Put Blog inside website or outside the website? Help us settle a dispute?

[golfnfuul]

I am the moderator/boss in a dispute with two of my associates. We have decided to let the readers of Webproworld determine who is correct (we recognize that there may not be an answer that is absolutely definitive since Google never let's us know all of their secrets, but we will go with the majority...majority will rule here).

We have a very active website with over 50,000 items for sale. We have never focused on SEO in the past since we did not have adequate resources, but now we do....we strictly used PPC in the past. One of our first SEO steps is to start a blog. One of us thinks that the blog should be within our website URL. And the other one thinks that it should be a separate url.

For example, here are the two options:

www.examplecompany.com/blog

or

www.examplecompanyblog.com


One associate wrote the following:

The blog does not intrinsically increase your PageRank. The typical strategy is to have a blog that has a comparable URL to the keywords for which you are optimizing (like cleaning supplies, chemicals, whatever), with posts regarding those topics, with keyword-laden links that point to Examplecompany.com. That is one way Google builds PageRank is through that linkback association around a keyword.

The other associate wrote the following:

The blog DOES intrinsically increase your pagerank. Since the SEO guru's have questioned whether Google gives equal value for links coming in from blogs, it tells me that the strategy should be to have the blog developed within the website URL and then create a link baiting/building strategy wherein we strive to get quality links from Blogs AND websites that link directly to the blog URL. Since the Blog URL is maintained within the website, all of the incoming links will increase the value of the website and thus increase the overall pagerank of the website.


Well, we hope that you will provide us your thoughts on this issue? Thanks for all of your help!

[fctoma]

Why not keep all the link love pointing back to your current domain. Buying a new domain will take time to rank and get indexed. I'd suggest http://blog.yourcompanydomain.com

It's worked great for my clients. No need to put your existing link juice through a strainer

Hope this helps...

[vwickam]

I would suggest either going with:

http://www.examplecompany.com/blog

or

Search Resource

Either of these options will add weight/pages to your examplecompany.com domain.

If you do go with http://examplecompanyblog.com, and you link to Search Resource you will gain inbound links to your main site, which also gives you increased search engine "points".

Personally, I prefer blog.companyname.com because it provides a logical separation that it is a separate site, while still giving more pages on examplecompany.com for google to index. This way, you get the best of both worlds - inbound links from blog.examplecompany.com to Search Resource and extra pages belonging to the root examplecompany.com domain.

Good luck!

<in your signature only please>

[vwickam]

Sorry,

I just noticed that blog.examplecompany.com is a junk search engine site.

Dang those squatters.

<in your signature only please>

[AcmeSEO]

Golfnfuul,

If your site will have lots of growth and freshness then go with blog.yourdomain.com because sub domains are treated as roots in regards to link juice. That is the links you point from you sub domain blog to pages, to within www.yourdomain.com, will transfer link juice as if it were coming from another domain entirely.

But if your site is going to be mostly static pages that are not changing, then blog from a subdirectory like yourdomain.com/blog/ as this strategy will allow you to grow your domain content, as from a subdirectory your blog content belongs to your root domain; but the links from your sub-directed blog only carry the weight of internal links which are not as strong as links coming from an external source which includes sub domains of yours.

If you are entrepreneurial and hoping to later sell the blog, then you need to have it on its own domain entirely, like, yourotherdomain.com.

Hope this was helpful,

Robert

[golfnfuul]

Your comments thus far have been GREAT!

We have learned a lot.

I want to encourage everyone to give us their viewpoint on this issue.

[bj]

The blog does not intrinsically increase your PageRank.

This is exactly wrong. A properly set up blog, on the right software as part of your current site, and configured properly for SEO, will automatically generate backlinks to it. And if you use it properly and blog your keyphrases, it'll raise your site in the serps for those keyphrases and give you multiple doorways into your site for those keyphrases. That coupled with the constant addition of new content ON your site, the RSS feeds, and good tagging, will definitely increase your pagerank over time. Why build two sites and split the effort when you can make ONE site super strong?

