Seo And Blogs, Host your own or use a service? Options

[TheManBehindTheCurtain]

Hi folks ...

We want to start some blogs so some of our execs can give deeper insights into the business and technical mission of the company. A fundamental question for me is: should I host these or outsource through something like blogspot? Beyond the financial/time-management issues, I'm wondering about the pros and cons of page rank for Google in particular:

Is it more advantageous to cross-domain links: blogs.ourcompany.com going back and forth between www.ourcompany.com, or between ourexec.blogspot.com and www.ourcompany.com.

Now I understand that the blog has to have unique and compelling content (not marketing content, but real behind-the-scenes insights), and that it takes a lot of external promotion and hard work to make a blog successful. But all things being equal, do you see compelling reasons or embarrassing "gotchas" for either of these two strategies?

Anyone face this sort of decision and have a success story or "I told ya so" moment to share?

All advice greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[eKstreme]

I would keep it all in-house, 100% under your control. You never know when a service decides to shut down or unacceptably change policies. Remember this is your company's voice on the line. Keep as much control over it as possible.

Also, as people link to your blogs, you will get the links values instead of Blogspot et al.

As for technical implementation, I would have a subdomain like blogs.ourcompany.com and then have individual blogs as directories under that subdomain. Something like:

blogs.ourcompany.com/blog1
blogs.ourcompany.com/blog2

Pierre

[rynert]

As for technical implementation, I would have a subdomain like blogs.ourcompany.com and then have individual blogs as directories under that subdomain. Something like:

blogs.ourcompany.com/blog1
blogs.ourcompany.com/blog2

If you anticipate people linking to the blogs from elsewhere, would it not make more sense to have :

www.ourcompany.com/blog1
www.ourcompany.com/blog2

[bwelford]

Yes, very much in agreement with Pierre's advice. Keep it in house. There is also a degree of scepticism about blogspot blogs in general, since there are a large number of these that are very spammy.

As far as the software goes, the new Blogger is much improved such that I abandoned thoughts of switching one of my blogs with Blogger to WordPress. The only upside with Blogger is that blog posts may be indexed faster in Google Blogsearch with such a blog. This is only a matter of hours if you have a well-linked blog but it may be worth a little.

What would swing it for me is the ability to construct the blogs in WordPress if they're inhouse. You win so much in terms of functionality by using WordPress that I wouldn't think of anything else.

[TheManBehindTheCurtain]

Also, as people link to your blogs, you will get the links values instead of Blogspot et al.

Thanks Pierre. Now *I'm* having a slap-the-head-and-groan type moment. Seems I'm asking a RDQ. (really dumb question)

I completely agree about the control/management issue. I was trying to do "due diligence", considering all the scenarios before assuming too much and diving in. But of course the value of people linking to our domain is going to be more important than crosslinking between our site and a third-party blog. I have to admit I had the moment of doubt when I saw a competitor on blogspot. Now, I'm glad they're doing it that way.

Thanks also for the organization recommendations; Rynert too. Would love to hear what people have found effective.

Thanks!



This post has been edited by FrankElley: Feb 2 2007, 11:42 AM

[eKstreme]

If you anticipate people linking to the blogs from elsewhere, would it not make more sense to have :

www.ourcompany.com/blog1
www.ourcompany.com/blog2

For me, personally, that's messy. Potentially, you'll have a situation like this:

ourcompany.com/blog1
ourcompany.com/product1
ourcompany.com/blog2
ourcompany.com/support
ourcompany.com/contact
ourcompany.com/blog3

etc.

But if you had a single subdomain, you keep things tidy and separate. One idea is to put all blogs as a subdirectory, like

ourcompany.com/blogs/blog1
ourcompany.com/blogs/blog2
ourcompany.com/product1
...

This is tidier and will keep all links to a single domain.

I think it will boil down to personal preference and be based on how many blogs you think you'll be hosting. If it's anything more than 3-5, I'd chunk them out somehow with a directory or a subdomain.

Pierre

[TheManBehindTheCurtain]

As far as the software goes, the new Blogger is much improved such that I abandoned thoughts of switching one of my blogs with Blogger to WordPress.

Thanks Barry. I appreciate the confirmation. Makes perfect sense to me now.

We're hosted on IIS, so for blog software I'm looking at Community Server (communityserver dot org). I may post for advice in the blogs forums on that one.

The ISP I use for my personal site has gone from mediocre to absolutely abysmal, so I'll definitely look into blogger for that when I make the switch.

Thanks!

[bragadocchio]

My own experience with using a format like http://www.example.com/blog.htm (sub directories instead of subdomains) has been very positive, in terms of:

1. Having people recognize the relationship of the blogs with the businesses behind them.

2. Providing timely and quality content for people to link to, and discuss.

3. Building relationships with bloggers and others in similar and related businesses.

4. Building pagerank/link popularity to the site as a whole.

Hosting them yourself can be a positive experience as long as you perform backups and updates. Relying upon a third party like Blogger leaves you prone to their downtime, updates, and policies. Having done both, I prefer hosting the blogs and databases myself.

As for avoiding embarassing moments, create a plan for the blogs in terms of content and tone, and stick with it. Avoid shootouts and arguments, and topics that don't reflect the values of the company - listen and be responsive to people. Consider such things as:

1. What might one of these bloggers write about if something negative happens?
2. What's the best way to handle disgruntled customers, if any?
3. What kinds of things should they write about and not write about?
4. How do they show their human side, which they should do in a blog?
5. What's the best way to handle comments
6. Make sure that strong spam protection is in place

Before starting, it might be good to script out the first 15 - 20 blog posts, with at least some partially fleshed out topics and posts ready to go - just like a coach might do in a football game.

