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I will link to and from the blog and our ecommerce site and I do still want to get the most benefit possible for the links.
Would I be better off hosting this blog as a sub domain on my current ecommerce site or hosting it on a server located in a galaxy far far away?
I realize Google has been basically treating sub domains as seperate websites, so based on my goals above, what are the advantages and disadvantages of hosting as sub domian vs. an individual site?
Thanks
Otherwise there's nothing in it - toss a coin.
A sub directory would be preferred because if you produced good posts and connect them with the social media you should receive links to the blog which would also benefit the main site. You would also be adding frequent, fresh content to the site which is attractive to spiders.
A sub directory would be preferred because if you produced good posts and connect them with the social media you should receive links to the blog which would also benefit the main site.
Actually, they wouldn't; that's why I didn't recommend using a subdomain.
For most purposes, SEs threat subdomains no different to any other quite separate domain. The only way the main site will benefit from links to the blog, is if the blog is part of the main site.
A sub directory would be preferred because if you produced good posts and connect them with the social media you should receive links to the blog which would also benefit the main site.Actually, they wouldn't; that's why I didn't recommend using a subdomain.
Good backlinks to a blog within a sub directory of a main site should benefit the main site.
Backlinks to a sub domain are not likely to benefit the main site. In this case, you would need to populate the blog with links to the main site in order to pass some PR. This approach is not efficient.
So, in general, I prefer the sub directory route. But, like everything in SEO, it's subjective and I'm sure other community members have alternative thoughts on the matter.
Q
I'm wondering about the original site, not the blog. Is the original site also new, or has it been around a while and if so, for how long, and generally speaking, how are the rankings?
IMO there can be very good reasons to put a blog on a subdomain. It depends on lots of factors, including the age and trust of the main site, the nature of the blog, and the objectives of both the site, and the blog.
This site is about 10 years old with great rankings. All white hat SEO, still avoiding buying links.
I see new competitors pop up frequently and most are using link spam in the masses and some are seeing good results, while others are being hit with penalties. Thanks to my Google alerts I can see that one site is looking to clone mine, which would be the third site and second lawsuit in the last year or so. We have been the market leader for the amjority of our existance.
We are in a difficult market to integrate all the social networking/bookmarking sites simply because of our target market. I'm hoping this blog gets us on our way there. Actually we are looking to start 3 seperate blogs that focus on different aspects of our industry including an advice column.
So I want to use this blog for several reasons, the top reasons being adding good quality content to our site and attracting inbound links. I want to take full advantage of the SEO beneftis of the blog.
Currently I'm leaning towards hosting the blog as a subdirectory. I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Thanks all for you comments!
[edited by: MadeWillis at 3:05 pm (utc) on July 23, 2008]
Reasons to Keep the Blog in a Subdirectory
1) When sites are just starting out, especially e-commerce sites, housing a blog on a subdomain may mean that the subdomain gets most of the inbound links, and thus the main site never really gets traction. So if both the main site and blog are new, that's a good reason to keep the blog on the main site in a subdir.
2) Even for established sites adding a blog for the first time, it can be tough getting good inbounds for e-commerce sites. So if you feel you are falling behind in the SERP's -- or may start falling behind soon because of intense competitive activity -- then adding the blog to a subdir again might make the most sense, in order to keep encouraging more inbounds to the main site.
Reasons to Put the Blog in a Subdomain
1) If the main site is rockin' in the SERP's, a new blog on a subdirectory offers the opportunity to create different kinds of content relative to the main site. Strategies vary, but there are many approaches that commercial sites can use to create great blogs.
2) Keep in mind too that if your content strategy is well thought out across your blog AND main site, you can post some content on the main site as appropriate and some content on the blog, and for the content you post on the main site (let's say, a How To guide), you can still link to it from the blog. ;-)
3) Though the inbound links won't affect the authority of the main site directly, you are still passing link juice to the main site, so there IS benefit still. If the main site is already ranking well, that is a plus.
4) If the main site is ranking well, and the blog goes on a subdomain, you create over time the opportunity to occupy more spaces in the SERPs with a subdomain. I'm aware of more than a few cases where a site has the number one and two spots because of an indented listing, and also the number 5 and 7 spots via a subdomain. That's four of ten listings on the first page of the SERPs. Google tightened up on this slightly not long ago, but there are still tons of examples of it.
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So IMO, it all comes down to:
1) Is the main site new or well established? (If new, go subdir.)
2) If well established, is the main site strong enough to support a subdomain, or is the main site a bit weak? (If weak, perhaps still better setting up the blog in a subdir.)
3) Can you see clear distinctions for what kinds of new content would go on the blog (e.g., news, opinion, announcements) versus what kinds of new content would go on the main site (how to, guides, etc. ).