I'm going to suggest a different approach to the url. Use myurl.com/news/ instead of myurl.com/blog/ since "blog" has a (rather unfair) stigma. I also understand that there is no longer the same advantage there used to be to using a subdomain, and putting the blog on a sub sometimes plays havoc with plugins and such, so it's better avoided.

[craigmn3]

It sounds a little backward to start SEO with a blog. You should optimize every single page you already have indexed. They have age, history and if they haven't been optimized they are ready to POP!

But I do agree keeping the blog in house would be best...more content, more ranking

[meadrose]

OK.

First thing: Subdomains are treated as sites in themselves, so a link can be considered to be inbound-only and relevant. With respect to a blog, it can help, particularly if the subdomain is built out of desirable keywords. It depends on the blog tool used as to how often it is indexed, once found by search engines.

Second thing: Offsite blogs (such as blogger.com) have the advantage of being separately indexed on a totally different IP block to say nothing of being a Google property. This is way cool. I have been able to achieve #1 ranks for certain keyword sets this way. The downside is that you need to abide by Google's (Blogger's) terms of service, and you may find out that something is disallowed halfway through a process that is working.

Third thing: Onsite dedicated blog pages have the advantage of being the sole destination for people interested in your blog offering. But, unless you are certain of the originality of your content, I wouldn't go there.

Fourth thing: I have found and iFrame embed to be a wonderful solution since people can find and read the blog within the site, but it counts as an inbound-only relevant link since iFrame-embedded content is not indexed as part of page content.

Here is an example:
Self-Promotion, Product Development, Digital Media & Internet Marketing New Earth Arts Blog

[kcire]

Originally Posted by fctoma

Why not keep all the link love pointing back to your current domain. Buying a new domain will take time to rank and get indexed. I'd suggest http://blog.yourcompanydomain.com

I like this solution most from everything mentioned here.

But I wonder if it is bad to have a seperate, new URL for the blog.

If the only fallback would be the time it takes to get ranked and indexed, I would consider these both.

So a domain like http://blog.somewebsite.com/ but also http://www.somewebsiteparttwo.com/blog/

And in time you have a more solid position then without this 'extra' URL...Or would Google consider this to be duplicate content or so?

The 'extra' URL could also contain other keywords than the 'main' URL...Which seems more reaching to me.

[microtekblue]

For SEO purposes I would highly recommend www.yoursite.com/blog

[amazonian]

Inside website.

Duh!!!!!

Then write a blog about each of your main products or pages, linking to that page. These can become ezines sent our daily or weekly.

The Internet gods love fresh daily content. Give it to them. On the site you care about.

Again: duh!!

[SEO]

I have had a HUGE amount of success using subdomains.
Google indexes them as separate sites and if you interlink them as you would one complete site (i.e. link to your blog on every page of your site and vice versa) you will have great success.

EDIT:

dont just call it ' blog.yoursite.com ' - call it ' keyword.yoursite.com ' or even ' keyword-description.yoursite.com '.

[iaccess]

I usually go with putting a blog within a website (e.g., www.yourwebsite.com/blog). This way, your main site gets direct benefit from the blog content, in terms of adding relevant content to your site and attracting links directly to your site. You can also use your blog to link to other pages within your site, channeling your internal link juice.

An external blog (e.g., www.yourwebsiteblog.com) will be a new site, and thus it takes time for any history and link popularity to build up, and you don't get direct benefit. Over the long term you can build this up, but why wait?

A subdomain is to some extent treated as a separate site, so that approach suffers partially from the same issues as a separate domain. You will need to build links for the subdomain for it to rank well and be competitive (since it will not inherently get the same link juice as the main site), and the benefits of inbound links to the subdomain your blog might attract don't directly benefit your main domain.

At the end of the day, any technique will work, but I've found putting a blog internal to the main site to be the most effective approach.

[bj]

First thing: Subdomains are treated as sites in themselves

Google indexes them as separate sites and if you interlink them as you would one complete site

A subdomain is to some extent treated as a separate site, so that approach suffers partially from the same issues as a separate domain.

If your site will have lots of growth and freshness then go with blog.yourdomain.com because sub domains are treated as roots in regards to link juice.

So much for the seo "experts"!

