Ranking Effect of hosting a blog at Wordpress

[joestern]

I'm moving a blog from a local Movable Type installation to a WordPress installation - seems much more full featured.

I'm considering just doing it as a wordpress.com, where, if I change my DNS records properly, they'll host it for free from my own domain name - not just as a subdomain of wordpress.com.

So is this somehow a mistake as far as my Google Juice is concerned? I'm a retail store, and this blog is about my business, so to the extent I get any Google help from the blog (probably not a lot) I don't want to compromise that by getting this free hosting account. Should I just pay some other host for a $50/year account?

[tedster]

For a business-related blog, I'd suggest paid hosting. You'll get more flexibility, and that can translate into more ability for you to handle SEO issues at the server and url level. Not that the hosting at Wordpress is so bad, but even they recognize the limitations that their free hosting can impose.

[joestern]

Thanks.

I was monkeying with their site some more, and it looks like they put rollover ads in your posts, so that's a non-starter for me.