10 replies to this topic

[esilver]

I am in the process of starting a blog, but unsure as to which tactic to use. From an SEO perspective, is it more beneficial to use a blog system that is provided from a free blog site or should we add it to our company domain eg. blog.name.com? How about using blogger.com, do the other search engines give this lower priority since it’s owned by Google? Is any one better then the other?

Look forward to any feedback.

[josh1r]

With blogger.com you can always set it up to post directly on your website. So you enter your blog posts via blogger.com, but they show up on your site (ie: news.blueluxe.com). I also like using wordpress which is free, and again you can host on your own site (ie: www.joshuafriedman.com).

Both blogger.com and wordpress seem to get spidered/indexed just fine (in my experience).

[storyspinner]

I honestly don't think that yahoo or msn "penalize" blogger blogs (say that 10 times really fast), nor have I seen any proof to that point. Search Engines really look at blogs for the relevant content they are providing - not who's hosting the blog.

Naming your blog is important though. If you are marketing the blog on your name, then name the blog with your name. If you are marketing the blog for a product or an industry, then name it accordingly.

As for other blogging sites - TypePad is great. They have a full range of different products and even just introduced a line of business services.

Typepad is owned by Sixapart who also owns MovableType (server installed version of Typepad) and Livejournal (more social community type of blogging).

[Jill]

There is no specific blog software that is better for SEO purposes. Blogs are just websites with a content management system.

It's true that some may be more crawler friendly than others, straight out of the box, but as long as you know how to tweak some of the code, it shouldn't make a bit of difference which you use.

[esilver]

Thank you all for your comments. Any thoughts in regards to benefiting from links? For instance, if we used blogger.com and sent links to our website vs. having the blog at our company url. Would we not benefit more from having the links from an unrelated address?

I don't recall the exact speaker, but during SES NY, comments were made regarding MSN giving more priority to content in blogger.com then Google did.

[randfish]

Just visit www.opensourcecms.com and play around with the free CMS demos. You'll get a good idea of what works best for your needs.

[Rajesh]

Hi All

Actually I am interesting in creating blog for our site and I want to make URL like www.domainname.com/blog.

Now its coming “http://domainname.blogspot.com“

I tried to set it in blogspot setting but it’s not work.

Can any one suggest how I will set this path in the server and what the steps to be follow are.

I will appreciate for suggestion and thanks in advance.

[Jill]

Any thoughts in regards to benefiting from links? For instance, if we used blogger.com and sent links to our website vs. having the blog at our company url.

We've got a bunch of long threads here on that topic, do a quick search or browse through this blog forum. No sense rehasing it all again as we definitely have some extensive threads.

[shermanhu]

Hi Rajesh (and to Jill and posse here)

RE: Blogger blog publishing to your own URL such as domainname.com/blog can be easily accomplished with a few steps - the benefit is a consistency with your brand and your own site's internal link popularity.

Here's how:

1. Login to your Blogger account

2. In "Settings > Publishing" you can choose to publish via FTP

3. Fill in the necessary fields - if need help, check with your host acct support.
Below are some sample answers...
a. FTP Server: www.domain.com
b. Blog URL: www.domain.com/blog
c. FTP Path: /domain-www/blog/
d. Blog Filename: index.html
e. FTP Username: yourftpusername
f. FTP Password: yourftppassword
Notify Weblogs: Yes

Then Click "Save Settings".

Go to "Settings > Archiving" and fill out necessary fields.
Below are sample answers...
a. Archive Frequency: Daily
b. Enable Post Pages?: Yes
c. Archive Path: /domain-www/blog/archive/
d. Archive URL: www.domain.com/blog/archive/
e. Archive Filename: archive.html

Then Click "Save Settings".

Go to "Settings > Site Feed" and fill out necessary fields.
Below are sample answers...

a. Publish Site Feed: Yes
b. Descriptions: Full
c. Site Feed Server Path: /domain-www/blog/
d. Site Feed Filename: atom.xml
e. Site Feed URL: www.domain.com/blog/atom.xml

Click "Save Settings".

Throughout this process, I believe Blogger will ask if you want to Publish or Re-Publish - yes, you want to publish using these new settings to your own URL now.

I started out using Blogger (blogspot.com), then FTPing to my own URLs (domain.com/blog), then graduated to Wordpress as I found that Blogger frustrated me to no end because:

1. Publishing was super slow at times - watching paint dry was faster biggrin.gif

2. I was dependant on Blogger, so if their server was down/slow, so was my publishing.

3. If I wanted to add categories to the sidebar navigation, it would mean having to go into the code to add it. Wordpress offers categorization by default - and even sub-sub-categories.

4. I had no control - if Blogger (Google Big Brother) decided they didn't like what I was posting, they could easily shut my account down - and I'm sure we have a few members in this forum who can attest to that. Wordpress blogs are on your own server/host account - and you have full control and publishing rights.

5. Capabilites - was far superior using Wordpress - from its plugins, strong user community, strong developer community, comprehensive documentation, categorization, speed in publishing as it uses MySQL database, easy 1-click install using cPanel, lots of themes, and lots of freedom.

I've created a video comparison of the two blogging systems - actually it also includes Movable Type and Typepad also. Here's the video URL: www.wordpresstutorials.com/battleoftheblogs

Hope this helps you out with your Blogger questions, and if you want to graduate to Wordpress, I recommend it.

Cheers!


[Edited live URls and fixed sig. to conform to [url=http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?act=boardrules]Forum Rules[/url]. - Jill]

[Jill]

Welcome shermanhu!

[shermanhu]

Hi Jill, thanks!

And also appreciate your fixing it to conform - cheers!