Should You Separate Your Blog from Your Website?
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You have a brilliant, customer-focused company website (or you soon will). You have an insightful, passion-infused blog (or you soon will). And you have an important choice to make (or you soon will):
Should you separate your blog from your website? Or would they be happier together?
Blog Options
Let’s say your main company website is www.abcinc.com.
- Integrating your blog with your website means the blog appears either at www.abcinc.com/blog (subfolder) or at blog.abcinc.com (subdomain).
(Of these, the subfolder option is better.) - Keeping your blog separate from your website means hosting it at www.xyzblog.com.
Is it better to keep your blog separate from your company website?
The short answer is…
No… most likely. Don’t separate them. Here’s why.
Advantages of integrating your blog
Integrating your blog brings a number of significant benefits that, for most companies, provide more than enough reason to choose integration.
I. Visitor benefits
- A (well-written) blog is a great way for visitors to get to know your company because it showcases your more relateable human side.
- Many website visitors today expect to find a company blog on your website and would be disappointed if they don’t.
- An integrated blog creates a more seamless visitor experience.
II. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) benefits
- All backlinks to blog posts will contribute directly to your website’s overall SEO strength because those backlinks are pointing to your main domain. This helps all of your company website pages rank higher in search results.
- Simply having more content pages on your site will also help the entire site rank better because Google loves content-rich authority sites.
III. Company benefits
- Having a blog on your company website helps position you as a thought leader, not just a provider of services or products.
- Visitors who find your blog post will already be on your company website, that much closer to taking whatever conversion action you are targeting (email opt-in, content download, purchase, etc.).
- It’s easier and cheaper to build and maintain a single website.
- It’s easier and cheaper to establish and promote a single brand.
Integrated Blog Example
To see a highly effective example of this type of blog, check out www.moz.com, which provides some of my favorite SEO and marketing tools.
The company blogs are featured prominently in the main site navigation. Visit the blog page and you’ll see a ton of well-written, well-organized incredibly helpful blog posts spanning all aspects of internet marketing. Many posts are from guest bloggers.
Rarely do these posts directly promote company products. Rather, they have served to firmly establish MOZ.com as a thought leader in this space. This leadership attracts readers in droves. It also attracts backlinks, which boosts the overall SEO authority of MOZ.com.
Advantages of keeping a separate blog
With all these integration advantages, why might you instead choose to keep your blog separate? Here are some justifiable reasons:
- If you want a scope that isn’t highly relevant to your company’s main offerings.
- If you want a “tone” that isn’t appropriate for your company’s main site.
- If you want to promote your blog as its own brand.
- If you want to promote yourself as a more objective industry expert.
- If you might want to someday sell the blog but keep the company website.
- If you might want to someday leave or sell the company but keep the blog.
Separated Blog Example
To see a highly effective example of this type of blog, check out www.quicksprout.com, which is written by Neil Patel, one of my favorite bloggers.
Neil founded CrazyEgg.com and KissMetrics.com, and he also runs his own consulting practice. His blog posts often reference these other businesses and help drive traffic to them.
But the primary purpose of his QuickSprout blog has been to establish himself as a renowned industry expert, which he has achieved in spades.
What about SEO?
Note the glaring lack of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) reasons for keeping a separate blog. This is because if your goal is to boost your main website’s SEO authority, the best way to do so is with an integrated blog.
That didn’t used to be the case. In the old days (2+ years ago), you could build any number of separate web sites, point most of their links at your main website, and successfully inflate your main website’s SEO authority and Google search rankings.
Not any more.
For obvious reasons, Google doesn’t like artificial link building. It doesn’t well serve Google’s customers, who want to see the best, most relevant websites, not the websites that SEO “experts” manipulate into the rankings.
And so Google has clamped down in a variety of ways. Google is much better at recognizing and discounting such website linking schemes, which have different characteristics than natural linking that occurs from true 3rd party sites. Google also gives much less value for multiple links from the same site. And Google gives much less value for links from low-value sites.
In other words, getting a single link each from a handful of trusted 3rd party authority sites will be more valuable to your website’s SEO strength than getting hundreds or even thousands of links from low-value sites.
Yes, you could work to build quality backlinks to your blog website so that its links, in turn, pass more value to your main website, but you’re still using an unnecessary middle man. If the blog is part of your main website, then those backlinks that it attracts will automatically and more directly help the SEO value of your main website.
What about keyword focus? Can’t a separate blog website achieve better Google rankings and more search traffic because you can optimize everything, including the domain name, for a valuable keyword?
Yes and no. Exact-match and partial-match domain names still provide some ranking value. However, you’re neglecting to consider the very substantial additional ranking boost your blog posts will receive simply by existing on your main company website rather than on a separate lower-authority blog site.
And your ultimate goal is to have your company website found, not just the blog website, right?
Bottom line: If your company website is your main focus, any SEO-building efforts will be more effective when your blog is part of your company website.
Is there a middle ground?
Sure. If you’re still undecided, you can compromise by hosting your blog at a separate domain but including a prominent link to your blog from the main navigation of your company website.
This approach provides most of the visitor benefits described above — They can easily find your blog and get to know your company better. The tradeoff is that you lose all the potential benefits of having a truly separated blog other than the ability to easily detach it from the company website later.
Conclusion
For most companies, having your blog fully integrated into your main website is the best option — for your visitors, for your SEO, and for your leadership positioning. But there are some special cases where having a separate blog is the right choice.
Use this analysis to choose the approach that best meets your goals.
Agree or disagree? Did I miss anything? Let me know in the comments below.
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Thank you, this is very helpful. I think my next step will be to do some determining about the blog brand vs. my company brand – both of which are in the “consideration” phase right now. I look forward to keeping up with you!
I just wanted to say thank you for your insight. I am new to all of this and was very up in the air about doing a blog. Thankfully you have put things into perspective for me. I now feel confident about adding a blog to my website!
Andrew:
Currently I have two sites up. One for the my branded blog and a second company website. Content from the branded blog is posted to the company website as it is published. Company website has a archive section of published blogs. I’m concerned about SEO for both sites and if Google will lower my SERP.
