| To embed a blog, or not to embed - that is the question |
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Creating the blog outside of your website may have some SEO benefits, if the blog exists in a large network (such as Blogger, Blogspot, Wordpress.com, etc.) as those sites tend to be indexed more frequently than other sites, allowing for greater freshness of content for the blog, and increasing the blog’s page ranks faster than it might in an embedded blog. Inbound links from an external blog will lend that higher SEO ranking to the main site – however, it is also the case that this is a game of diminishing returns, as links beyond the first back to the main site are weighted relatively lower (the second link is worth half the first, the third is worth half the second, etc.) so over time, this is a strategy that will not lend a great deal of SEO relevance to the main website. If you are creating a new domain for the blog, external to the main website, that network benefit is of course lost, and you are forced to build the SEO relevance of the blog on top of building the relevance for the main site as well. One larger reason to creating a blog separate to the main sites, is if the blog perspective, mood or flavor is sufficiently different from the main site you are trying to assist with the blog in SEO (if, for example, you are looking to blog as a personality / individual, but want to keep your company’s website at a higher level of professionalism than what you might post in your blog). Keeping the separation between the two sites will increase the perception of authenticity for the blog (and perhaps increase inbound links due to this factor), but again, the benefit to the main site is going to be limited over time. Unless you are trying to perpetuate the personality of the blog as a separate brand, many would argue that the benefits of inbound links to good content is better served to contribute to the main site through embedding the blog. Another strong argument against having an external blog stored by a third-party provider is around data security. Externally hosted blogs that live in large public and free networks hold your data in databases outside of your control, and can be wiped from existence in many cases without warning (and depending on the terms of agreement, without legal obligation or recourse). On the practical level, maintaining both a website and a blog in separate tools and in separate locations adds a layer of complexity to the content management tasks, and can result in less blogging and therefore a lower rate of returns for your hard work and activity. Conversely, embedding the blog in your site can have some fairly major benefits. First off, any link-backs generated by the blog through other sites will build direct link-back association to the main web site, and increase relevance far faster than what you might gain from your single blog, no matter the relevance of that blog. Also, adding fresh content to a blog embedded in your main site has a direct benefit to search engine ranks for that site, as new content is treated favorably in the indexing (and Google will artificially elevate the ranks of pages with new content temporarily, meaning a constant stream of content will result in higher SEO on average). Further, if you are not concerned about conflicting voice between the blog and the main website, the user experience of an integrated blog is far more pleasant to your readers, and will result in greater stickiness for your site, and longer visit durations. One last reason for embedding the blog into your main site is that every post you create becomes part of the long tail of the website, creating a history of broad content and increases keyword density for the entire site for what is discussed in each blog entry. If the blog is separate, none of that advantage is imparted to the main site, only to the blog. Beyond the debate of having a separately hosted blog versus having your blog embedded, is the use of subdomains or subfolders referencing your blog. Using a subdomain, such as http://blog.yourdomain.com (or better, http://keyword-description.yourdomain.com) to reference your blog keeps a marginal separation between content (emulates a blog exterior to site to search engines), and might increase the SEO benefit for any inbound links from the blog to the main site, but doesn’t lend same SEO benefits for content as it would be if in a subdirectory of main domain. This method is best suited if the main site has lots of fresh, rapidly changing content already, and doesn’t need the blog’s content for breadth or keyword density. Putting the keyword and description into the subdomain will help with SEO. (Note: You can in most cases create this subdomain and point it to your blog page as well as having it as a subdirectory). Conversely, using a subdirectory to reference the blog (such as http://www.yourdomain.com/blog or better yet, http://www.yourdomain.com/keyword-description), embeds content directly into main website’s domain, and transfers the SEO benefits of inbound links from other sites directly to the main domain. This solution is best suited if the other content on the site tends to be more on the static side. Our recommendation is to integrate the blog into the main website, for ease of use, better user experience, and better overall SEO results. Trackback(0)
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In the debate of whether or not you should create a blog inside your main website, or create the blog externally and link back to your main website, there are many pros and cons, and much discussion has arisen on the web in SEO forums around this topic. In general, the advice tends to trend towards embedding the blog inside your main website, but here are some of the reasons for going either direction.
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Great to see you are a fellow Joomla specialist as well