If my main site is strong, and the blog ads a new dimension and has a reason for being that is different from (but very related to )the main site, then I'd jump at the chance to put the blog on a subdomain.
My personal experience in those cases (worked on a few of them in the last few years) is that when the blog is on an entirely different domain, if the two sites get strong, they battle with each other in the SERP's. Worst possible outcome, obviously.
It's made worse by the fact that in a case like the one of this thread, where the two sites are closely related, the owner not surprisingly wants to link heavily from the blog to the main site. So the algo's tend to see it as co-owned sites on the same topic, heavily cross-linked, and blow one out of the SERP's, if not both.
So at least based on what I've seen, best option by far is to keep them on the same domain, regardless of whether it's a subdir or subdomain.
Establishing a blog on a subdomain or separate domain may make sense in certain instances.
Specifically if your potential community will be threatened by the activities within the main site, thereby creating resistance which limits the interaction that makes blogs so powerful as marketing tools.
<snip>.
Also another potential reason is if your content is not 100% aligned with the main site.
I question that sending some links from one domain to another, regardless of ownership, would harm both domains. I can see all domains being penalized/filtered if a ring was created.
[edited by: caveman at 3:38 pm (utc) on July 24, 2008]
[edit reason] No site or commercial mentions please, per TOS. [/edit]
so do you think if a blog in a separate domain and the main site are "discovered" by the SEs to be related, it could be a cause for penalty?
No not at all. The mere presence of a co-owned sites with conservative cross-linking is not an issue.
But generalizations can get us into trouble. We're not talking about any two sites cross-linked. We're talking about what is commonly thought of as a corporate or company blog, that exists to further the goals of the main commercial site (in this case defined as an e-commerce site). The specific context of this thread is the addition of a company blog to the e-commerce site, either in a subdir or subdomain. Clearly the OP intends for the blog to be closely connected to the main site.
Typically in cases like this, the blog uses the same header or brand logo, or in some other way closely resembles the main site. The blog also is also typically part of the main site's nav and vice versa. Or, if links flow one way more than the other, it's most common to find that the blog links from every one of its pages back to the main site, in an effort to push link authority in one direction. Either way, the owner is not hiding anything: The blog looks like, and resides somewhere on or hanging from, the main domain.
Marcia then introduced another interesting option to the conversation. Putting that company blog on an entirely different domain. As the context of this thread is a company blog, I'm assuming that the blog is still closely connected via appearance and links to the main e-commerce site. (Otherwise it's an entirely different situation to the topic of this thread.)
As I said above I can't comment on consensus (I've only looked at or been involved with maybe 8 or 10 situations like this).
And to be clear, I don't necessarily believe putting the blog on an entirely separate domain is a problem. But you really have to know what you're doing or you are likely to create problems that last for years.
The problem I've most commonly seen is that the blog ends up competing with the main site because the content and topic are similar, the two sites are clearly co-owned, and the cross-linking in one or both directions is heavy, and backlink profiles are sometimes too-similar. The algos of the SE's (and especially G's algo), not liking to give site owners multiple site entries in the same set of SERP's, filter out one or the other of the two closely related sites. So you end up with the worst possible outcome: Unintended filtering of one of the domains in any given SERP set. Which is easily avoided simply by keeping the blog on a subdomain or subdir. (Not to mention that you don't need to do two entirely different sets of link building.)
None of this means that putting the blog on another domain can't work; it can. It just puts more onus on the site owner to really understand the in's and out's of SEO, since the chances of one of the two sites being filtered goes way up. In order to keep both sites ranking, the site owner needs to scrupulously retain separation between the two sites, build differentiated backlink profiles with varies anchor text, etc.
Unnecessarily complex IMHO. I prefer to keep things simple. That's especially true of site owners who don't know the in's and out's of SEO, and may not have the resources for on-going SEO help. Keep it simple, and avoid set-ups that increase risk needlessly. My opinion, anyway. ;-)
If you look on Google for "their keyword phrase" blog, the blog's domain comes up first with a warning that the site may harm your computer (no cache for it), and you can see some of the text the hackers put in, in Google's snippet for the site. Their main site is fine for that keyword phrase still.
This is exactly the possibility I fear with having a blog installed on the same domain as an ecom site, and is why I had a client take down the blog her designer had put up a couple of months ago - unsecured, unmaintained, very out-dated WP version.
I just looked at Yahoo's cache of that blog and Norton stopped it from installing Downloader.
I looked up the whois and phoned the owner of the site and left a message (he apparently doesn't know yet, since the blog is still linked to from the ecom site), but it would not have been a good thing for his main site to be flagged as harmful, being a prominent and high budget site.
[edited by: Marcia at 4:33 am (utc) on Aug. 1, 2008]
