Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Internal vs external blog and best way to set up
-
I have a client that has two domians registered - one uses www.keywordaustralia.com the other uses www.keywordaelaide.com He had already bought and used the first domain when he came to me I suggested the second as being worth buying as going for a more local keyword would be more appropriate.
Now I have suggested to him that a blog would be a worthy use of the second domain and a way to build links to his site - however I am reading that as all links will be from the same site it wont be worth much in the long run and an internal blog is better as it means updated content on his site.
should i use the second domain for blog, or just 301 the second domain to his first domain.
Or is it viable to use the second domain as the blog and just set up an rss feed on his page ?
Is there a way to have the second domain somehow 'linked' to his first domain with the blog so that google sees them as connected ?
NOOBIE o_0
-
Thanks Everyone. I think for the ease of set up - and so the client can do it himself a wordpress is going to be the way to go. We only really got the second domain so that no-one else can and we maight as well use it I figure.
-
Thanks Ryan,
I also use Joomla and AceSEF looks perfect!
-
It would entirely depend upon which software you build your site upon.
I use Joomla and AceSEF is one example of an extension which provides automatic internal linking. There are numerous other extensions which provide that functionality as well.
I would guess all major CMS solutions have at least one extension which provide that functionality. I know Wikipedia uses MediaWiki and all of their articles use automatic linking.
-
Thanks Ryan.
So basic rule is - If at all possible, keep your blog within your domain.
On a brief aside, you said in you last post "With a single site, there is software which can automatically generate all your internal links as appropriate."
Are you able to tell me which software?
-
An offsite established blog such as Google's blogspot or WordPress.com can benefit your site. Those types of sites overcome several of the challenges which arise when you try to set up a blog.
Advantages: quick and easy to set up, a unique C block for hosting, no worries about site maintenance, etc.
Disadvantages:
-
your blog content would not be on your site so would not benefit from the main site's DA. Also, your main site wont benefit from the links your content will hopefully generate. While you can link from your blog to the main site, it is not as beneficial as having a direct link to your site.
-
as Alan shared, your main site would also lose out on the freshness benefits a quality blog can offer
-
internal linking is also a fantastic means of properly directing the flow of PR throughout your site. With a single site, there is software which can automatically generate all your internal links as appropriate. For an external site, you would need to manually create all the links which is a lot more work.
Overall the best results should be achieved by integrating a blog into your existing site. You could choose an external blog and it can benefit your site, but not as much as an internal blog would.
-
-
Hi.
Sorry Cassi, my post doesn't answer your question for you but raises another one based on Ryan's answer.
The main attraction for using 3rd party blogging solutions is the ease at which they can be set-up compared to setting up a blog on a domain from scratch even with the help of wordpress.
Some blogging services such as Posterous will allow you to use a sub-domain address for your blog. Would this help? or would this still be classed as splitting the blog away from the site?
-
Hi Cassi.
My highest recommendation is one site owner, one content focus = one site. By keeping the blog and the main site on the same URL, you will have the benefit of building up domain authority. Higher DA will allow all of your content from both sites to perform better in search results.
Maintaining one site is usually cheaper and easier then multiple sites. You have one set of software, one host and only one place to look if something goes wrong.
If you attempt to split the blog and main site, Google will recognize they are both owned by the same person and your interlink value will be diminished. It also can cause confusion for visitors, along with the natural loss of link value as sites links pass from site-to-site.
You can establish relevancy for a given area with your content and backlinks without depending on your URL.
-
sites need regularly fresh content and inbound authority building. So in this scenario, an internal blog would make sense and provide more long-term value than an external blog unless you've got another plan for a high volume of long term content freshness on the main site.
The exact match keyword domain aspect isn't as important as it used to be since Google has slightly devalued exact match domain importance. Even when it carried more weight, it shouldn't be a primary means for long term success because it causes the illusion that a diverse strategy isn't as important as it in fact really is.
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 there a limit to Internal Redirect?
I know Google says there is no limit to it but I have seen on many websites that too many 301 redirects can be a problem and might negatively affect your rankings in SERPs. I wanted to know especially from people who worked on large ecommerce site. How do they manage internal redirect from one URL to other and how many according to you are too many. I mean if you get a website that contain 300 plus 301 redirections within the website, how will you deal with that? Please let me know if the question is not clear.
Technical SEO | | MoosaHemani0 -
Www2 vs www problem
Hi, I have a website that has an old version and a new version. The content is not duplicate on the different versions.
Technical SEO | | TihomirPetrov
The point is that the old version uses www. and non-www before the domain and the new one uses www2. My questions is: Is that a problem and what should be done? Thank you in advance!0 -
Meta Description VS Rich Snippets
Hello everyone, I have one question: there is a way to tell Google to take the meta description for the search results instead of the rich snippets? I already read some posts here in moz, but no answer was found. In the post was said that if you have keywords in the meta google may take this information instead, but it's not like this as i have keywords in the meta tags. The fact is that, in this way, the descriptions are not compelling at all, as they were intended to be. If it's not worth for ranking, so why google does not allow at least to have it's own website descriptions in their search results? I undestand that spam issues may be an answer, but in this way it penalizes also not spammy websites that may convert more if with a much more compelling description than the snippets. What do you think? and there is any way to fix this problem? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | socialengaged
Eugenio0 -
Best way to handle pages with iframes that I don't want indexed? Noindex in the header?
I am doing a bit of SEO work for a friend, and the situation is the following: The site is a place to discuss articles on the web. When clicking on a link that has been posted, it sends the user to a URL on the main site that is URL.com/article/view. This page has a large iframe that contains the article itself, and a small bar at the top containing the article with various links to get back to the original site. I'd like to make sure that the comment pages (URL.com/article) are indexed instead of all of the URL.com/article/view pages, which won't really do much for SEO. However, all of these pages are indexed. What would be the best approach to make sure the iframe pages aren't indexed? My intuition is to just have a "noindex" in the header of those pages, and just make sure that the conversation pages themselves are properly linked throughout the site, so that they get indexed properly. Does this seem right? Thanks for the help...
Technical SEO | | jim_shook0 -
Best URL format for pagination
We're currently changing the URL format of our website search, we have been discussing a lot and cannot decide the past way to pass the pagination parameter for SEO. We narrowed down to the options. www.website.com/apples/p2 - www.website.com/apples?page=2 - www.website.com/apples/page/2 What would give us best ranking returns? What do you think?
Technical SEO | | HelpSaude0 -
What is the best way to find missing alt tags on my site (site wide - not page by page)?
I am looking to find all the missing alt tags on my site at once. I have a FF extension that use to do it page by page, but my site is huge and that will take forever. Thanks!!
Technical SEO | | franchisesolutions1 -
I can buy a domain from a competitor. Whats the best way to make good use of these links for my existing website
I can buy a domain from a competitor. Whats the best way to make good use of these links for my existing website
Technical SEO | | Archers0 -
Microsite on subdomain vs. subdirectory
Based on this post from 2009, it's recommended in most situations to set up a microsite as a subdirectory as opposed to a subdomain. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites. The primary argument seems to be that the search engines view the subdomain as a separate entity from the domain and therefore, the subdomain doesn't benefit from any of the trust rank, quality scores, etc. Rand made a comment that seemed like the subdomain could SOMETIMES inherit some of these factors, but didn't expound on those instances. What determines whether the search engine will view your subdomain hosted microsite as part of the main domain vs. a completely separate site? I read it has to do with the interlinking between the two.
Technical SEO | | ryanwats0