Sub Domains To Be Treated As Folders By Google

» PubCon Las Vegas 2007: Matt Cutts of Google and Vanessa Fox WebProNews Videos: Videos from WebProNews.com

[SEO]

Originally Posted by bj

So much for the seo "experts"!

Sub Domains To Be Treated As Folders By Google

» PubCon Las Vegas 2007: Matt Cutts of Google and Vanessa Fox WebProNews Videos: Videos from WebProNews.com

Well... 6 months later... and they haven't done it yet...
google - Google Search
Just what are you trying to say...?
Are we wrong with our claims...?

I hold 10 of the top 30 positions for a fairly competitive keyword using local country search in google purely because I use subdomains... If not for the subdomains I would only hold 2 - or maybe 3 positions.

So what are you inferring...?

[bj]

I'm not inferring anything. I'm saying that using subs isn't the best way to go, for a lot of reasons, not least of which is that Google is no longer treating them as separate domains in terms of "link juice".

[SEO]

Originally Posted by bj

So much for the seo "experts"!

Sub Domains To Be Treated As Folders By Google

» PubCon Las Vegas 2007: Matt Cutts of Google and Vanessa Fox WebProNews Videos: Videos from WebProNews.com

If you hadn't have posted those links I wouldn't have known. I can't see any evidence of Google doing this yet but it is something to watch out for. Still... if Google is going to treat subdomains as subfolders, that doesn't mean that subdomains are a bad thing. I have only ever had success with subdomains in the past.

Even if you choose to have your blog in a subfolder name the subfolder ' www.yourdomain/keyword ' or ' www.yourdomain/keyword-description ' and not ' www.yourdomain/blog '.

The other option is to set up separate "feeder sites" on separate domains with separate IP addresses hosting blogs with relevant content all with links to your main domain. This would obviously work and some people claim to have done this with fantastic results, but it would be a lot of work. As I said... I have had a lot of success with subdomains up until this point in time.

[bj]

Well... 6 months later... and they haven't done it yet...

I can't see any evidence of Google doing this yet but it is something to watch out for.

Actually they put this into the algo months ago:
"Made it more clear that this change has already been live for a while." -- Matt Cutts, Google

From:
Subdomains and subdirectories

[SEO]

Originally Posted by bj

Actually they put this into the algo months ago:
"Made it more clear that this change has already been live for a while." -- Matt Cutts, Google

From:
Subdomains and subdirectories

Maybe the change isn't as drastic as you think...

One of the sites I worked on still has the main domain and 6 subdomains showing in the first 30 results in Google (country specific search). I haven't touched the site for quite a while so three of the subpages have dropped out of the rankings.

I am not trying to argue with something that has clearly come from within the Google loop (Matt Cutts)...

But I do have to say that I have not yet seen any evidence of this within any of the subdomains that I have set up.


EDIT:

In the link you provided above Matt actually states:
"Note that this is a pretty subtle change, and it doesn’t affect a majority of our queries. In fact, this change has been live for a couple weeks or so now and no one noticed. The only reason I talked about the subject at PubCon at all was because someone asked for my advice on subdomains vs. subdirectories."

and then he goes on to say:
"My personal preference on subdomains vs. subdirectories is that I usually prefer the convenience of subdirectories for most of my content.

A subdomain can be useful to separate out content that is completely different. Google uses subdomains for distinct products such news.google.com or maps.google.com, for example.

If you’re a newer webmaster or SEO, I’d recommend using subdirectories until you start to feel pretty confident with the architecture of your site. At that point, you’ll be better equipped to make the right decision for your own site."

[bj]

If your domains and subs have been accruing incoming links for a long time, you may be less affected by this issue than people putting up sites now. But knowing what you do now, would you still structure sites this way? I for sure won't, unless, like is suggested, the subdomain is on a wildly different subject than the rest of the domain (in which case it seems silly not to just buy a more suitable domain name, actually. Domain names and hosting are cheap.)

[SEO]

Originally Posted by bj

But knowing what you do now, would you still structure sites this way?

I definitely would set up other domains the same way...

The site is about 6 mths old. I have pointed external links to the main site and a couple of external links to one of the subdomains. They are all interlinked as you would link a single website. Main domain and 5 subdomains all accrued PR3 at first PR update since new and the 6th subdomain PR2. Most of the subdomains have none or 1 at most incoming links from external websites.

