Having your blog on an external domain, is this ok?

[isle_surf]

We have our website / ecomm cart with network solutions and they do not allow you to have a internal blog like www.islesurfboards.com/blog . So the only solution is to have the blog on a external domain www.islesurfboardsblog.com which we set up. Is this ok for seo purposes or are we gonna miss out on alot by doing this. Any help?

[EvolveCreative]

Some people swear by setting up the blog on a separate domain to give it its own identity, but any SEO would likely say to have it on your own domain.

One of the reasons you create content is to attract links to your site so you can rank higher for your 'money' keywords - ex. 'buy isle surf boards'. If the content is being created on a different domain, those links will point to the other domain and not your site.

The best solution is www.islesurfboards.com/blog

The second best solution is blog.islesurfboards.com

The separate domain strategy does have merit, but only for brands who are willing to invest SIGNIFICANT (100k +) cash into the blog.

[isle_surf]

ok, so since my cart doesnt allow me to create a blog on the domain and i have started a new one on www.islesurfboardsblog.com then what should i do? move to a new ecomm cart that allows a blog on the domain and migrate over all the content? Am i just wasting my time with the new blog i started in terms of getting any SEO from it to my site since its at www.islesurfboardsblog.com

[EvolveCreative]

"move to a new ecomm cart that allows a blog on the domain and migrate over all the content?"

I would do that. Put the content from www.islesurfboardsblog.com on your primary domain www.islesurfboards.com. Make sure to do a 301 redirect on a page-by-page level from www.islesurfboardsblog.com to www.islesurfboards.com once the content has been moved. Don't just do a blanket 301 to the homepage of www.islesurfboards.com.

Watch this video on how to do the 301 redirect correctly:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1lVPrYoBkA