In my 12+ years as an SEO consultant, I have never worked with a client that couldn’t benefit from creating a business blog. The numerous benefits of business blogging have been repeated on dozens (if not hundreds) of SEO and Internet marketing blogs across the blogosphere, but I’ve noticed that very few blog posts talk about one of the first steps in developing a business blog—should it be on a separate domain or your current website? If you are thinking about launching a blog on its own domain (like I did back in 2007), here are 3 things to keep in mind:

1.  Separate link building strategy

A blog on a separate domain won’t be able to piggyback on the link building efforts of your company website like a blog that is registered on your home domain. It’s not enough to just link from your website to your blog and think that will help it succeed (although cross linking is incredibly important!) The rules of white link building still apply—if you want your blog on a separate domain to rank well in the search engines, it is important to develop a long term, diversified link building strategy for it. The more quality, inbound links from a variety of sources you can develop for your blog the better.

2. Takes time to develop trust factor

Some site owners may choose to develop their business blog on a separate domain because it is a good way to build your online presence. A well optimized blog (for both branded and non branded keywords) can rank in the search engines right alongside your website. However, a blog on a new domain is essentially a brand new site and the search engines are going to treat it as such. The older your domain is the more trust is has with the search engines; a new blog has a trust factor of zero. This is one of the reasons many site owners choose to incorporate their blog into their existing website. The new blog is treated like any new page and benefits from the domain authority of your website. Don’t be surprised if it takes a long time for your blog to rank as well as you would like for certain keywords. There are some things that only time can do for your SEO.

3. Won’t necessarily push traffic through to your site

A blog on a separate domain is a great way to build a new touch point that connects with your target audience. The more places you can build your brand the more times you can interact with a potential customer and the more powerful your online brand will be. However, by placing your blog on a separate domain you are asking visitors to your blog to take one extra step on the road to your website. While one extra click may not seem like a lot, there is a lot of distraction and noise between your blog and your site and your visitor may get lost along the way.

When I launched my SEO blog in 2007, I decided to create it on a separate domain. In the last four years, that blog has grown into a brand of its own and I’ve been able to leverage it for the benefit of my business. It’s a strong enough website on its own that it could survive without being connected back to my company. However, if I had to do it over again, I might have just built it directly onto my company website. Hindsight being what it is, it might have been easier to kill two birds with one stone in terms of link building and establishing a trust factor with the search engines.

About the Author – Nick Stamoulis

Nick Stamoulis is the President of Brick Marketing (http://www.brickmarketing.com) a Boston SEO agency that focuses on white hat link building and content marketing. With over 12 years of industry experience, Nick Stamoulis shares his knowledge by posting daily SEO tips to his blog, the Search Engine Optimization Journal, and publishing the Brick Marketing SEO Newsletter, read by over 160,000 opt-in subscribers.

Contact Nick Stamoulis at 781-999-1222 or nick@brickmarketing.com

5 Responses to “3 Things to Consider When Building Your Blog on a Separate Domain”

  1. This is an issue I address with clients with fair regularity: to make a separate blog site or keep it all together. From my experience, a separate blog – if it is maintained with regular posts, replies to comments, etc – can build steam pretty fast and have a positive impact on traffic to the main website. But I see your point about the extra click. The fewer, the better. Anyway – interesting read, thanks, and I may point some clients this way as well so they can get your perspective.
    Kerry

  2. Ilias Glenis says:

    Thanks for the article Nicko. I’m one step closer to deciding if I should build my new blog on a separate domain or not. Opa! :o)

    How important do you think it is to instill SEO into the blog URL? The reason I’m debating this issue is because my current website domain doesn’t reflect any of my new keywords in the domain name, and I wanted to build a foundation for the blog by leveraging keywords in the new blog name if I choose to go that route with a separate domain. Any advice on this? – Ilias

    • admin says:

      If your old domain has decent weight and organic search ranking, it would likely be better to capitalize on that ranking even though the URL is not as SEO-friendly as you might like. (See point #2 about trust.)

      If, on the other hand, the old domain is not performing as well or does not ranking for the new keywords, you may benefit from starting fresh. Best of luck!

  3. I’ve been considering this question for a long time …. The benefits just seem to register when you put it all together and do ONE link building campaign, it simply makes your domain stronger and re-inforces that domain when it is all on ONE …… ONE domain, ONE sets of incoming links, ONE domain to remember …. ONE domain is much easier for the customer to remember and the builder to build …..

  4. Mark Pettus says:

    We have both an on-site and an off-site blog (on its own domain). I’m curious whether a 301 redirect from the main site to the blog domain would continue to carry SEO weight down the road or if it would only transfer some trust early on (or if I’m totally off base)?

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