We have been doing the same thing as Bailey. For a long time we were posting our blogs on various websites in order to get more back links. Obviously this is frowned upon now and we have stopped. We have thousands of links to our site from duplicate content now. Would you recommend just deleting these old blogs and only keeping the blog on our site (the blog with the original content)? We lost some of our Google rankings, but are still #3-4 for a lot of our keywords. Do you think deleting all of the back links from the duplicate content will hurt us?
Great article that answered a lot of questions for me – thank you. This is a bit of a tangent, but hopefully not much – I have a Facebook page for my company and publish original content there. I am now thinking of moving everything to a blog. Will it affect my Google ranking if duplicate content appears on FB and my blog (I’m not sure how the search engines handle FB posts)? And, a follow-up – is there any real advantage from an SEO perspective to having a vibrant FB page…or should I focus on the blog?
“If you link to the same internal page multiple times in a single blog post, make sure you optimize the first occurrence of that link. Typically, search engines will rely more heavily on the first instance of anchor text for a given link than subsequent instances. “
Hi Andrew,
thanks for sharing your opinion about when to seperate and when to integrate your blog and website.
I can see the advantages and disadvantages of integrating a blos into the website. I would love to hear your opinion about the following:
Would it be benefical to integrate a blog into a clinical website? Since the pharma and medicine companies rely on trust and reputation, wouldnt it be a great chance to keep them seperated and strengthen the overall reputation and competences within a seperated more objective blog? Would you agree on that?
Thanks again for the insightful post!
Joerg
Hi Andrew,
I really like your article. It is clear, thoughtful and, in my opinion, right-on. The only thing I would add is that sometimes companies need to separate the blog from the website due to technical constraints.
For example, my e-commerce company has been running on a DNN site that was built in 2006 (yes, I know, we’ve grown organically so… the site is what it is) until, like, today, when we switch to a new Drupal platform.
All I ever wanted was /blog however the old site, for a variety of reasons, simply didn’t permit that. So our SEO-friendly workaround was to build a WordPress site with the blog. prefix.
Now that we’re moving to the Drupal platform we can finally bring the blog under the URL as /blog.
Great article! Do you have much experience with multilingual ecommerce sites / SEO?
Erica
Hi Andrew,
Thank your helpful and interesting article.
I was hesitating so far, but i think i’ll go for an integrated blog.
The only problem is the blog design, it’ll be a little hard to customize the templates so they will look the same as main website design!
Do you have any suggestions regarding which blog is better: wordpress, blogger, overblog, … ?
Regards,
Reda
I agree with each and every conclusion made on this topic. It is really very informative. Thanks for sharing.
Hi Andrew,
Here’s an exact quote from our web developer when I asked your exact topic: “I would recommend getting a blog on a separate hosting account. Why? Because if you host it on the same server and your blog gets hacked, which is happening more and more these days, you will not risk affecting your main website that brings in your new students. So, you can set up a simple WordPress or Blogger blog yourself and simply link to it”
We’ve never experienced hacking and we use PayPal for customer purchases. Should I be worried about hacking to the point of using a blogging host?
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for the article – interesting perspective on where to host. I’ve tried the blog subdomain and /blog approach and have to say that, at first blush, moving to the sub-domain approach from /blog resulted in a drop in organic traffic but with the (not set) chaos thanks to Google it’s a little trickier to pinpoint these days!
Adam
Hi Andrew,
We are wanting to start a blog using WordPress on our existing domain and were wondering about the WordPress options – WordPress.com and WordPress.org. From what I read, WordPress.org is the way to go if we want to drive traffic to our site for SEO value so that we can use our existing domain but our IT department is worried about constantly having to update with this option. Do you know of another solution which helps retain SEO value, allows for a new blog to be added to an existing site and limits the upgrades needed by IT?
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for the article.
I have a website set up offering services and online program, however I am currently working out legalities with lawyers to make sure I not breaking any laws in my profession and currently doing some further product testing before driving people to this website.
In the meantime I want to be driving traffic to blog posts and building a subscriber list as soon as possible, so I am not wasting any time, however I dont want people to be seeing my services/products just yet.
I feel my options for driving traffic to blogs and building a subscriber list now are:
A)I build a new blog website on a new domain and drive people here and then when the above are sorted redirect this page to my initial site.. Or,
B) If possible, hide current pages on my initial site/domain and just leave the blog page and a few others unhidden for viewing and when the above is sorted open up all of the pages.
What would you recommend?
Hope that made sense.
Thanks
Michael
Great article! I’m desperate to integrate our blog and website on the same server… but unfortunately just found out our Windows server won’t host our WordPress blog. After reading your points, I’m even more convinced it needs to happen! Are you aware of any blogs that can be hosted on a Windows server or do you recommend us biting the bullet and switching to a PHP server? Thanks
Hi Melinda
It might depend specifically on your windows server – because this looks like WordpPress might run on windows:
http://www.microsoft.com/web/wordpress.
That being said I know Joomla! can be run up on a windows server (I use Joomla for my blog).
Thanks for the very informative article. My question is this: I am a chiropractor and my clinic domain will contain the word chiropractic and the city I am located in so that I can optimize SEO that way. My thought process for wanting to separate my blog is that I want my blog to be widely visible and relevant not just to the city. I want to establish myself as an expert in nutrition and wellness, and so will not be blogging just about chiropractic. Will it hurt my SEO if I just have the first 50 words of my blog posts on my website but then link out to my separate blog?
This is a great article. We have been doing this with our client sites and it has worked great for SEO purposes. Thanks for sharing.
Hi Andrew
Many thanks for your interesting and informative article. I am a newbie who is about to start a blog and then in the future an e-commerce business. My thinking was to grow the blog first and then to somehow incorporate it into the e-commerce site when it is up and running. My hope and intention was that the blog would help to improve the seo of the e-commerce business and that any blog followers might then be attracted to browse the e-commerce site from the blog. If I use a simple blogging platform like Google’s Blogger would it be possible to incorporate it onto an e-commerce site later that had been created using something like ‘Shopify’ ? Would the blog then benefit the seo of the e-commerce site or does the blog have to be an integral feature of the e-commerce platform in order for it to provide seo benefits in this way ?
Andrew, very interesting post – thx!
What do you think about this?
We have a very specialized consulting business and positioned ourselves as experts – with a blog.
We have as well a quite low profile website on a separate domain which we are updating in near future. I’d like to integrate the blog in the website, but the blog has much more traffic than the website.
