Is blogging better within the site or external?

[James2]

Having tried to fight it I have finally succumbed to the idea of starting a blog for work.

Would it be best to just have it as a webpage within the site or use an external link to a specific blog like tumblr or wordpress? Are there any benefits or drawbacks for each? Personally I think it would be fine as an internal page on our site.

In this blog I will be doing our news/ updates and commentry on external factors relating to my industry.

Thanks!

[tedster]

I don't think it's going to matter much as far as Google is concerned. There are certainly trade-offs to consider (such as offloading security concerns to a third party) but as long as you link between your blog and your core website in a way that informs you visitors, you can go either way.

[James2]

thanks

if that's the case I think I'll just do it internally

[vivalasvegas]

I have an internal blog also and, with the mostly static content I publish the blog adds some freshness to my website.

[FranticFish]

I think internal is best as that way any traction your blog develops will directly flow to the rest of your site. If you develop an independent blog then no matter how good it gets, it will always be a referrer or feeder. Any trust or other good factors you develop wil always be one step removed from your site.

[tangor]

Handle it internally if possible. Keeps all the eggs in one basket (which is a different problem!) but gives ultimate control. Run my sites (usually static) with Forums and Blogs internal. Then again, I'm an anal retentive control freak. :)

[Simsi]

There's another advantage to having an internal blog in that it is easier to then include panels and snippets of "latest posts" from the blog at relevant points within the site for integration.

[CenSin]

Why you add value to others people site, just blindly create your blog internally.

If your external blog (such as in wp) success later on, can you sell that subdomain?

I create my services site with WP, and get every benefits of it's quick notification to other sites.

I even welcome all good and creative spam comments (of course I strip all their url info and change those flashy submitter name with keywords related to my site) to stimulate the ping engine within WP.

[Simsi]

I create my services site with WP, and get every benefits of it's quick notification to other sites.

Reminds me of another good reason to have an internal blog. Regular posts pull the Googlebot back quicker and it will start to spider the rest of your site on a more regular basis.

[CenSin]

^
Exactly... ;)

[Planet13]

Do remember that having an internal blog means that you will have to keep up with updating the software on a regular basis. If you DON'T have the latest version of the software on your site, you can be vulnerable to hacking, something google does not approve of.

[tedster]

And the worst kind of hack is the placement of parasite links on your pages - in a way that is cloaked for only googlebot to see. Many people think they've been unfairly penalized only to find a good while later that this happened to them.

Parasite links are not like malware in that you get a big obvious message - or like the total defacement of a site such as script kiddies used to do. Instead, it hooks your site into a spam link network and there's no way Google or any other search engine can tell that you didn't do it intentionally. In essence, you DID do it, because you are responsible for your site's server.

So if you host your own blog, do be extremely vigilant about updates and patches to the software. Parasite hosting is an epidemic the past few years, and if your blogging software isn't secure, the odds are pretty good that it WILL happen to you.

[TamanRoyal]

Hacking is a common situation face by every dynamic contents generator (cms, forum, blog, gallery, etc.), even for site with static contents.

[Planet13]

And the worst kind of hack is the placement of parasite links on your pages - in a way that is cloaked for only googlebot to see.

What would be the best way to discover this? I am assuming that the bad neighborhood tools WOULDN'T find them, would they?

[tedster]

Use "Fetch as googlebot" in the Webmaster Tools Labs section, and especially check any URLs that seem to be attracting spammy backlinks.

[James2]

Thanks for all your input.

I'm assuming that people posting invisible sketchy links would happen only if you allow them to post comments but would that be dealt with by approving the posts first?

[tedster]

Right - or by nofollowing all user added links.