Blogging to add SEO value to site... recommendations

[rosstaylor]

Hi Mozzers!

A client has a high authority website in the travel industry, and needs any and all advantages to get ahead in very competitive keywords.

The send out a newsletter bimonthly, but have no blog, so I recommended at the very least, they publish online their emailed newsletters to add informational and relevant content.

The question is, for max SEO value, should they...

create a blog as a subdomain or subfolder of their existing site?

should they self host a blog with a separate domain?

or should they simply use a blogger/wordpress.com free blog?

Consider that just adding on a blog to their existing site isn't easy. It's some old CMS that's apparently a nightmare to deal with. Plus, branding a WP install to match the site isn't something they want to spend a lot of time on.

Your insight is welcome and appreciated!

[PedroM]

In my opinion I think you should do this:

• Creat a Blog in the subfolder in the main domain and add content from all the newsletters (Use SEOmoz On-Page to optimize those pages);
• Creat a free blog in Blogger with content associated to Travels and put some links to your high authority website;
• Search for blogs in the Internet about travellings and comment the news that are associated with your website.

Im very recent on the SEO industry so Im curious to see more coments and sugesttions :))

Regards,

Pedro M Pereira

[Daylan]

Hey Ross,

As Pedro says, keep the blog on the same domain (in a subfolder). Sub-domains are treated as separate websites as far as search engines treat them so probably wont be as good for the sites SEO kudos.

It's easy enough to add a blog to a domain but not have is within the same CMS. (An apache rule can handle this easily)

Best bet to get traffic through to the blog is to utilise the newsletter traffic; send views from the newsletter whenever possible to articles within the blog content. EG: Blurb about content in the newsletter but to read the article, click thorugh to the blog post. This way the newsletter doesn't contain all the key wood and info richness. It raises awareness of the blog to newsletter recipients and ensures traffic initially while the blog finds its feet.

As for the blogger/wordpress.com i'd lean towards not going down that path so much. Not haing the content on your domain doesnt give you all the link juice/keyword kudos. Linking from the site to yours (and vice versa) might help a bit, but not as much as having the content under your domain. If you set up both, then you've got both a maintenance and a duplicate content issue.

Share the blog posts socially (if viable).

Hope that helps a little. Good luck.

[rosstaylor]

Thanks for the feedback.