I think we could still link on the blog sites (under its “old name” as an headline, as landing pages) to gather all the blog interested people. But what about the old valuable links on the blog posts? Will we loose them and does this hurt our ranking?
What would be your approach?
Just wanted to say that this article and the detailed answers to people’s questions were incredibly helpful to me! We are planning to import a client’s external blog articles into their main site, but I had concerns about what would happen to their SEO and the old links. Your suggestion for a 301 redirect is exactly the solution I was looking for. Thanks so much!
Very good answers to everyone’s questions… so thanks for doing this.
We have a website http://www.buildingperformanceservices.com that works perfectly. When customers go on it, we almost always get the work… so that part is cool. It was built in iWeb and I am getting ready to convert it to Easyweb and want to start a blog. It is clear from your previous answers that having the blog be part of the web site is the way to go.
Here is my problem… we are insulation contractor and the the word “insulation” is nowhere to be found. I recently bought insulationgeek.com thinking it would be a great name for a blog about insulation. My real question is… is there a way to use insulation geek.com to link to my buildingperformanceservices.com/blog page?
We have a blog that has been around since around 2010 on Blogger. We just recently converted our site to WordPress. Is there a way to merge blogger post into our new site? Do we leave blogger up and start a blog on the WordPress site? Will Blogger not being updated hurt us? I really want to utilize the authorship features of Google because we are experts in our field and what to share that knowledge.
Thanks for the great information. I agree that the blog being on the site is important. We also have a press page, should that page also be the blog? I know a lot of questions.
Thanks for the info! I am currently a FT graphic designer – wannabe freelance designer SAHM with my three little ones. I would like to ideally incorporate my design business with a humorous really life blog/design inspiration & projects. That’s my life, so why not share. My issue – I have 2 domain names that I LOVE. One plain ole one for my design business, and one for the mommy blog. Do I make 2 different websites or combine? And how can I use both domains if I do combine? Can the blog link go to a different URL? Thanks!
Andrew, thanks for the tips. I’m a new fan! The small business I work for wants a blog for various reasons (including SEO and to grow the site content). The boss wants the blog posts to double as website pages, but the writing style and content are not a direct fit. My ideal would be to create independent pages for the website, then write blog entries (still on the same domain) with links back to the web pages (allowing more flexible blog content). From an SEO perspective, are there advantages to this?
I would just like to share my reason for separating my blog from my website because I pondered about this forever. I chose the middle ground of adding a link on my page after reading this post. I have an author page, but it is solely for my children’s book series about fruits & vegetables and my food illustrations. I have a blog connected to it, but I list it as “Resources” on my nav bar because I only post information and resources pertaining to children’s health & nutrition and any educational materials related to my book.
My personal blog is listed as “blog” on my nav bar. Although, it is related to my art and life, it has a different tone of writing I probably could have combined it, but my desired layout wouldn’t have been possible. I would also like to monetize it and add a shop in the future, and the idea of advertising with affiliated links on my author page bothers me.
It is a lot of work, but I’m finally getting the hang of it.
Thank you for your insight!
I am considering adding a blog of articles for photographer resources, but I already have a blog to showcase my photography sessions.
Would it be beneficial to have a separate blog for my photographer following? My whole
Point of writing any articles would be solely for SEO purposes and to be seen as a thought leader as you stated.
Also, I am wordpress.com. Is that a bad choice as a business? I have my own domain name.
Should I have gone with WordPress.org and if I wanted to switch would that be SEO suicide?
I just want the best shot at SEO and traffic and growth.
Great post! Quick question that I haven’t seen addressed yet…
Let’s say a company, mikespizza.com, publishes their blog URL as mikespizza.com/blog. However, when a user goes to that link it 301 redirects to mikespizza.tumblr.com. From an SEO perspective, is the value the same as if the blog were actually hosted at /blog?
Thank you for this article! What if I already have a lifestyle blog under my name and I am choosing not to sell my products on Etsy anymore, but my business products go by a different name? Should I sell my products on Shopify to not create another word press website. Or should I just add my business name to my blog menu opening up woo commerce and not have a paid domain name for it?
Hi – Great post, has for sure helped my understanding of sharing content either via integrated blog (within own website), or by external blog (blog platform), just a quick question to help with my situation on this subject…
If you have a online store/e-commerce website selling products, but don’t currently have a blog (to promote news feed on products, industry news, related public news, etc, which then from these posts link to products on my website, etc), can using an external blog from blogger or else only, help seo value as effectively as an integrated blog within your website (so just having one blog from blogger or else, so we can avoid duplicate content, middleman, etc)…? Please note the website homepage and other pages will have image/text links to the blog on blogger, and vice versa from the blog on blogger as explained above.
Additionaly reason for the question above – is that my online store/ecommerce website is designed/hosted/developed by web design company (so they have access to the code, etc), and for me to have a integrated blog on the website – then I have to go through them to have this integrated blog, which I don’t really want to, as I want better control for my blog, so I can make changes/updates whenever, and not to always get charged over-the-top for these changes/updates – because if I could start again with my online store/ecommerce website years ago, then I would have via Shopify/Big Commerce platforms – where I have more control.
Also to the question above – can using your own domain name in blogger not help with the seo value like the way an integrated blog can…?
Many Thanks
Shiv
Hi Andrew!
Impressive engagement you’ve got here! I’m scratching my head over whether to put my two blogs/business areas on the same site or separate them, both from a visitor trust perspective and from an SEO perspective. I have recently started my consultancy firm and I offer services within sustainability and sustainability communications on one hand and cheap marketing for small businesses on the other. These areas do overlap some but I am afraid that they may seem so far apart that it looks suspicious to my customers. At the same time, there are keywords like “brand”, “strategy” and “communication” that are shared and if I put the two blogs on separate sites/domains I divide the page authority and page rank. What would you do?
Andrew, thank you for the idea of using only *summaries* of blog posts on the home page, in order to avoid the duplicate content penalty. I’ve voiced this concern on several forums, and you’re the only one who gave a useful answer (use snippets, not full content).
My next question is, how do I publish WordPress content *outside* of WordPress? I.e. the blog is installed in http://www.mysite.com/blog/, how do I show content on the homepage of http://www.mysite.com?
Thank you so much Andrew. I’ve been looking for the exact question and right answer which you provided me.
