It’s one of life’s greatest mysteries (well almost) “where should I put my blog?”
Basically, there are three options (this assumes your blog is supporting your site, not a stand-alone blog, like this one:)
- In a subfolder (www.yoursite.com/blog)
- As a subdomain (blog.yoursite.com)
- On a separate site (www.somewhereelse.com)
While there are advantages and disadvantages to each, and the advantages of one are usually the disadvantages of the others, one of them clearly wins – the subfolder.
Let’s discuss each so you understand the rationale:
1. In a subfolder (www.yoursite.com/blog)
Advantages:
- Links to the blog “count” as links to your site. Since building links is a major task, why do it more than once?
- Traffic to your blog “counts” towards your site for traffic measurement rankings (and advertising calculations)
- It’s a logical place to put it, people who guess may just get it right
- Domain names are easier to communicate (don’t have to explain the different addresses for your blog versus your site)
Disadvantages:
- Harder to split off the blog if traffic overwhelms the servers
- Links from the blog to the site are counted as “internal” links by the server, making them less valuable than if they were “external” links if one of the other two options was selected
2. As a subdomain (blog.yoursite.com)
Advantages:
- Links to your site from your blog are counted as external links by some search engines
- Easier server management, as the blog can be isolated to its own server in high-traffic situations
Disadvantages:
- Subdomains are counted as totally separate domains by most search engines, meaning that any links to your blog posts don’t count towards your site as a whole, hurting your overall search engine rankings
- People naturally (stupidly) want to put www. in front of everything. Unless your server experts perform voodoo, www.blog.yoursite.com won’t generally work
3. On a separate site (www.somewhereelse.com)
Advantages:
- Links to your site from your blog are counted as external links by some search engines
- Easier server management, as the blog can be isolated to its own server in high-traffic situations
- Opinions on the separate site can be more easily isolated from your main site, giving more freedom of discussing more topics (industry trends, etc.)
Disadvantages
- Links to your blog don’t count towards your site total
- Customer confusion – where is your blog and why does it have a separate URL?
Given the advantages and disadvantages cited above, why do I say that subfolders are the obvious winner? Simple, links.
Probably the hardest part of building online traffic is building incoming links. They’re vital for search engine rankings, and unless you plan to buy traffic to your site forever, you need to maximize every opportunity to gain incoming links.
Purposely creating a situation where the value of your links is reduced is illogical at best, stupid at worst.
Which reminds me of the chant that I hear my friend Ed Dale repeating over and over “Get more links”
Not a bad mantra, try meditating to that sometime!
The next time you hear someone ask where should we put our blog, tell them the answer’s simple – chant “get more links,” then put it on a subfolder!
Agree, disagree? Make your argument by commenting below.
I’m glad to see someone write about this topic. Clients ask about this frequently. For the average small business, adding a blog as a sub-folder is the best bet.
You have a great point about the subfolder way to generate more links. Another great advantage I want to point out is that if your website does not generate lots of new content regularly, than a blog is a great way to create new content. So by putting it in to a subfolder, the search engines recognize that your main website is generating new content more regularly which helps with rankings.
Easy to Navigate Website, just incase your intrested I apply Acronis to backup my system.
I have a question I can’t find an answer for. Ok first of all I have successfully created subdomain and it looks everything is working ok, ex. the name is subdomain.maindomain.com but when I enter maindomain.com/subdomain it also appear in the search result. I’m confused because the second variant should refer to a subdirectories. Any hint?
Here is the sub domain I’m talking about
http://www.download.allacronis.com
My guess is that someone has set up a redirect that makes it work for you.
Don
Very helpful post. I am planning to create an app for the iPhone and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go with subdomain or a subfolder. In the end, I think I’ll go with a subfolder, so that traffic will toward it as a whole, which is important for traffic.
How about putting your posts on you main domain..include your posts in the widget area?
Have you ever considered adding more videos to your blog posts to keep the visitors even more interested? What i’m saying is I just went through the entire posting of yours and it absolutely was really fantastic but since I’m much more of a visual learner, I found that way to be more helpful. well, let me know what you feel.
This is a great article. I still don’t have a blog even though I know I should. This article helps me on my first step.