They all pass PR to each other very well.

But then... Each to their own I guess...

[peopleaustin]

We always put blogs inside of our sites as well as our customers sites. I cannot think of a better way to get fresh unique content onto your site. Even using WordPress for the blog would be a great idea. I would recommend using the blog for press releases and newsletters also.

And encouraging interaction with the blog readers by allowing them to post comments to the blog posts. It certainly won't hurt your Google PR.

[Good Tidings Nautical]

My advice would be to put your blog Inside the site, and outside. Make sure your content is indexed on the site first before you post it on the blog to avoid duplicate content penalties. I have started this with my site for nautical decor/nautical gifts and it seems to be working.

[edhan]

I do believe that having the blog as a sub-folder or sub-domain will work well with SEO. It is basically depending on your content for the blog that you intend to build down the road will receive the result. Good quality content will help you in a long way.

[powsurfer]

We had the same dilemma just recently. Even though we have several ski sites the question was on our main site solely for skiing Chile & Argentina, should we have a specialist 'news' page or have a central ski news page for all regions and all our sites elsewhere.
We decided to go with South America Ski News keeping branding the same, keeping a professional news page rather than a link to an external blog and introducing lots of fresh content to the site and hopefully some IBLs.

I don't believe Google differentiate between internal and external links although they may between different IP blocks.

[jordanmcclements]

Originally Posted by bj

I'm not inferring anything. I'm saying that using subs isn't the best way to go, for a lot of reasons, not least of which is that Google is no longer treating them as separate domains in terms of "link juice".

Are we "Inferring" or "Implying" ??

[dburdon]

I'm a fan of putting the blog outside your site. That way the blog has more flexibility.

A corporate website is a corporate website and should look like one.
A blog can be all manor of things and still have value for SEO purposes. You can take a much higher risk to developing your blog compared to developing your corporate site.

One solution is to try both approaches. And see who things pan out over 3 or 4 months.

[eMarketing Mark]

In general, if your planned blog complements the content and focus of your site and appeals to your readers, then always have it on your own website in a subdirectory. If it clashes with your site in these respects, then run it as a separate site on a separate domain.

In terms of an external blog being useful because you can create lots of inbound links back to your main site, then I'm afraid I disagree with the logic. Multiple links from one site through to another suffer from “diminishing returns” - the first link you create from the blog you have set up as a separate domain is great and registers a, let’s say, resounding “1” on the Google link scale. The second from that blog (and that new domain) through to your site is seen as less valuable as you have already “recommended” the site with a link. In this case, it’s given, let’s say, half the value – the next, half again and so on for all of the other links from that blog domain to your main site. Result, as you add more links from your new blog back to your main site, the additional ones quickly add little to no value.

On the other hand, if you hold the blog on your own site and create content that people consider worth linking to then each of these external links will be fully valued and counted, as they are external links into your blog from different domains. Very quickly, having your blog as part of your own site and domain will have benefited your overall site more than an external blog ever would, no matter how many links with great anchor text you use. (This also ignores the benefit of higher page rank here, which established blogs linking to you would have but your newly established blog would not!)

Therefore, I would always advise setting up a blog in a subdirectory on your own site unless you have really good reason not to (such as multiple blogs as mini sites for example) or its content will be in coflict with that of your site.

All the best,

Mark

[subhzash]

Originally Posted by golfnfuul

I am the moderator/boss in a dispute with two of my associates. We have decided to let the readers of Webproworld determine who is correct (we recognize that there may not be an answer that is absolutely definitive since Google never let's us know all of their secrets, but we will go with the majority...majority will rule here).

We have a very active website with over 50,000 items for sale. We have never focused on SEO in the past since we did not have adequate resources, but now we do....we strictly used PPC in the past. One of our first SEO steps is to start a blog. One of us thinks that the blog should be within our website URL. And the other one thinks that it should be a separate url.

