Blog on your current domain or a new domain?

[AaronSOLD]

So I am going to start a blog I plan to update 4-5 times a week. My current site is starting to rank for popular terms and has a PR4. Should I add the Wordpress blog to a subdirectory of my site or make a whole new domain for it?

[judyo]

Sorry I don't have an answer but I have one site with the blog on the domain (Cook County) & the other blog is separate (the Oak Lawn sites). I've had my Cook County blog for awhile and my Oak Lawn sites are newer (I've had the domains but have switched hosts on both), so I don't know which situation is better.

However, the on site blog adds a lot of pages to my site. Recently had it deindexed with the Big Daddy update but it is once again getting indexed. So maybe just from that it is a benefit to have it on-site.

Sometimes if I haven't added anything new to my site in a while I just make a blog post and voila - a new page for the entire site.

[phaithful]

Well it really depends on what you want to do with the blog. Since you've mentioned PageRank, I'd assume your looking for the best way to leverage SEO with your blog.

I would put my blog into a subdirectory to increase the SEO value to the primary domain, elevating my position within SERPs for the keywords I'm targeting, unless I was already in the top 5 for the keywords I'm going after.

If my primary domain is already at a certain level, and I'm confident that SEO juice coming from other avenues would sustain me, I'd either put the blog on a subdomain or a new domain.

Subdomains are typically viewed by search engines as the same thing as a new domain. Granted there are slight difference and there is a slight advantage of a subdomain vs. a new domain, but they are minimal. So really the difference between having a blog on a subdomain vs a new domain is branding.

The SEO value will be, for all practical purposes, the same in either case.

So it's more of a business decision. If you primary domain needs a revenue boost or you're producing leads from it, I'd placed it on a subdomain. People will tend to check out the main domain afterwards.

If you're looking to go a whole different business direction with the blog then put it on it's own domain.

Just at the end of the day... you'll need to know that if your blog doesn't provide a good deal of content and is compelling enough to link to, you're much better off putting it into a subdirectory as supporting content. If you believe it's compelling enough to live on it's own than you can also reap the benefits of sending link juice from your new domain to your old domain.

[Cleo]

Hi Aaron, what did you end up doing and the results of it. I just went to the three links you have on your signature now and did not see any Pagerank. Was that another domain?

[AmistadRealEstate]

Cleo, his first link is PR 5. Google changed the link to their Page Rank tool which broke most PR checking applications, it gave me a heart attack the other day haha.

My firefox SEO plugin just updated so it shows it working again now.


Below might be irrelevant now, just saw the original post date:
Back to your post Aaron. I have found that a blog does indeed bring traffic to my site, however I am not sure how much traffic generated by the blog is useful at all. The concern running through my head right now is keyword density, as unless you solely blog about Real Estate (not likely to appeal too much to potential clients) then you can end up confusing Google about what your site is actually about.

I decided to make a post about a property for sale or rent every time I make one about something else. As my blog has two columns it now means that the whole left side if featured properties and the right are very up to date blog posts. Only recently started doing it this way but it seems to be helping my key words and helps to give the site more of a real estate and blog feel rather than just a blog which it previously did.

It is the first link in my sig if you want to see, any comments always appreciated.

Simon.

[realatrends]

Are Blogs good for content on your own site or better to make a new one as Aaron suggested and link back to your main domain?

[mhomes]

I have recently (ie: 2 posts so far...) started blogging on my domain, in a subdomain, and I'm very curious how much result will I get. I suppose it's a long term investment, though.

[realatrends]

I'll try both as well.

[zcoplan]

Yeah that pr link change was scary. To answer the question I would say the best bet would be to have the blog on the same domain, I guess if I had to choose I would probably do the subdomain.

[realatrends]

Do REW websites come with a blog built in? I am thinking of creating a wordpress site with a custom real estate theme for the IDX feeds