Internal or external blog for a company?

Cybertronic · 8 Dec 2009 at 11:17

The company I work for has an inactive WordPress blog hosted on its subdomain and BlogSpot blog which has been active for the past year.

What is the best option to go with in regards to SEO and traffic?

RandomTom · 8 Dec 2009 at 15:00

I'd suggest routing all traffic internally using one of the blog tools they're already using, and setting it out like:

http://blog.companyname.com or http://www.companyname.com/blog

For SEO, I'd argue it be better internal, but it's a judgement call, if you're a professional company, an external one to me would have the perception that they weren't able to manage the workings of an internally linked blog.

Cybertronic · 14 Dec 2009 at 00:10

Thanks for your reply

The reason I'm asking is because the previous workers for the company I'm working for believed that having an external blog was better for SEO and traffic although their specific reasons which I've forgotten what they were, left me confused :confused:

I countered these strange reasons with my own thoughts which were exactly the same as yours Tom and I just wanted some reassurance from others

suarve · 14 Dec 2009 at 01:42

Personally I'd do like tom said - think it's a lot neater. Don't think it would look overly professional if your company blog took you to a google blogspot blog.

From a SEO perspective, I guess an external blog would be hosted on a seperate serve/host to your company website - as far as I iknow links from different IPs to your own carry more weight (could be wring on this, just going off a few articles I've recently read)

Cybertronic · 20 Dec 2009 at 17:44

Thanks for your reply, it seems the company has decided to go with the internal one and will be shutting down the external one soon

akakjs · 20 Dec 2009 at 22:31

At work we've asked this question to 3/4 SEO consultants at one point or another. No clear consensus emerged, some said blog.domain.com some said www.domain.com/blog. Basically I don't think it matters

akakjs

suarve · 20 Dec 2009 at 23:05

akakjs said:
At work we've asked this question to 3/4 SEO consultants at one point or another. No clear consensus emerged, some said blog.domain.com some said www.domain.com/blog. Basically I don't think it matters

akakjs

I think the op meant company.com/blog as opposed to blogger.com/company

unwashed potato! · 21 Dec 2009 at 10:19

sorry just to confirm, internal blogs means putting something like wordpress on your own website, and external means using blogname.wordpress.com or something like that?

i've been reading a bit about using either sub domain or sub folder and it seems there are benefits for both. using a sub domain in the past meant you could have 2 seperate google listings for one search, but google have changed and only do this for the bigger companies, e.g. ocuk probably will still keep forums.ocuk and ocuk.co.uk as a seperate site in googles eyes.

i went with sub folder for my first blog as supossbly the "link juice" that you get from a sub folder will roll up better to the main domain's page rank. imo it's also easier to us sub folder for more areas, e.g. shop and forum, as the usercould easily change the url at the end, but it's hard to change the beginning or the url

Cybertronic · 21 Dec 2009 at 18:41

Mammalian said:
sorry just to confirm, internal blogs means putting something like wordpress on your own website, and external means using blogname.wordpress.com or something like that?

That's correct and thanks to everyone else who replied!

At the moment, it seems most companies are favouring the subdomain approach rather than the subfolder approach and the URL seems cleaner too

ArmyofHarmony · 23 Dec 2009 at 13:46

I definitely recommend company.com/blog

By placing it on a subdomain (blog.company.com) any links you attract to the blog will not really benefit the rest of the website.

On the other hand, it means you will probably block off another slot in the search results for your company name, as different subdomains count as different domains in the search results pages and you are only allowed 2 results from one domain to show.

unwashed potato! · 24 Dec 2009 at 00:31

ArmyofHarmony said:
On the other hand, it means you will probably block off another slot in the search results for your company name, as different subdomains count as different domains in the search results pages and you are only allowed 2 results from one domain to show.

iirc google are changing this so people can't do this anymore