Category: Blogs

Posted on

Blogging-Off Domain Does It Work? Part II

If your blog cannot be built on-domain what should you do? There are some situations where you just cannot build an on-domain blog. Some situations may be where you are using a template driven website and you really do not have your own server space and so cannot install WordPress, you have an e-commerce site and just cannot include the technology to run a blog on the server, or you are hosted on a Windows server and cannot install PHP which is needed for WordPress.

If you have any of these scenarios, isn’t off-domain blogging still good for you? I used to say yes, but let’s look at a case study done recently for a real estate firm.

This client could not install an on-domain blog as their website was a template driven website and they did not have “real” server space. We set up a GoDaddy.com domain and hosting to house their off-domain WordPress blog. We blogged for almost six month using keyword dense phrases. At the end of the study period, we evaluated. Did the off-domain blog bump up the parent domain due to one way inbound links and keyword dense blog posts pointing to their parent domain?

What we found was that the strategy of off-site blogging was not workable. The parent domain got no “SEO juice” from our blogging efforts. Not only did organic placement not improve, but the off-domain blog itself was not showing for the keywords we were using either.

You can run some searches yourself on this website yourself to see that we started out no where and ended up no where. The parent domain is www.MarcoIslandLuxuryEstates.com and the blogsite is www.Marco-Island-Luxury-Estates.com. If you look, you will see that the blog domain is not in the top 100 results. The parent website has been slowly moving up in the SERPs but when analysis is done on links to the parent domain, Google is not recording the links from the blog as a factor.

The key take away from this post is that unless you heavily promote and create a link strategy for your off-domain blog to build it up in Google, the site has no “authority” on Google and the other search engines and so one way inbound links from the off-domain blog to the parent website mean nothing to Google in regards to organic placement.

If you are going to invest time and money to promote, create links and push placement for an off-domain blog in order to help the parent domain, wouldn’t the investment and time be much better spent on the parent domain instead?

Make sure to read my recommendations on Friday on what you should do instead of having an off-domain blog.

Posted on

Blogging Off-Domain Does It Work for SEO?

I used to feel that blogging anywhere was great, just get blogging. Now I have to say I really feel that blogging under your own domain name is the only workable SEO strategy.

First, let me explain a few things. When I say blogging off-domain I mean that your blog posts reside at Blogspot.com, WordPress.com or at a domain name you have set up separate from your website parent domain. The key is that the actual files that are your blog posts reside some where other than your real website.

Second, blogging on-domain means that you have WordPress installed in a directory that is part of your own website. The URL for your blog would be something like www.mydomain.com/blog. Here the actual files that are your blog posts are spiderable by search engine robots under your parent domain.

It is important to understand that subdirectory blog sites typically are not hosted at the parent domain, but are set up to look like they are, but the files do not typically reside at the parent domain. Blogspot allows you to do this with a bit of massaging of your domain name records. If your blog URL looks like this: blog.yourdomain.com most likely your website files do not reside at your parent location.

So, why is on-site domain blogging so important? There are a few reasons why you should only consider blogging on-domain.

  • You get search engine capital for blogging on-domain. That means each blog post is considered by search engines as if they were new pages in your parent domain.
  • Search engine spiders will index the blog posts that are created in on-domain blogging.
  • You will build “web authority” and create keyword density on your topic for your parent domain when you blog on-domain for your parent domain.
  • Links to your on-domain blog will help your parent domain place better on search engines and therefore help you place organically.

Don’t be confused if you have an off-domain blog and programmatically send the content in an iframe or with JavaScript to your parent domain pages, you do not get the search engine capital for your parent domain that you do with on-domain blogging.

Equally, if you have an off-domain blog and point to it in the navigation in your parent website, you get no search engine capital from it for your parent domain. You may get traffic, but not SEO juice.

Make sure to read Wednesday’s and Friday’s posts this week as I discuss more about on- and off-domain blogging and share with you a case study I have done for a company recently that illustrates these issues.

Posted on

WordPress Websites

I have been toying with doing WordPress websites and so have done quite a bit of research on the topic this past week. What I have found is that I do not want to “re-invent the wheel” by creating my own as there are some really great ones out there now. But what I did find was an excellent WordPress website theme that is perfect for my customers.

I highly recommend the Small Biz WordPress website theme. We find that this template has built in resources that help you place on local keywords, have search engine optimization features built in and is very easy to use even for the novice. If you buy from our link we will be paid a small commission, but that is not the reason for our recommendation.

We like this WordPress template for several reasons.

  • It is very easy to use and configure for your own personal needs.
  • There are numerous videos that illustrate how to customize your WordPress site even how to add videos.
  • Built on the back bone of WordPress this website allows you the site owner to add and change content at will with an online control panel.
  • The application files are easy to find and not buried in code that is hard to find.
  • It is one of the most user-friendly WordPress websites I have found to date.

I highly recommend this WordPress theme to you. If you decide to use it, we can install and configure it for you or just install it for you. The theme is not expensive and is available for $117 plus our hourly charge for installation. You will need to install it on a hosting plan that has PHP and MySQL. We like the Hostway Starter Plan for $168 per year as a very cost efficient resource for hosting for WordPress. Take a look at the Small Biz theme now and see what you think.

I think that you will agree that hands down it is one of the easiest yet robust themes that can be used for a website.

Posted on

New Ghost Blogging Clients to Check Out

We’ve been busy selling and setting up new blogs. We would like to share a few of our newest ghost blogging customers with you so you can check out the writing.

Perfectory Web Design
This Canadian web design firm makes the most beautiful website templates I have ever seen and the prices are good too. We are blogging for her site on topics of interest to small business owners or web designers who would be buying her templates. Each Friday we feature one item from her assortment and on Monday and Wednesday provide great business and marketing tips. Visit the blog now.

Homes Buy Day
We’ve blogged for literally years for this client who then took a several month break while he was building a new WordPress based website and now we’re back blogging. His blog is chock full of interesting articles on Maryland real estate and showcases some of his listings and foreclosed properties. The owner John Day periodically blogs on the site as well and has a wonderful authoritative voice for his industry. Check out this great blog now.

Staff Advantage
This new blog for a virtual assistant offers wonderful marketing and business productivity tips. Although we only blog two times a month for this client, the content is interesting. Andrea Dwyer the owner is also available to help with a wide variety of virtual assistant services. Check out this blog now.

We’ve got a few other blogs getting ready to start this week and the first part of May so we’ll make sure to point those new ones out to you as well. To find out more about our ghost blogging or blog writing services, I invite you to visit our blog writing services page. There you’ll find pricing, samples, and links to other blogs that we are writing for as well.