are new, itll just make your learning curve longer.

Tell them what to do, don't give them options and hope they aren't sentimental for a wordpress.com blog. Move on and market their site. Boom!

[Netrepid]

If your clients DA is 100, it's probably hosted on a Wordpress subdomain (http://clientblog.wordpress.com/), right?

I would incorporate that blog into their existing site on their domain and work with WP to redirect if at all possible. In terms of theory, this is pretty easy to think about. Simply ask yourself (or your client)...

"If a potential customer is taking the time to read this piece of content you took X minutes/hours/days to write, where would you prefer they read it? On Wordpress.com, where they can easily find content on the same subject from 1000s of other writers? Or on your site, where they can learn more about only YOU and YOUR business?"

If they can't wrap their head around the virtual aspects of Wordpress.com vs. their own domain, give them a real world analogy.

• Compare Wordpress.com to them having a pop-up stand at a tradeshow for anything and everything available for sale in the world, then
• Compare their own domain to their physical brick and mortar store.

Where would they rather the potential customer engage with their brand? I think we can all come to an agreement on what the right choice is for that one.

I'm not saying it's a BAD IDEA to have a blog on Wordpress.com, but the content they write should probably be generalized about their industry and offer links back to their services where applicable. Their company-centric news and top content for generating traffic via SEO/inbound marketing should be hosted on their own domain.

Hope this helps.

[Chris661]

We went through the same thought process and decided to self host a wordpress site and dump the wordpress.com (in our case) blog. There are many advantages of having the blog on your own site. You will be increasing the number of pages and adding fresh content. Google likes that and you can compete for more keywords. Also creating content in your blog that other people will link to because it is high quality will get you links naturally. I don't think it can be overstated as to how important this can be for SEO.

I can't really speak to whether or not the 301 is a good idea. In our case it wasn't possible anyway.

Hope this helps!