The Maine SEO Blog

Hey Nicki,

I think one of the biggest considerations regarding blogs and consistency with domain structure is the value of your inbound links. If you have a ton of links going to your blog that is _not_ part of your primary domain, that domain Page Rank is not going to benefit from that inbound activity. Sure you may rank separately for both for your brand (as demonstrated above), but you havem ore content opportunity with blogs to drive traffic to that primary domain.

Just my .02!

Monica,

Great point and thanks for it! I should have included the negatives too.

Even with links back and forth between a site and a blog, driving traffic and controlling PR is definitely a challenge. But for me personally, I think these pros might just be able to outweigh the cons!

Yeah, my recommendations lean in the other direction. But you know, it would be an interesting case study!

That it would! Hmmm…

@Monica and @Nicki: Good point ladies.

However, I agree more with Monica’s view more because:
- what she listed above.
- it takes a lot of effort to write interesting and fresh content all the time. While Flyte can do it, most small businesses have hard time with this.
- you also have 2 systems to manage, 2 sites, 2 domains, upgrades of both system, security and any changes to templates, contact info, etc on 2 places. It has become easier to integrate blogs within existing websites with Joomla CMS or other publishing systems so I would definitely recommend combining blog within business site.

From what I remember or guess, a while ago, people would build a static html site and then use 3rd party software for blogging on another domain and I think that’s the primary reason why so many users have their business blog and website separated. But it just does not make much sense any more to me.

The only reason why I would set up a separate blog for Small Business would be if what I was going to write was completely separate from what our website or business blog was about so I could focus the new blog toward more specific keywords and user interests.

But I agree, if you have enough writers, time and resources, you could cover up the entire front page of google.

Cheers,

Ogy

Exactly right, the freshness of the content benefits the primary domain. In the long run – more content, more opportunity for traffic. Also, I have been noticing a trend of companies who have blogs outside of their domain folding it into their company site, both as a subdirectory or as a subdomain. The ideal SEO situation is as a subdirectory, but it can be a hassle for an existing blog.

Time to enjoy another hot day!

I love social media! Great conversation starter Nicki and comments from Monica and Ogy.

My clients almost always need their blog on their site because a. they have a wordpress site most of the time, b. they only want to maintain one, and that is challenge enough and lastly and most importantly, c. it’s a much easier way to continue content development than adding and updating the “static” pages on the site, though that’s something they do, they do it much less frequently…

Thanks for the topic!

Good point! Thanks!