LeadQual Blog

When creating a blog, a key decision is how/where it should be hosted, and what domain structure is used.

Typically, you have several options for hosting, which include:

1. Host the blog on your own website, or
2. Host the blog on some service, such as blogger.com, typepad.com, etc.

For SEO for the blog site itself there is not a big difference between these two options.  In either case you can promote your blog, have a good structure, and create great content so that it can rank well.

For domain usage, you also have several options.  These include:

1. Make the blog part of your website, such as at www.mysite.com/blog/
2. Make the blog a separate website, such as www.myblog.com
   Note that this could be hosted anywhere, including at a blog service that allows you to set up a unique domain.
3. Use a subdomain under your main website, such as myblog.mysite.com
4. Use a subdomain of a blog service, such as myblog.typepad.com
5. Use a directory within a blog service, such as www.blogservice/~myblog

If your blog is part of or related to your website, then it is generally better to use the first option, where the blog is part of the website and uses a directory within that website.  This is because all your blog content is part of the site, and that content and any inbound links benefit your site as a whole.  You can also get the best leverage from internal linking from your blog posts to other pages on your site (”internal page rank flow”).  Also, your blog immediately benefits from the page rank and link popularity of your website, enabling your blog posts to rank better, faster.

If your blog is not related to a website, the second option is generally best, where you set up your own domain name for your blog.  You can do this whether you are hosting your own blog or using a service (at least most services allow this option).  Using your own domain gives you much more flexibility for moving your blog in the future – you can more easily change hosting services and keep control of your blog.

The other options can work OK for SEO, especially if you pay attention to other factors such as good content, keywords, freshness, etc, but generally the first two options above are better.

Tags: blog, domain, SEO

This entry was posted on Monday, November 10th, 2008 at 5:12 pm and is filed under Search Engine Optimization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.