Hi Andrew,
Thank you so much for such a helpful post and what an impressive engagement you have achieved indeed.
I would highly appreciate your insight on a situation I’ve found myself trying to decipher. See, I manage a Hotel, own a tour company and am considering launching a portal blog to position myself as an expert in Travel-related information pertaining to my country (Belize). I am currently upgrading my hotel’s website and want to integrate a blog to it. I have just launched my Tour Company’s website and wish to have a blog for it as well. My Belize Portal blog will be a separate blog. This leaves me with three blogs in total. I am battling the decision of having both my hotel and tour company site link to my Belize portal blog site but am worried about the lack of SEO for my websites. If I create 3 separate blogs, I’m worried about content creation or duplication. What would be your advise in this case?
Your advise would be highly appreciated, thank you!
Biggest challenge for me is to get the visitors from my blog posts to go to the main site pages on same domain.
Most raed the posts and are off!
Any good tips for me?
Advantages of keeping a separate blog seem very less than the advantages of integrating the blog with company website. From SEO point of view, It is always recommended to have a blog page on the website which helps in boosting the traffic of the website a lot.. Hats off to you for listing out these advantage points!
Hi! Fantastic article… and still getting comments/questions more than a year later — that’s what I am hoping my new blog/site will do.
I am launching a new business / website / blog at the same time — product and content development services. It’s all brand new, so no link authority to deal with for either. I plan my blog to be about the same topics I offer services for and will be integrating with my site. My question is two parts:
1–Should just call the blog “ProductSLAM blog” to be consistent with a new brand or use something more fun but still playing on that theme… like “the SLAMarize blog” or “SLAMmable.”
2–Regardless of the answer to #1 should I buy a domain for the log and then 301 redirect it to my productSLAM.com/blog page. So that I have a direct URL to use when I want for the blog. (e.g., productslamblog.com, theslamblog.com, slamarize.com etc.).
SLAM is an acronym I plan to use a lot around the same, separate from the brand, so I am ok separating it. Just struggling with whether a less “branded,” more approachable blog is actually going to hurt me as I try to build the company brand.
Thanks!
Hello Andrew,
I am a real novice and tying to digest not only your informative article but many of the comments you have received. Thanks for your time.
Background -I am a tour guide and thinking of starting my own small touring business. I have a website in progress but I think I am a year or so away from making it happen for legal reasons. So I will continue to guide for another company. However, I want to start blogging about my travel, travel tips,etc now. I have 2 questions –
1 – Not sure if I can do this but maybe I can use my current website and only have my blog on it for now, and hide all my other pages in progress. If I find out that I can do this, is the only way for people to see my blog by first going to my website? Or can google searches (say about truffles in France) lead you to the blog without you having to know about my website?
2- If I can’t use my current website in progress and start with an external blog will it be easy to get old blog copy on my site when I eventually launch? Are there some blog sites better at allowing for this?
Many Thanks
Hi Andrew,
I’m creating content on the blog for Intrica Consulting, I want to use my knowledge to reach out to fellow workers in my industry (Business Analysis) as well as managers of businesses (potential customers).
However, I’m concerned that having consulting in the domain is likely to put bloggers off in linking back to my content. Should I separate the blog from the site? Any views on this is much appreciated.
Hi Andrew, firstly I would like to say that this has been a really great article to read. From my side I think its more beneficial to keep your website and blog together. Remember your website will have a certain amount of pages which means you won’t have that much content that can be indexed in Google or other search engines but if you integrate your blog to your website you’ll be able to get more pages indexed which could lead to more visitors to your website. I’m doing this and it’s working really well in-terms of getting more traffic to my website. I don’t disagree with your recommendations, I just think you should identify what you want from your website and use that as your basis. Non the less this was a great article and sorry for the lengthy comment. Hope I contributed to the discussion. Cheers
This was very interesting read. I’m just facing same problem. If I should separate my blog from the main site or not. I just hired an SEO specialist to work on my site and the first thing what he said was that I have way too many pages of my site. My main website holds only 38 pages, but /blog has more then 900 blog entries which are treated as separate pages.
So in google it shows that I have over 1000 pages. He is saying that I need to really trim down those pages, but I’m not sure why. I thought that larger your site is, then better it should be.
Should I leave this as it is or open separate domain for the blog?
Thank you Andrew.
Regards,
Armands
Bonjour Andrew,
thanks very much for this post – I had been hesitating to start a blog, short of answering that very question. I can now move forward, but would love your perspective on a detail question, linked to the moz.com site you referenced. They have four blogs in their blog section.
I happen to sell services in different categories: wine tasting, cooking classes, baking classes, corporate teambuilding, etc…
From an SEO standpoint and in general if one sells multiple categories and can consider creating separate original content for each of these categories, should then one consider multiple well separated blogs? Or just separated categories in one blog?
Any perspective would be appreciated
Merci
Cheers
Fred
Dear Andrew,
Thank you very much for this insightful article, that deals with exactly what we’ve been struggling with.
Our problem is this: we will soon have to main websites, one for our healthy snack subscriptions and one for our retail brand (different product than the other). We want one blog site to serve both.
Also, all your reasons for wanting a separate blog site apply to us, so we are in favor of having a separate blog microsite. Its goal is to position ourselves as industry leader. The blog will have a scope much wider than just healthy snacks. It will deal will health behaviour in general.
There would be a link in the main navigation menu of both main websites linking to the blog site.
Do you agree this approach would be best?
Also, why would this be the case?: ‘The tradeoff is that you lose all the potential benefits of having a truly separated blog other than the ability to easily detach it from the company website later.’
Thank you so very much in advance for any reply!
Kind regards,
Thomas
Hey Andrew,
Great post, exactly what I’ve been trying to figure out over the weekend!
So my dilemma is that I originally started my website as a blog on tumblr, then recently I decide to invest in a website on Squarespace to make everything look more legit. Right now I have the blog as an external link that clicks through to http://www.belindalovelee.tumblr.com
But my concern is that if I integrate the tumblr posts into my website as a /blog (subdomain) I’ll essentially have two blogs with the same content and I don’t want people to get confused. Also I have strong following on my tumblr blog that I don’t want to loose. Essentially I have two websites at the moment.
Would you suggest that it’s still better to integrate the blog as a subdomain, or should I just leave it as is? Or is there another solution that you’d suggest?
