How do we build rank on a domain with an offsite blog?

[J-Me]

We have a site (domain y) that we'd like to integrate a blog into but our team doesn't have the bandwidth to do this. So, we've been exploring the option of building the blog in WP and hosting on a separate domain (domain x) and redirecting from domain y to it. My concern is how this affects or undermines rank value on domain y (effectively all the value from the blog resides on the blog domain x).

How might we go about integrating an offsite blog into the core domain while maintaining search value? Is there a way? Thanks!

[ThriveIdeas]

Jamie -

Best practice would be to create a sub-directory (yoursite.com/blog/) if you can. Otherwise, create a sub-domain (blog.yourdomain.com).

You could use a reverse proxy to add the WordPress blog to a sub-directory. Here are some step-by-step instructions. This method may not solve your issue of team bandwidth.

You could create a sub-domain on domain y and then add an A record in the domain x DNS settings which points the IP address of domain y. Example instructions from GoDaddy

[J-Me]

Thank you. And what is the impact for SEO and rank building? Does Search Engines recognize the external blog as part of the core domain?

[Tom-Anthony]

If you configure the reverse proxy (and redirect traffic going direct to the true hosting [x domain] to the sub-folder on the [y domain]) then it will absolutely be counted as part of the main domain as if it was really just in the sub-folder.

[StephanSolomonidis]

Hi Jamie,

For the reverse proxy method, the search engine will perceive that the blog is on the main domain (domain y). As far as any user or Googlebot is concerned, the blog is on domain y in a subfolder – they never see domain x. If you do this, your main challenges will be:

• Making sure that domain x can't be accessed directly (otherwise, your entire blog will exist in two places). They should only be able to access the blog by visiting the correct subfolder on domain y. Domain x can be configured to only accept connections directly from domain y.
• Making sure to configure the proxy correctly. They can be tricky, and may take up some of your team's time.
• Making sure everything remains fast. Although Googlebot has nothing against proxies, if the inclusion of the proxy introduces a big delay to the page load time, that's going to have a negative impact.