Should I map third party blog as a subdomain?

Question

I am wondering if I should map my blog to my domain as a subdomain or just leave it completely separate on the third party site?

I am primarily concerned with SEO and the ease of transitioning between content on my domain and on my blog. I know there will be a slight disconnect between my domain and a potential mapped subdomain but if it benefits my domain it shouldn't be an issue.

Also do backlinks get credited to my domain or subdomain or are they considered one and the same once they are mapped together? And can I create backlinks from the third party site even though it is mapped as a subdomain on my cash for gold domain?

Answer 1

a subdomain and 3rd party domain will have almost identical SEO benefit. They are considered different domains by google. So if you have a subdomain of your regular domain (blog or not) google sees it as a totally different site. If you are trying to get the blog to add value to the main domain then subdomains or 3rd party domains are propbably not what you want, and instead you want a directory for your blog. If you are using a 3rd party blogging service (blogger, wordpress.com hosted) then your only choice is to reverse proxy the /blog/ directory of your site to pull this content from their servers.

Works like a charm in NginX and Blogger. Let me know if that is what you want and I will post a config sample to reverse proxy.

# LOCATION >>
# MYSITE.com/blog (Blogger blog.mysite.com) **** 
location ~* ^/blog/(.*) {

    # Variables so we can redirect later
    set $blog_url            'blog.mysite.com';
    set $url_full            '$1';

    # Update Variable So We Can Catch SSL 
    set $force_SSL    "${force_SSL}XX";

    if ($force_SSL = HTTPSWWWXX) {
     return 302 http://www.mysite.com/blog/$url_full;
     #rewrite ^ http:/$host$request_uri permanent;
     break;
    }

    # Turn off SSL for Blog
    if ($ssl_protocol != "") {
     #rewrite ^   http://www.mysite.com$request_uri? permanent;
     return 302 http://www.mysite.com/blog/$url_full;
     break;
    }

    # Make sure blog is only available under www domain
    if ( $host != 'www.mysite.com' ) {
      rewrite ^/(.*)$ http://www.mysite.com/$1 permanent;
      break;
    }

    # Rewrite outbound text to new url | rewrite https for image sources
    subs_filter               blog.mysite.com/ www.mysite.com/blog/;

    # HEADERS
    more_set_headers          "Server: BLOGGER";
    more_clear_headers        'Cache-Control-*';
    more_clear_headers        'Alternate-Protocol*';
    add_header                Cache-Control "public, max-age=7200";
    etag                      on;
    expires                   2h;

    # Cache File Information
    open_file_cache           max=1000 inactive=500s;
    open_file_cache_valid     600s;
    open_file_cache_errors    on;

    # Gzip
    gzip                      on;
    gzip_vary                 on;
    gzip_http_version         1.0;
    gzip_disable              "MSIE [1-6].(?!.*SV1)";
    gzip_min_length           200;
    gzip_buffers              64 8k;
    gzip_comp_level           3;
    gzip_proxied              any;
    gzip_types                text/plain text/css application/x-javascript text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript;

    # PROXY SETTINGS
    proxy_set_header          Accept-Encoding "";
    proxy_http_version        1.1;
    proxy_redirect            off;
    proxy_set_header          Host $blog_url;
    proxy_set_header          Authorization '';
    proxy_hide_header         Set-Cookie;
    proxy_hide_header         Cache-Control;
    proxy_ignore_headers      "Set-Cookie";
    proxy_buffering           off;
    resolver                  8.8.4.4 8.8.8.8 valid=300s;
    resolver_timeout          10s;
    proxy_pass                http://$blog_url/$url_full;
    proxy_temp_path           /usr/share/nginx/temp;

    # PROXY CACHING
    proxy_cache               STATIC;
    proxy_cache_valid         200 302 1d;
    proxy_cache_valid         404     1m;
    proxy_cache_use_stale     error timeout invalid_header updating
    http_500 http_502 http_503 http_504;

break;
}