Should I Blog on My Website or a New Location?
Oct 6th, 2009 by Val Nelson
Website with blog built in.
Businesses and organizations often ask this question, or seem to think that it doesn’t matter.
It definitely matters and the answer is nearly always to blog on your main website. Here are the details and why.
I recently checked my answer against numerous experts on blogging, web marketing, and search engine optimization. There is a clear agreement that blogging on your main website is the best way to go.
Exact Setup for Your Blog
These are good setup options for your business or organization blog:
- www.yourmainwebsite.com/blog/
- www.yourmainwebsite.com/news/
DON’T have an address (URL) for your blog that looks like this:
- blog.yourmainwebsite.com (This is at least better than the next two options but still not ideal.)
- yourname.blogspot.com
- yourname.wordpress.com
Why It Matters
- Search engines will like you better.
Search engines love frequently updated content, such as happens on blogs. Therefore, when you blog on your main website domain, all that search engine love (higher search rankings) will go to your main website! This benefit will be mostly lost if you use one of the above “Don’ts.” - People will see it as more legitimate.
Using your main domain for your blog is seen as more legitimate — by people and search engines. Does a blogspot.com domain look as legitimate to you?
Yeh, But… No Excuses
“But I can build it on Blogger and embed it on my website and it will look the same to the outside world.”
Search engines will know the difference. You won’t have the same benefits as if you use the same domain name as the primary location. Technical setup matters.
“But my website doesn’t currently have blogging capability so I have to start it somewhere else unless I redo the whole website.”
You can still use a blog platform like WordPress.org even if the rest of your website is built with something else. Your web developer should know how to make it work.
“But what if I don’t want the blog to be easily found by my main website visitors?”
Then you can bury the link to it in the footer or somewhere obscure. But I hope there’s a really good reason to not want the same people to go there.
Alright, One Exception
Ha, isn’t there always at least one exception to the rule?
The one exception for building your blog at a separate location is if you plan to leave the business or organization behind and take your blog with you. Pretty rare for that to make sense anyway.
Questions, disagreements? Please leave comments in the box below.