Thank you again for all your time and effort!
I’m glad to see your comments seem to point that this way of thinking is still the same since you wrote this article a year an a half ago. In the ever changing world of technology, would you still recommend this philosophy. Do you see a difference between business types, i.e. a college website/blog vs. a business selling a direct product (fully understanding that a college is still “selling” something). Would love to hear your opinion! Thanks for your great articles.
Hello Andrew,
You’ve given me the confirmation that a blog is better off integrated into a company’s website, I thank you for that.
Here’s the situation, the e-commerce platform we use for our site is currently not allowing blogs. Do you recommend waiting for this feature to be available before starting a blog or have a blog created with WordPress or Tumblr and linked it to our web site right away?
Having a blog means time and efforts and I would like to get the full benefits from it.
Thank you in advance!!!
Hi Andrew,
Nice article. You mention:
Integrating your blog with your website means the blog appears either at http://www.abcinc.com/blog (subfolder) or at blog.abcinc.com (subdomain).
(Of these, the subfolder option is better.)
Do you know if you can go down the subfolder path if you have a Tumblr blog?
Thanks!
Hello,
Thanks for this post, that is very helpful. I have created my company website and now I’m about to launch the blog, and I asked myself the same question, should be on a separate subdomain or as a fubfolder. I asked myself this question, because I’m running my company’s website on wordpress, and I went for a complicated theme that I wouldn’t want to use for the blog that I’ll be using every day ! I think I’ll install a new theme for the subfolder, which brings me to the next question, is this possible ? having a different wordpress theme for a subfolder?
Anyway, I really appreciated reading your post, thanks again !
Elyes
Could you please advise on why the subfolder option is better than the subdomain option?
Also, we are constantly publishing articles on our blog, which is currently on a subdomain. Does this still count as original content for our domain?
Hi Andrew,
What a wealth of information. It’s great!
My question is, I have a blog that I am starting. Because I have a product that I am heavily branding, that website is a subdomain of the blog, e.g. brand.blog.com. You mentioned subdomains in your post, but didn’t go on to state any advantages or disadvantages of this approach. The plan is also to have more brands that offshoot from the blog….
Thanks!
Hi,
Thanks.Very well written post.wouldnt having a separate blog and having it backlinked multiple times to your main site cause the main site to be penalized due to the google updates.
Thanks
Rohit
As a real estate agent, there are so many options out there its hard to know where is the best place to present blog posts. Many use “Activerain” to blog while others use their own website, while others have separate blogs on platforms such as wordpress.com or blogger. I think that perhaps most importantly is being consistent with blog posts, and when you separate things based on “tone” or “branding” it may help with attracting a larger audience, but may also cause yourself to be spread too thin and discourage you from posting consistently. In the end I believe I will go with a single blog on my main website, to help make our website more of an authority in the eyes of google, as well as showing visitors that we are active and updated, while occasionally adding blogposts elsewhere to supplement and support our overall link structure as well as have a say on other platforms people may be browsing on (such as active rain). Thanks for the post.
Hi Andrew – I wonder if you can help me…our website https://www.dodopad.com has been around forever (1997!) and has undergone some changes in that time – most recently when we moved from Acticic shopping cart software to Magento in 2011. Our site has two ‘sides’ to it – static pages and the dynamic pages in Magento. On the home page a widget brings up ‘featured’ Magento products on a random basis – so anyone going to the home page might see a different set of products apearing each time they refresh the page. Around 2011 (maybe a little beforehand) we were advised to register dodopadblog.com and we started a WordPress blog and linked it on our home page. We’ve not posted as regularly s we probably should have but want to change that now. But no-one suggested then that having them separate was an issue. It now clearly is…as evidenced by an analysis that an SEO company conducted for us who are keen for our business. Before I decide on whether to go with them or not it would be really helpful to know if there is a simple way in which I can transfer the blog onto our site. I have access to Adobe Contribute to make edits (simple ones!) but I want to continue to be able to post on the blog via the WordPress platform . Can you help with some advice and what I need to do please? Thank you 🙂
Hi Andrew, thanks for sharing this – am I correct in thinking that a blog can benefit homepage SEO because a) (as you mention) more pages = more authority – presumably it is therefore important that each blog post becomes a separate page in it’s own right and b) the generation of fresh content on the blog is also positively associated with the homepage ?
This for this article however it doesn’t cover the issue I’m dealing with so I hope you can help. In Google Wemaster Tools (Search Console) they list internal links pointing at a site’s pages and according to SEO reports I’ve seen lately you want you most important pages at the top with the most links. One site I’m working on that has an integrated blog has all it’s blog pages at the top but we need the website product pages ranking higher. This seems almost impossible due to the blog providing recent posts and an archive that goes back to 2011 so most of the blog pages have around 350 links each where there are only 68 pages on the main website. Is there a way to reduce the amount of pages the blog points to within the blog?
Hi Andrew, thanks for the initial post and for the continued support for all. I’m just starting out as an architect and would like to expand in to other creative built disciplines with my fine arts background. I believe in the integrated blog/website as a means to be more efficient as well as directing viewers to my architecture or additional interests. Is there an ability to really push this concept to combine all of these media types together. For example, build a more static website that illustrates your work, while containing a blog subfolder page that allows for more active posts that is linked with facebook/instragram, so one can take a picture on their iphone and upload to their blog/facebook/instragram/etc simultaneously in one step? I have a website domain (suprblk.com) and a template chosen through cargocollective, but they don’t offer such integration being explored in this post. What are your thoughts and how would you go about this strategy? Thanks
So I tried to scroll through to make sure that another one of the comments or questions didn’t address this issue and I didn’t see anything… so my problem is I failed to do extensive research before diving into a build-your-own site through sitebuilder.com and it wasn’t until after I was all done building my site that I realize I could not add images within the body of my blog posts. This is a bad situation for somebody in an image driven business such as mine-interior design. I am a startup interior design business and I can’t afford to have a web designer build my page at the current time so I had to do it myself. Though I love the ease of building a site through sitebuilder.com it was very disheartening to find that I couldn’t use any any images within the blog body. I used to have a wordpress blog and I’m strongly considering reinstating that with the other domain name that I own and adding it to my website but I’m not sure how to go about doing that have any advice? Thanks for all your help this is a great blog post!
