Transfer existing blog to wordpress.org or start a new blog

[GardenBeet]

My blog  sits on the wordpress domain http://gardenbeet.wordpress.com/ - it has good page rank and has around 300-400 visits per day  - should i move it to my website or Should I start a new blog?

i have a page set up for it on my website but it now has good rank http://www.gardenbeet.com/content/design-blog.html - and now want to keep this URL

am a bit confused - what is the best strategy in terms of SEO?

[AdamThompson]

If I were you, I would move the blog to my own domain and 301-redirect the wordpress.com urls to my new domain (if that is possible!)

[GardenBeet]

hi thanks for your response but can you explain why you would do this?

[Marcus_Miller]

Hey Felicity

In an ideal world, you would have the blog on your main site and then when you win links to the blog they link popularity is being passed into the main site instead of the gardenbeet.wordpress.com domain.

That said, the gardenbeet.wordpress.com blog is well indexed and can be used to build links to your main site so it's not a total disaster to keep it separate and it may allow you to get better index saturation by ranking pages from both sites for your targeted terms.

If it was me, I would move the blog to my own host and manage just the one site and ensure that it is correctly redirected (301 as suggested below) so that you maintain any traffic and best transfer any search rankings.

There is a some details covering the technical aspects of moving your blog here:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/moving-a-blog/

Additionally, Wordpress offer a guided transfer system where they will move your blog to your new host, set it all up, configure any plugins and then support you on the new host for 2 weeks to overcome any initial problems. As a business owner, I would imagine you are pretty busy so as a business owner and SEO I can't recommend this service enough to make sure  everything is done right and without a major impact on your time.

More details on guided transfers here:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/guided-transfer/

Additionally, the people that will move your blog are called Happiness Engineers and for some daft reason that makes me want to use the service even more.

Hope it helps!
Marcus

[GardenBeet]

hey thanks Marcus - well OK it will be moved - but not by a happiness engineer as my server does not sit at one of their preferred locations - never mind - unhappiness here I come

[ThomasHgenhaven]

Wait a minute. Wordpress offers to redirect your blog. You just have to pay them 100 dollars for the effort: http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/offsite-redirect/

[GardenBeet]

If I transfer my blog to my website will that mean all my link juice for my main website will be given to all the links i have on my blog.I link to heaps of people from my blog

Also many of my links from my blog point to domains that point to my main website -

given this info would you still advise to move my blog from wordpress to my own domain?