Advice Needed For Sem Strategy For Consultant, SEM advice blogging domain issues Options

[floatingworld]

Hi,

I will be developing the Web strategy for a consultant/professor who wants to position herself as a leader in her field. She has a lot of published articles and her name is mentioned all over the Web. Right now she has no website.

I am thinking that she would benefit from a blog- to help her establish credentials as an expert in her field. However, I think the blog should be seperate from her consultancy business for this reason: the home page of her business site should have copy aimed at her target market, while the blog will be ever changing, depending on her topics. I want the "bigwigs" who are coming to her business website to read copy aimed directly at them.

The dilema I am having is whether to have her blog in a seperate folder on her smain site, or to have it on another domain.

If it is in a subfolder, it will contribute to the ranking of her main website. However, this will mean that her blog will have an ugly url like www.janedoe/myblog instead of a snappy one like www.myblog.com.

On the other hand, if her blog is on another domain it will not add to the rank of her main consultancy business, and people reading her blog will have to click a link to be tranfered to her main website- this will slow things down a bit.

What is your opinion? which do you thinkis a better choice? is a blog url like www.janedoe/blog unprofessional?

I look forward to hearing from you.

[OldWelshGuy]

A blog attached to the main site is totally acceptable. Although I have my blog away from my site, I only did this as I had the domain spare and thought I would put it to use.

It really does not make a difference, and linking between blog and site is not a problem. The main consideration is that if the blog is separate to the main site, you are going to have to market BOTH domains, rather than the one. Blogs pull in good traffic, especially if the content is well written, the blog is SE friendly, and the threads are titled properly.

If I had the choice now, my business blog would be part of my main site.

[floatingworld]

Thanks, these are great points... I guess it's just that "www.janedoe.com/blog" doesn't roll off the tongue that well.... That;s a great point about having to market two URLs- I don't want twice the work!

[Nueromancer]

Thanks, these are great points... I guess it's just that "www.janedoe.com/blog" doesn't roll off the tongue that well.... That;s a great point about having to market two URLs- I don't want twice the work!

doesn't seem to be a problem for devorak

[Scottie]

I'd put them on one URL unless the subject matter of the blog is completely different from the website content.

[WSO]

I'd definitely say put the blog in the same url as the client's main site. You'll get far more benefit from the blog that way, and there's often a good chance that the client's target audience (the ones that the main pages of the site are geared toward) will get value out of the blog too, or at least further understand the complete level of expertise that your client has.

If the blog is accepting comments, be sure to protect against spam comments.

[donp]

Guess what Jill did...
'nuff said.

[Jill]

Guess what Jill did...
'nuff said.

Me starting any new blog (or two or three) never has anything to do with the search engines. I simply get an idea for one and set it up and do it. I've never given a second thought to whether I should put a blog on my main domain or on a new domain. It's irrelevant as far as I'm concerned. (Other than in terms of branding.)