3 replies to this topic

[rnowak]

Hello,

I'm in the process of choosing a blog. We were planning on using Wordpress and having it reside at blog.xyz.com. An eCommerce website will be at www.xyz.com. We were thinking that by having the blog be outside the domain, the inbound linking would help with ranking. Now, I'm rethinking this and wanted to get some expert opinions. A little more information on the blog's purpose is that it will be used as an area for people to discuss products, experiences and where the store owner can blog about her products and link back to them in the www.xyz.com domain. Is this bad thinking? Also, if you have a good blog tool that works well for you for either scenario above, include any reasonings you have.

We're rather new to this, so any help is appreciated.

Thanks,
Rhonda

[Randy]

Just for the record, subdomains are no longer "outside" of your main domain with Google according to the info they've released in the last month or so. They're now going to treat subdomains the same as they've always treated subdirectories.

Now, that said I think you may have a misconception that external links carry significantly more weight than internal links do. In one way they do because you need some external links to get the ball rolling. But once it's rolling you can do as much and often more with your internal links. So don't fall into the trap of thinking you need your blog to be on an external domain for any SEO reasons.

In fact, you should view the situation exactly the opposite. View it from a Business point of view. If it makes sense for the blog to be part of your main site because it's closely tied to the same subject matter and is going to share some or much of your normal navigation structure, make it part of your main site. Either as a subdirectory or as a subdomain. It won't matter which for SEO purposes. Do what'll work best for your structure and your users.

On the other hand if the blog is basicallly unrelated to what your main site offers, with only an occasional reference, make it a separate, stand alone domain.

[Osel]

Hi Randy

Ive been reading through alot of the threads, and found this which is pretty close to my situation: I am setting a up a blog for reviewing products sold on my main site. My main site is hosted with a shopping cart service that doesnt allow blogs, but will create a subdomain that points to an IP (another host) where I can put the blog.

Since my goal is to create interest in the products and get people back to the main site to buy them, I was curious from an SEO perpsective if there would be any impact on my main domain with the subdomain pointing offiste (obviously would be best if was on the same domain) as opposed to building a new domain up from scratch for the blog (no redirect from the mainsite).

I apologise if this is posted in the wrong place

[Randy]

Welcome Osel !

Since the blog content it going to be directly related to the main site, that's exactly how I'd do it, given the restrictions you have to deal with: Set up a subdomain and put the product discussion blog there.

Makes the most business sense to me.

The engines shouldn't have any problem at all with such a setup, whether the subdomain is on the same server/ip or a different one.