2 replies to this topic

[golfnfuul]

I am the moderator/boss in a dispute with two of my associates. We have decided to let the readers of some forums 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!

[Randy]

Welcome golfnfuul !

Well, let's clear up one misconception everybody involved seems to have.

One of our first SEO steps is to start a blog.

Starting a blog is not an SEO step. It can be a marketing step and it can be a communication platform that provides an easy way for company personnel to get information out there to the public quickly and efficiently. But it's not an SEO step.

As to the other stuff, it doesn't matter either way. On site or off site doesn't matter.

Why not?

Because with the search engines pages are ranked, not sites. So if one presumes you would link to either version in the same manner and one accepts as a given that the same people out there linking to the blog content would link to it no matter what location it inhabited, any link popularity boosts would be equal. Thus the answer to the same domain-different domain argument is it doesn't matter.

How's that for throwing a monkey wrench into the equation?

[Jill]

Tons of posts here on the exact same subject...please try a forum search and review the blog category where I'm moving this.