For example, here are the two options:

www.examplecompany.com/blog

or

www.examplecompanyblog.com


One associate wrote the following:

The blog does not intrinsically increase your PageRank. The typical strategy is to have a blog that has a comparable URL to the keywords for which you are optimizing (like cleaning supplies, chemicals, whatever), with posts regarding those topics, with keyword-laden links that point to Examplecompany.com. That is one way Google builds PageRank is through that linkback association around a keyword.

The other associate wrote the following:

The blog DOES intrinsically increase your pagerank. Since the SEO guru's have questioned whether Google gives equal value for links coming in from blogs, it tells me that the strategy should be to have the blog developed within the website URL and then create a link baiting/building strategy wherein we strive to get quality links from Blogs AND websites that link directly to the blog URL. Since the Blog URL is maintained within the website, all of the incoming links will increase the value of the website and thus increase the overall pagerank of the website.


Well, we hope that you will provide us your thoughts on this issue? Thanks for all of your help!

www.examplecompany.com/blog/ is best because taking new domain and it takes time to index. If you add blog within domain and post content it can increase importance of your website in search engines.

If you dont like to add blog within the site then sub-domain is also best option. But separate domain is waste of time and resources


Regards
Subhzash

[powsurfer]

One I aspect that should be considered if you are looking for inbound links is if you host the blog separately and do not make it specific to your company you are more likely to attract links to your posts.
That way you can then link from the blog to your main site.
I think many people finding useful info on the blog will be reluctant to link to your company site particularly if they are in the same industry or competitors.
This way your company site can look like it has placed an ad on the 'independent' blog, or the blog is referring to your company as a good one to contact for related products.

[seopo]

Shame this couldn't be a poll. I'd like to see the majority votes on this.

[chrisJumbo]

I don't think a poll is needed. From the comments it looks like a clear majority for inside the blog. The new question maybe is it better to have it in a sub-folder or sub-domain. The one argument I've seen for this (I have no evidence that it is true) is that with a sub-domain, you can have your keyword rich phrase at the front of the site instead of at the end. And having the keyword phrase first may help if the phrase isn't extremely competitive.

ie. chris-rocks / chriscd .com may rank better for "chris rocks" then
chriscd .com /chris-rocks

Although that is probably a real lame example as their is a famous comedian named Chris Rock. :O)

Of course with good back-links and great content, it probably doesn't matter.

[mjancosek]

Exciting!! Such good insight and alot of great debating.

I do prefer separate domains personally. I feel that I have more avenues to go down as for marketing. I have one one site that actually branches off to 5 other sites also 2 blogs.

Doing this lets me take each domain and market towards different demographics and keyword searches, even the blogs. To me this is much easier to do than use sub domains. I feel that I do get better results than when we had it all under sub domains.

[SEO]

Originally Posted by chrisJumbo

I don't think a poll is needed. From the comments it looks like a clear majority for inside the blog. The new question maybe is it better to have it in a sub-folder or sub-domain. The one argument I've seen for this (I have no evidence that it is true) is that with a sub-domain, you can have your keyword rich phrase at the front of the site instead of at the end. And having the keyword phrase first may help if the phrase isn't extremely competitive.

ie. chris-rocks / chriscd .com may rank better for "chris rocks" then
chriscd .com /chris-rocks

Although that is probably a real lame example as their is a famous comedian named Chris Rock. :O)

Of course with good back-links and great content, it probably doesn't matter.

Also... Which looks more professional:


http://army-boots.online-shoes.com

or

http://www.online-shoes.com/army-boots/

[seo4china]

If you were starting up you could give a shot at having the blog on a separate domain. But as your current site is already well established, the impact of having a blog on a new domain would be far less than the link popularity benefits of having your blog within your existing site.

[jbsmith]

Although I've seen it work successfully both ways...in my case I have 4 sites in different markets where I use the /blog off of my main domain and it certainly does drive traffic to the site. Where I would wonder is in terms of links I place in posts back to the root and other static pages - but suffice it to say I get thousands more visitors to my various root and static pages due to the blog.

Jeff

[AcmeSEO]

[QUOTE=bj;380539]So much for the seo "experts"!

Sub Domains To Be Treated As Folders By Google

Sorry BJ, but this looks more like a case of, "So much for the dupies and dupettes who believe whatever they hear from Google."