Great article. Still a difficult choice for me but I’m leaning toward the separate blog to build independent credibility. My main company markets nostalgia shows to senior living facilities to help them regain memories via the music-memory connection. For social media marketing I am going to write a Senior Well Being blog that gives information on memory loss. I intend to add little references every now and then to the Memory Lane Shows to promote the business. What do you think? You can email me if you like.
Thanks!
Hi, thank you for this article! I am in the process of launching an updated website where I have also changed the url to give it a better branding (redirects are set up). I have integrated the blog and website but have kept two different domains for it. The blog trauma-and-ptsd.com and the website rolandbal.com
I am just thinking now, before launching, if this is really such a smart idea and if it might be better to keep everything under rolandbal.com for SEO/google mainly.
(ps. if you put ?wpok behind the sites you can get in). I would really appreciate your comment.
Best
Roland
Hi Andrew, while this blog post is old, the content is just as relevant today. I run a real estate property management website and have loads of content and media I’ve created over many years. Lots of professional photos and videos of daily life kind of things. I’m forced to put these items on a blog because of limitations for media on my website’s theme/template. I’m feeling stuck between using the age and authority of my website (doing a subfolder blog) – or – going with a standalone blog. I can focus on lifestyle content and also provide lots of great info on neighborhoods and districts of town, created on a ‘neutral’ website. I want to give my property management website the credit for the photos and the real estate-related info but want to do it the right way, keeping everything ‘white hat’ and hopefully getting lots of good traffic by focusing on giving people what they want. Any suggestions on what you would do to generate the most return on the time and effort? Thanks!
Found your article useful. I am looking at moving my website due to existing issues and have 2 websites – business and blog. Trying to decide if should go to one website when I move. The blog does get occasional responses today – mostly spam. I am thinking combining both at the new site – would be better and easier for me to keep up with.
I have Three other domains. These domain have the Blog section and have unique articles, keywords pointing to my main website different pages.
is that allowed by google ? can it harm me?
Hi Andrew – Thanks for the informative and helpful article.
I’m working with a client who used to run a Blogger site in addition to their main website. All of their blog posts were on Blogger, and the “News” section of the main website just contained links to the latest articles on the Blogger site. The thought was that the external site with the backlinks to the main website would help boost rankings.
We recently redesigned the main website and know that these days its better to keep the blog posts on the main website. The Blogger site hasn’t been updated since 2012 but there are a lot of good quality posts on there.
I’m wondering if I should import all of the posts (or at least the good ones) onto the new blog and setup redirects from Blogger. And if so:
1. Should that be done all at once, or 1 or 2 a week?
2. Should the original post dates be kept, or should they be treated as new posts?
Thank you.
I found your very informative article while trying to find out if just publishing a blog on WordPress.com gives your blog the domain authority of WordPress. This is what I was told by an internet marketing company that supposedly gives you a few high-value backlinks by creating a blog on WordPress.com and then publishing an article with a link back to your website.
This doesn’t sound right to me! Is this a linking scheme like you mentioned in your article?
I was wondering if I go for the ‘middle ground’ option (having the blog at a separate domain but within the navigation of my main website) will this help boost the SEO of the main website still?
Many thanks for a great post!
Kind regards,
Maisie
Hi Andrew.
Great post and responses to questions! We are considering moving our external blog to become a part of our main website. If we do this (copy all the posts to be on our main website blog and then delete the external blog) will this hurt our main website’s landing page rankings? We have links coming from our external blog, and I know internal links are not as helpful to domain authority as external links, but as you point out, a lot of external links from the same low-authority site isn’t very helpful.
We are wondering if our rankings will drop for a couple months, and then pick back up again from this integration? Or should we just keep our external blog with links pointing to our main site, and then start a brand new blog on our main website?
Thanks for the help.
Your article has hit close to home, and after reading all posts thoroughly I still can’t decide on which is best for my scenario. I live in a fast growing tourist area of Brazil, for which I started a site to do some affiliate marketing. It is still a work in progress… marautour.com that will sell (try to sell) hotel, car rental, air, etc. But the more I am learning, the more I want to create a more exciting brand for travel all over Bahia with a blog. I have the perfect blog name with the .com available.
After noodling through various scenarios, I am coming to the conclusion that the blog and its branding will get more traffic than the main destination website (marautour.com).
Should I:
a) launch the blog right away while the main site is still new, and incorporate the main site as just one of the destination under the blog umbrella (with future destinations to come)?
b) Or b) stick with conventional wisdom and put the blog as a subfolder in the main site for now, buy my “perfect” domain name, and if it is successful I could turn the website “upside down” in the future, putting marau.com along with other locations under the blog.com umbrella using 301 redirects.
c) Totally separate blog that leads to several separate monetizing websites.
My idea is to use the main site (marautour.com) as a template to be replicated in other tourist destinations in Bahia. I hope I made the question clear enough to understand, as I value your opinion!
This article was really helpful to me, and confirms my decision to keep my blog integrated with my web site. I used to have them separate, but for convenience and simplicity, I combined them about 3 years ago. Since then, I’ve been able to build more authority and also build my mailing list because people see my work and also read about what goes into it. I am currently in the process of changing the focus of my work, and the blog is a key component in that. I appreciate your thoughts on the topic.
I have just set up a blog in WordPress and have embedded it into my main company website. Is this a good idea will it help or cause duplicate content issue with the wordpress and the same blog integrated into my site.
Great perspective Andrew. You totally nailed this for me. Our CEO has unending high value content for our niche space (process engineering) and I was wrestling with the decision to launch a blog within our site or create a totally separate site. Your article made it pretty clear that we should have an integrated blog. Thanks again.
Hi Andrew, Thanks for sharing this article, I see it going from 2013 to 2016. I have the same dilemma. I started with blog but have now a site and the blog is integrated in blog.domain but don’t know how should I continue now. It looks like traffic is separate. Would it be better to make a news section in website and write article there? Or is it OK like it is and keep linking the blog with the website. What is best for SEO and traffic for my website? The other concern is that if we continue to put all articles in the website, I might need a huge space later on for the archive, while with blog this is solved. Please let me know your opinion!
Hello!
