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I recently added a blog to one of our company's websites, and was confident that this increase in content on the site would have only positive SEO results. My boss, however, feels that we should have instead located the blog off-site, on a blogging platform such as Wordpress, Typepad, etc., in order to generate a backlink (assuming we'd link from blogging platform back to website.)

While I know that backlinks are important for SEO, isn't content creation equally, if not more, important? Granted, I'd be creating content either way, but I figured we'd get more site traffic by having the blog located on our site versus a separate blogging platform. Am I incorrect in my priorities here? Boss's TOP priority is increasing the ranking of our website, so maybe a backlink would be better...?

If we do need to relocate the blog to an off-site platform, is there a blogging platform that is more conducive to SEO than others? Is there a platform from which backlinks would be more valuable than others?

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1) Internal links are just as important as external links. A big part of Wikipedia's success is their excellent internal linking.

2) An offsite blog will be of equal value to an onsite blog because both will be new and have no incoming links to them, the same content, and just about the same everything (except URL and HTML). Regardless of wherever you put it it's going to have the roughly same SEO value. (It's a common myth to think that links from separate domains have more value then links from the same domain).

If you want to have full control over everything, host it on your own site. If you want someone to manage everything but the content, host it remotely. But the SEO differences between the two will be virtually nil.

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  • Regarding "the SEO differences between the two will be virtually nil." One piece of advice that is often repeated is that www.domain.com/blog will be better ffor SEO than blog.domain.com when there is a good amount of unique content. The reasoning being that content in a subfolder adds more authority to the main domain. See fx. seohawk.com/blog/subfolders-vs-subdomains-seo-analysis Is this advice no longer valid? (I don't know, I'm just curious.)
    – user1857
    Sep 8, 2010 at 22:07
  • The whole "authority" thing has been a form of speculation that has taken a life of its own even though there is no evidence of it and it is contrary to what we already know about how search engines work. I don't give it a second's thought.
    – John Conde ♦
    Sep 8, 2010 at 22:10
  • There are no subfolder/subdomain differences if the subdomain points to the same IP as the primary domain - some discussion @mattcutts.com: mattcutts.com/blog/subdomains-and-subdirectories
    – danlefree
    Sep 9, 2010 at 2:14
  • @Jesper Mortensen In this day and age I think it can be safely assumed that the difference between the two in today's web is marginal at best.
    – Mike B
    Sep 9, 2010 at 9:14
  • Agree with eveything here. The other way to increase SEO would be trackbacks from other blogs, but you'd need to build your network to include that, or provide relevant information based on user interest so they would do that automatically.
    – John P
    Sep 11, 2010 at 21:33
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Everything John Conde said is spot on. One thing to remember with links you get a larger benefit from external links across many reputable sites. Having a number of links back and forth between your blog and your site won't give you any more benefit if the blog under a different domain than under the same.

The benefit will come with making your blog popular and having tons of great (relevant) links from your blog to the rest of your site and from you site back. So really it comes down to how you would like to manage it.

Finally, if your bosses main concern is using a tool like Wordpress, that helps with SEO because it is built well you can always use Wordpress within your own domain and host it yourself, giving you complete control and a strong tool.

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I would also put the blog on your OWN site ("content is king"). Links from the blog with the keyword anchors will be the same. You can also use the the rss feeds on the blog to send to other sites for the backlinks... auto post to facebook, twitter etc.

I think content is more important... just need somebody to write something often, not just a page of links.

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In my experience it depends on goals and your competitive environment. For example if you are hoping to write content that will drive traffic from very long tail keywords that have little or no competition (think Ehow) then keep it on your domain, if you plan to use it for linkbait or hosting other linkable content types, keep it on your domain. If you are in a competitive environment where there aren't a lot of links to be found, I'd place it on it's own domain, often in link dry niches the addition of a unique linking domain can have a substantial impact. (I'd also shell out the hosting fee and host it myself rather then using a .wordpress or .typepad).

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