The experts at SEO are the ones who are in the trenches daily testing and practicing SEO and SEM, not the ones who have time to sit around reading forums then sit around in forums telling people what they've read as if it were godspeak or gospel. Try answering the questions rather than slighting four members with a backhanded comment like "so much for the seo experts" which is what, supposed to make you look more informed than the rest? Based on what, some blog post you read on Search Engine Land?

No wonder I so rarely come to forums. It is a shame that I would take time to try and help someone here only to be quoted and smeared by some wannabe expert.

But I guess I shouldn't complain, in general, bad forum advice is good for my business.

[Terry Van Horne]

1. If you have 50,000 products then you are crazy to be wastin' time with a blog if you haven't optimized the product item detail pages (usually where user is to add to cart)
2. get all 50,000 item detail pages indexed
3. figure out how to get deep links to the product pages (blogs work for that). An excellent way to get deep IBL's is to add video content to YouTube. That F'in rocks any BS blog

IMO, 1 and 2 come wayyyyyyy before a blog on the priority list. Getting all your pages indexed could provide more ooomph then thousands of IBLs from other blogs and the kind of sites that link to blogs. There is abso;utely no extra value if a link is from another site. The juice that is passed is the amount the page has to pass it doesn't matter if it's internal or external so... to have a blog outside the site is to double the promotion work! You are now devloping links for two sites.

[AcmeSEO]

If I put up a page in my site and link to my homepage from it, that link will not benefit my homepage as much as an "external" link to my homepage from another domain with the same PageRank. The external link is more helpful, stronger.

Therefore, since I had oodles of back links and growing, I chose to put my blog inside my domain like this: Search Marketing and SEO Blog so I would aggregate the content under, and lend freshness to, my root.

Robert

[golfnfuul]

To All:

The feedback to date has been great.

I hope that you all have enjoyed the discussion as much as I have.

I hope that many more will add to this dialogue

----------------------------------------------

To Terry Van Horne:

I probably understated what we have done todate re: SEO since I wanted to keep the conversation focused.
But, I appreciate your points. We have about 35,500 pages indexed. Those pages definitely include the key areas that we focus on. I am not certain how to determine what is not indexed with that many pages, but as we continue to focus on improving the text and internal and external links, I am assuming that the number of pages indexed will increase.

We have been pretty successful to date in developing nice landing pages to assist the customer in our major areas, but to also focus on the keywords, links etc. We are definitely focused on doing some deep linking to our landing pages.

We have a full time employee this summer focused on cleaning up the text within the products and landing pages. It is a big job. I wish we knew everything we know now 5 years ago when we started.

We wanted to simultaneously develop the blog with the work that the summer employee is doing. Hopefully, the simultaneous two pronged attack will allow us to get the pages optimized and by the time they are optimized, the blog will not only be up, but beginning to generate traffic.

--------------------------
Once again, I hope that everyone will continue to give their thoughts on this subject. I believe that everyone is getting something out of thsi.

[Terry Van Horne]

Originally Posted by AcmeSEO

If I put up a page in my site and link to my homepage from it, that link will not benefit my homepage as much as an "external" link to my homepage from another domain with the same PageRank.

Robert, that is wrong, the PR passed is based on the page PR and links it's spread over, not the site PR. So if you link internally from a PR2 page with 50 links on it it would pass the same PR as the PR2 external page with 50 links on it. The PR of the page is the start, divide that by the links on the page for the juice. More links on a PR 2 page sends less juice as that juice is spread over more links. That's why PR sculpting increases the PR passed. Internal or external any page with equal PR and links passes the same amount of PR.

[Terry Van Horne]

Originally Posted by golfnfuul

To Terry Van Horne:

I probably understated what we have done todate re: SEO since I wanted to keep the conversation focused.
But, I appreciate your points. We have about 35,500 pages indexed. Those pages definitely include the key areas that we focus on. I am not certain how to determine what is not indexed with that many pages,..