I’m confused by some of the terminology after reading the above article, questions & answers. By hosting a blog to my website for better SEO, do you mean:
A. Having blog entries hosted directly on my server? Or…
B. Embedding a 3rd party blog, like Blogger or Tumblr to a page on my website?
Which are you suggesting is best?
-Thanks!
Thanks so much for this post, it really assisted me in developing my son’s website and blog… we have decided to integrate his blog and website as one. Thanks again!
Thanks for the informative and helpful article.
All of their blog posts were on Blogger, and the “News” section of the main website just contained links to the latest articles on the Blogger site. The thought was that the external site with the backlinks to the main website would help boost rankings.
Hi Andrew 🙂
Very well written article.
I did scan all the comments but didn’t see my Q,
but apologies if I missed it*
I’m looking at having blog, marketing and courses on my site.
I’m wondering if I can keep seo goodness while upping performance and clarity and simplicity of function by using one primary domain with functional subdomains with one wordpress host for each?
e.g. blog.mysite.com and courses.mysite.com and mktg.mysite.com
Greatly appreciate your insights and many thanks for sharing!
~ James
* Note: comment for this don’t appear to be in chronological order
I always had this confusion. Both are having its advantages. But these days people don’t type url and they only remember short names. i have hardly seen anyone typing xyz.blog.com which is hosted on another site. We have to promote both things together. It takes more time so I’m in the favor of having a blog in our own website. And I’m still searching for this option to create my own blog through coding.Currently i have made my blog and linked to my website which i don’t think is benefiting me.
Hi,
well, we are now at the stage where we wish our blog was under our main url. and in the transfer, we have been informed that we will lose all our social likes and shares.
is there a way to transfer:
http://www.blog.xyz.com/blog TO http://www.xyz.com/blog
AND transfer all the history of social FB, LI, TW… shares and likes?
Thanks
Hi Andrew,
Great article and very helpful. I have a question regarding blog integration: What are the benefits of using something like WordPress, integrated into your existing website theme, over using a blog section within the website’s template?
People keep telling me to use WordPress but I am struggling to see the benefits (even if it is integrated) when the website template has a blog section that can be updated whenever I want to.
Many thanks
Ben
Hi Andrew
This is all new to me…
My company has its own WordPress website, I want to create a blog that i can share links to our Facebook page and our website.
Is this all possible? and if so, could you give me any advice on how to create this blog in such a way that it is integrated with the website (like yours)?
Im wanting to make $ blogging by selling packages and such on my website and have youtube videos embedded in the blog on the same topic. Do you think i should have my blog as part of my website and have the youtube videos embedded? Thanks!
Hi , I have started my website recently . I am confused whether i should keep the blog section on the personal website or to buy a different domain name for the blog . I am a budding digital marketer and the blog will be around that itself. What will be the best option ?
Thanks for the very comprehensive article. I am doing the same thing right now. I have an artwork portfolio site which I branded based on my art style (line art). I call my site Lines of Lila. I have a blog integrated into it for the sole purpose of driving traffic and updating on my latest works. but at some point I realized that some of my blog entries were becoming too personal and running away from the key philosophy or concept of the brand. And I want to use it only to exclusively show off my paintings, talk about the art process, just concentrate on my painting style, and probably attract collaborators of the same art form. But I realized I also wanted to talk about other topics on art and share some news and my discoveries from the art world (including my personal art journey and philosophies) that may not be completely related to my art concept. So, I decided to create a separate blog using my name as the domain for personal branding purposes (and also to somewhat monetize it, which is something I do not want to do on my portfolio site). Also, through this separation, I can focus more on updating the creative process and updates on new artworks on my portfolio website’s blog (I changed its name to Insight, instead of blog), while at the same time driving traffic to it. I hope I made the right decision. By the way, I linked both sites on each, so it’s not really an integration.
Great article! I am still undecided which camp I should join (integrated vs separate) for my particular situation. Perhaps you can help.
My husband and I own a martial arts academy. Our business website is very simple. Home page, schedule & tuition rates, class descriptions, meet the instructors, contact us, etc.
Recently we have been discussing starting a Jiu Jitsu blog to create a stronger online presence and generate more revenue through content marketing, advertising, product sales (generic martial arts related products, not anything specific to our business brand), etc.
We have no intention of selling or leaving the company or the blog. I have a slight inclination towards separate domains due to different levels of geographical relevancy. What I mean by this is that the academy website is relevant only to people who live close by, whereas the blog should be relevant and accessible to anyone anywhere in the world that is interested in Jiu Jitsu.
Of course I would love to reap the added SEO benefits of the integrated approach, but I’m afraid that tying the blog (Internet scope) to our academy site (local scope) would somehow inhibit its potential or outreach.
Do you have any advice? Thank you so much in advance!
Hi Andrew, Great article, it’s interesting to see so many people contemplating about that significant dilemma. although I saw similar questions along the comments, my situation is still a little different. I have a portal that is basically all around cloud computing. there are articles made by me my partner and some of the portal members regarding professional and non professional experiences in the field, as well as a forum that anyone can ask a question related to cloud computing. Currently we offer our services in a designated “services” rubric in the portal site, but the majority of the site content and hyperlinks are still community oriented. We decided recently to open a new website to represent our consulting services, under a brand name the differs from the name of the portal, and with a more professional design. We can’t integrate both because it will drastically change the current essence of the portal and we might lose popularity accordingly (that’s our concern anyway). The question is whether we should redirect traffic to our new consulting site claiming this is our firm, or shall we just advertise it as a distinct business entity in the portal site? Currently the site publishes other advertisements, and our top priority is to still look like unbiased counselors in the field (not committed to work with a specific vendor) while promoting our consulting as the primary business.
Kind regards
Thank you so much for such a detailed, organized, well-thought out and well-written article! Those seem quite rare these days, with so many amateurs posing as experts on the internet! As an experienced writer and website designer, I especially appreciate this article and the information is definitely helping me to make an informed decision on how to work with my own blog and website.
I do have one question, if you don’t mind. I didn’t quite understand the meaning of this:
“This approach provides most of the visitor benefits described above — They can easily find your blog and get to know your company better. The tradeoff is that you lose all the potential benefits of having a truly separated blog other than the ability to easily detach it from the company website later.”
I wonder if you could spell it out for me or perhaps give me an example?
Thanks!
