Wordpress Blogs and SEO

[greenhornet77]

So far we have been creating separate blogs on wordpress.com for our sites, and writing there. Today I was told that there was better SEO hosting the blog on the actual domain.

i.e.   www.widgets.com/blog instead of widget.wordpress.com

Is this true? Oddly I have had my WP beat my own URL on one account. So I am not sure if this is valid.

Can someone tell me pros and cons of both?

Thanks!

[CaseyKluver]

There can be pro's and con's for both instances. The biggest pro you can get with a blog hosted on your domain rather than a WordPress.com blog is a cohesive brand image. I would never want my blog readers to leave my main website to read a blog on another domain, most likely they wont come back to your main website.

As far as your WP.com hosted blog beating your main URL in the SERP's, WordPress.com has a very high domain authority that can pass through to your blog and help it out a bit. You can think of that as a pro, but I see it as a con if your blog is outranking your main website.

[David_ODonnell]

I would lean towards having a blog as part of your site. That way you ware always building up one sites content and links. If you have a blog on a separate domain you are effectively splitting the benefits you could be receiving and increasing the amount of work/effort required to improve/rank two sites instead of one.

[WinningInch]

Hello,

The answers you have so far are all good.  wp.com is a great resource but it is not great for building your brand.  I use it mainly for industry leadership purposes i.e. big picture stuff so that visitor are interested in finding out more by visiting the main website..  However, no links in content..  leave that to your profile.