Yes agreed, when you use site:www.mysite.com/ then yes it's hard to tell but... you can use that and narrow the result like this to see how many item pages:
site:www.mysite.com/cart/product.asp
and that will show you how many product/item pages are indexed

Also just the number of pages is not as important as how many pages it will show you from the index. For instance how many are shown before you get this message
"In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the # already displayed.
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included." if it's a low number than you have a problem. If they show a lot with "Supplemental Result" in the cache info then... you may have duplicate content or other content issues

Originally Posted by golfnfuul

but as we continue to focus on improving the text and internal and external links, I am assuming that the number of pages indexed will increase

Yes agreed, IBL's help to some degree but on or off your site doesn't matter.

Originally Posted by golfnfuul

We wanted to simultaneously develop the blog with the work that the summer employee is doing. Hopefully, the simultaneous two pronged attack will allow us to get the pages optimized and by the time they are optimized, the blog will not only be up, but beginning to generate traffic.

Personally, a blog adds nothing that any content addition can make. Blogs can IMO, help if you get a lot of subscribers to your feed but no subscribers and you get nothing extra from a blog other than a CMS that ties your hands and eliminates some opportunities.

[incrediblehelp]

Build the blog on the same domain

[Sergio Simarro]

Having a Site with more than 35000 pages indexed and considering that Google will apply its recommendation about "treating subdomains as folders" I would follow the strategy of using a separate domain with a different IP from your main domain.

This is not an strategy for 3-4 months, but perhaps 2-3 or more years so, where's the problem for starting a linking strategy for that new site?

As some of members have pointed:
- you could use a different strategy seo or marketing strategy from your main site (perhaps much more targeted)
- you could increase main site popularity adding external links from the blog (if you are able to rank it, it will have much more weight than an internal blog)

But, if you would like to try first: why not using blogger or wordpress.com? Google indexes that sites quickly and, making things right, you can get valuable results in just 2-3 months.

Good luck!

[AcmeSEO]

Originally Posted by Terry Van Horne

Robert, that is wrong, the PR passed is based on the page PR and links it's spread over, not the site PR. So if you link internally from a PR2 page with 50 links on it it would pass the same PR as the PR2 external page with 50 links on it. The PR of the page is the start, divide that by the links on the page for the juice. More links on a PR 2 page sends less juice as that juice is spread over more links. That's why PR sculpting increases the PR passed. Internal or external any page with equal PR and links passes the same amount of PR.

Terry, I "sculpted" my site nearly 5 years ago, well before people were talking about it. I am well aware of how PageRank works and is divided and distributed. Nevertheless I've seen test results in this matter. There is more going on than what you are talking about here. I stand by my statement. All things being equal, no penalties on either domain, PR is the same, an on topic link from another domain to my homepage carries more weight than a link from my inside page to my homepage. If you can PROVE otherwise please feel free to, but I have no intention on bickering back and forth on this point. I have seen proof for my argument and no proof against it thus far. There are many reasons that contribute to why this is the way it is. One reason would be, well... ask, which is easier to acquire, an external IBL or a link from yourself? Google is smarter than that for years now and has worked this factor and others into their link analysis part of the equation.

Robert

[jordanmcclements]

I agree with AcmeSEO...

Anyway, if nothing else, Google seems to index Blogspot more frequently than my own site!

[Terry Van Horne]

Acme, I agree to disagree... you have your opinion and I have mine. I had a much longer reply but... I don't want to take the thread in another direction other than... you mention the use of "sculpting"... that alone makes me skeptical of your results being a true indicator of internal link value because you have manipulated the PR of your internal links and my personal experience is that... a link... is a link. I consider all other thesis (otherwise you stagnate) but... this one doesn't hold water for me at this time.

[jordanmcclements]

Is there really *such* a big difference?

Are we talking like 2% here or 90% ?

[Jayson]

Ok - I am going to throw a wrench in the works of this thread - let me know if I should create another thread... What are your thoughts on using a CNAME entry to point keyword.yourdomain.com to a Blogger account "yourdomain.blogspot.com" versus using ftp publishing with Blogger to actually host the blog on our server?

Do I lose any SEO benefit or authority by using the CNAME entry and letting Blogger host it? Do the search engines view this the same because of the url being used in links or the the host location matter?

In this particular case the blog has not been started yet, so I'm not worried about loss of authority, but I want to build this right from the beginning so that our site has the most benefit possible from the beginning from the content generated in the blog.