Claire Amber
Hello,
I work for an IT Software and services company. We currently have our blog hosted on our own website. However, the website itself generates only 20-30 hits per day, and only a few blog hits per week.
We want to position ourselves as thought leaders in the industry (and we are, actually). I want to drive more traffic through our blogs. Is there some way to drive more traffic through our blogs? I have never used any blogging sites, but are there any popular ones that can drive traffic by pinning popular blogs or paying to promote our blogs in the homepage?
Thanks!
Hi Andrew, Thank you for sharing and helping others do their best! I’m a newbie and have just create by website on Wix that also has a blog tab. I really like my web domain name “MyCity”LuxuryHomes but I wanted something more catchy and interesting for the blog that I felt people could remember and had relevance to the community. I bought the domain IfYoureLuckyYouLiveIn”MyCity” which happens to be part of a saying in town. Something everyone knows. Yes, I did check to see if it was trademarked and it isn’t. Should I be using WordPress and integrating it with “MyCity”LuxuryHomes? Does it make sense to use IfYoureLuckyYouLiveIn”MyCity” or is it too long? I do have the branding fYoureLuckyYouLiveIn”MyCity” elsewhere on other pages in my website. Just seeking help to understand some basics (wordpress, subdomain vs tab etc.) on blogging and further understanding of the pro and cons of my options. Thanks in advance for your feedback.
Signed, Confused
This is super helpful thank you, I am pretty new to blogging as part of my website so good to have posters and to know Im on the right track!
Thank you for sharing this…it is really really helpful article.
HI andrew.
I know that you wrote this article a long time ago, but I still wanted to reach out as my head is spinning on this dilemma. I am currently developing an afterlife product , i want to create a blog but didn’t want to create content around death or over spiritual so my blog is going to concentrate on old age – Tips and tricks, feel good stories, all things positive. My question is when it comes to integration how does that work with the product and the blog? can you have a product website and feature a blog that concentrates on subjects leading up to death. I would love you get your thoughts as I stuck. This is such a sensitive subject that I don’t want to come across incentive or disrespectful.
Would appreciate your feedback.
THanks chantalx
nice article with useful information thank you
This was very helpful to me as I am not fond of blogs but realize it is the way we are headed. So my concern was how i should put a blog on my site , whether it be subdomain or sub folder. I did not know that a subdomain was not considered part of main site and its own entity so that was very important to me. Much appreciated thanks.
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for this article, it made me think twice about having a separate blog, however, I am still confused! I am in the jewellery industry and I want to start a blog in order to gain some credibility as a private jeweller and discuss trends/changes and help clients understand the purchasing process better. My company brand will be focusing on selling daily wear jewellery purely online – so it is a slightly different market and potentially different customer base. I am wondering whether I should merge the two or keep them separate. Initially, I did want to keep them separate, but then I was thinking of creating one brand whereby I can offer the private jeweller experience as well as sell ready made products, and this way I wouldn’t be launching two websites/social accs at the same time. What is your opinion? Thanks!
Came looking for benefits about the keeping the blog on myain house moving company website or it should be separate. So now I know that keeping them together will be great for my Expert Movers 🤗
Andrew,
I am in a bit of a pickle. I helped start a company that I do not own. I reap a percentage of the profits and an hourly rate when i work. This is a part time job that will hopefully turn full time when the customers come pouring in. When we started, my partner built our website (amateur builder). We are finding that our rank on google is not where it should be by far. So we decided to hire a professional website builder. The template i choose has a blog tab on it, so after talking to the website builder, i decided we needed to start a blog. I am the ONLY one that is going to be blogging (meaning my partners will not be blogging). I have told my partners that if i am going to do this for the companies SEO purposes, that if they were to let me go, or i leave, or the company goes belly up, that the blog would stay with me (in writing). So if i have that in writing, is it safe to put my full blog on the company website? How do i get my blog back if something were to happen? Should i have my own domain name or should it just “live” on the company website? I am at a stand still here.
Hi Andrew.
This article is so well written and provided so much info. thank you! 🙂
Question I had was, say in case, I create a blog page on my website http://www.rajatshanbhag.com. is it possible in future, if I want to delete me website or some other criteria it needs to be closed down, can I transfer the blog page to WordPress.com ?
I understand the importance of integrating and how it will help the website in terms of google finding it. but I am also concerned about blog’s longetivity in case something happens to the website. any thoughts on this ?
that’s why I am stuck and confused between having a WordPress.com blog and just creating a link to it on the website menu, and/or integrating blog by creating a blog page on website .com/blog
thanks in advance 🙂
Andrew: Thanks for the insight. I have a slightly different question. I have a website and a separate blog on blogger.com. I was feeding my blog articles to my website before, but was told that duplicate articles would hurt their credibility (as far as Google as concerned). Hence, I stopped the feed. What do you think? If I am not ready to integrate my blog into my website, should I continue the feed to my website? Thanks!
Hello Andrew,
First of all my respects for you to have been answering everybody’s questions for the last 7 years… I hope you still have energy for one more 🙂
My situation is a bit complicated:
On one side I started an Instagram Blog where I speak about a product I am developing as a data scientist. At the same time, I am showing pictures of my home setup. The idea is to slowly transfer all my followers to a personal blog I am about to create http://www.albertblog.com. In the blog, I am using many affiliation links from my setup elements and courses I am offering. Everything is really personal.
On the other side, the product I am creating and speaking about on Instagram needs to be connected to a company. So I got a new domain http://www.albertcomany.com In this website the product, other products and services as a data scientist are offered. Here there will also be a blog but related to data science.
As you can see everything is a big mixed up and present doubts:
1- I am not sure if having two websites is good or I focus on just one. I could not present things like my setup or personal believes in a company website though.
2- If I have both websites separated, I am not sure how to present myself to people. As Albert the data scientist from instagram and personal blgo, or as Albert the owner of the company that offers the product also from Instagram.
I think I went a bit out of topic but I believe it is still pretty related.
Thank you very much for your help,
Albert
Hi, This is an informative article. Thanks for sharing your experience & knowledge.
If you thought a link from your blog to your website would help search engine rankings for your website, think again. Yes, links are very important to SEO — but combining forces into one website is much more powerful. A single link from your blog isn’t nearly as valuable as all the links your blog will get from other sites over time. By having the blog and the website on one domain, all your links will benefit the same website.