Separate blog url helpful?

[lwilkins]

I am managing a website for a hotel brokerage firm. The main URL is www.hotelassetsgroup.com but we started a new blog with the URL www.hotelsforsaleblog.com.  We chose the blog URL because it has the words "hotels for sale." The main website has a tab at the top titled "Blog" which links to the blog URL.

I am not sure if this is helping us or not because the main URL and blog URL are both competing for the name of the business "Hotel Assets Group." The blog has very little interlinking within the same URL because it mainly links to the main website. Should we combine the two URLs together and just have the blog URL be the same like- hotelassetsgroup.com/blog or something like that?

[AlanMosley]

I would agree with you. You have to ask yourself why do we have a blog. i find many people have one but dont know how or if it is helping them. Why have one on a different domain? To give links to your main site? Then why reciprocal link back to it? If your blog can attract a handfull of links under the same domain, it would out-weigh any links from your own blog on a seperate domain. (hope that makes sense)

I think having the blog in a subfolder or subdomain is the best use, you stand to gain links and traffic and you can use these pages to funnel PR to your home and landing pages, see link
http://thatsit.com.au/seo/tutorials/a-simple-explanation-of-pagerank

[kbloemendaal]

This is a tricky space Leslie.

I went through something similar with a fence contractor and we ended up with a bunch of worthless sites with exact match domains for various towns around the area.

In my case I found it easier to carry the authority of the existing site to rank for new keywords on a "blog" in a subdirectory rather than a new site.

Also, looking briefly at your sites, it looks like you are linking back and forth anyway so one doesn't really help the other. Because those links under "Latest News" flow through a feed proxy, they aren't really adding any SEO value to your blog as well (I could be wrong here, but I think there is a way to change the way those links show from a feed).

I guess if it were me, I would install the blog on the main URL. Seems like the whole site could work towards the same goals then....

Hope this helps, I look forward to seeing other responses.

[jeffreytrull1]

I agree with Alan. Ideally the blog is on the same domain at a location like you suggested (hotelassetsgroup.com/blog). Having an a domain with the keywords are targeting is often helpful, but it's not the end all, be all for ranking for that or other key terms.

Check out this other thread, which is along the same lines: http://www.seomoz.org/q/which-is-better-for-linkbuilding-internal-or-external-blog

[Syed1]

In the long run, having a blog on your main domain is going to outweigh the benefits of having a separate one.

Google is looking for stronger brand signals and pooling all your great content and resources under one roof will play a key factor in SEO.  If you have a blog on a separate domain and if you generate tons of links via social media.. all that "juice" is not being sort of 'transferred' to your main website, which I am assuming is the money maker.

Furthermore, Google is giving much less importance to 'keywords' in a domain. You can assume that keyword in domains is going to decrease in weight as a rank factor even more, as they can be 'gamed' easily so I wouldn't worry too much about that.

Having a separate domain could make more sense for big brands especially if SEO is not of great importance.

[lwilkins]

Thank you guys for your help. I am going to need to chew on this information and figure it out. Thanks!

[lwilkins]

Your answer was good as well. I can only choose three users to have a Good Answer status. Thank you for your help!

[lwilkins]

Hi Keith, Thank you for actually looking up the websites I was talking about. I think I am going to place the blog on the main url. Thank you!