[Ruud]

One idea is to put all blogs as a subdirectory

One installation of WordPress in the /blog/ folder. Using author pages and a nice permalink structure you can have people browse by author -- or have them view the whole blog at once.

Getting people interested in one (company-related) blog can already be hard enough. Setting up 5 blogs for 5 execs is making things worse.

We're hosted on IIS

You can still install PHP and MySQL and run WordPress although the nice permalinks are not supported, I think.

[DianeV]

Another vote here for self-hosted blogs (or hosting on your own third party web hosting account) rather than third-party hosted-on-their-server blog software -- some of which make you jump through hoops to comment, if you can figure it out for all. This keeps it simple for the customer, and doesn't drive traffic to some other site that doesn't belong to you.

And a second vote for putting all the blogs in one directory; otherwise, it's untidy and ... strange.

Bill makes a good point, too, regarding what you want the blog posts to consist of, how you'll respond to consumer comments, etc. Vital.

By the way, if you're going to use WordPress and you'll be allowing comments, get an Akismet.com API key (it requires a simple signup), download Akismet, and install it on the blog. This will sequester almost all spam comments (which you *will* get if you're allowing comments) on your internal Akismet page, where they can be dealt with as they should be. (Think: delete)

This post has been edited by DianeV: Feb 2 2007, 12:11 PM

[TheManBehindTheCurtain]

Just wanted to say thanks to everyone for the great advice. Clearly we're going to host it ourself based on feedback.

Barry, Bill, Diane, Pierre, Rynert: Thanks for the comments about subdirectories versus subdomains. This is the sort of thing I was keenly worried about, and I'm definitely leaning toward subdirectories now. Although www.example.com/blogs/bloggername appeals to the obsessive organizer in me, I would put up with four or so blogs scattered throughout with www.example.com/bloggername if there were any compelling SEO reason to do so. But from the comments seems like there's no SEO impact, or at least none that clearly trumps tidiness.

Bill: Thanks too for the comments on preparation. We have six blogs in the can and topics for the next six. Since the CEO is the first blogger, the topics focus on entrepreneurship, the role of innovation in high tech, etc. No competitive wrangling, positive tone. We've spent some time talking about one of voice, and working hard to make sure the comments are distinctive (else who will read it).

Ruud: Yes, I agree, the hard work is not writing the blogs but making sure they're interesting and well read. I was simplifying by saying "execs." One is the CEO, and the others represent the technical braintrust of the company. One is the CTO covering Microsoft technical issues, one is director of engineering covering UNIX and Linux issues, and another is the director or product management talking about industry issues and Mac issues. So discrete audience/topic for each. No one is under the illusion that "if we write it they will come." Lots of work ahead.

Thanks again everyone!


This post has been edited by FrankElley: Feb 5 2007, 11:11 AM

[DianeV]

That sounds terrific, Frank.

One thing I'd consider is that most blog software doesn't give you a whole lot of options for when posts scroll off the home page. How to locate these archived articles? Sure, you can poke through categories, for example, but a site map would be divine.

As well, blogs that have a number of authors often give you no method of finding articles by that author alone. Sounds like your setup will be a little different, but in any case, links to articles by other authors would also be wonderful.

It's these kinds of niceties that, to me, make a blog easier to use, or not.

[graywolf]

I'd stay away form the subdomain solution if at all possible unless you are a huge site. While a subdomain may be nice and tidy from an admistrative perspective it would isolate the "link juice" and more importantly "trust equity" into the subdomain not the full domain. IMHO go with http://example.com/blog/ almost all of the time.

Additionally try to find ways to interlink the blog with the main site in non-spammy ways. This is especially important in those "magnetic content posts" that attract a lot of links. This provides a nice way to help the people (and the spiders) find those older pages that need a little extra "help".

[bwelford]

Welcome to the Forums, graywolf.

I agree entirely with your suggestion on interlinking. Indeed I feel that the continuance of the blog word may be inadvertently supporting the separate existence of blogs and websites. For quite a high proportion of 'blogs', I feel they should be integrated seamlessly within the website and labelled 'News'. To coin a word, perhaps they should be slogs rather than blogs.

[JesseLeeStringer]

I'm in favour of the following format :

http://www.example.com/blog/
(My own http ://www.knoxit.com.au/blog/ for justification )
SUB ; Director
SUB ; New Products
SUB ; Press Releases

I'm not an SEO expert however if you've got the content centralized you will entice then entire company to view the blog, encourage visitors to research developments rather then trawling the subdomains, getting the ancient continually blogging as they're seeing someone else did. etc...

More content for google to crawl, more individualized blog categories to show visitors you care enough to categories them, and finally it's centralized.. One Password, One Backup, One Worry.

Jesse

[kailyn_morgan]

as far as i kno i think... blogs r more into personal front n sharing ur experience with all the ppl on a topic or theme...

[rynert]

Welcome to the Forums, graywolf.

I agree entirely with your suggestion on interlinking. Indeed I feel that the continuance of the blog word may be inadvertently supporting the separate existence of blogs and websites. For quite a high proportion of 'blogs', I feel they should be integrated seamlessly within the website and labelled 'News'. To coin a word, perhaps they should be slogs rather than blogs.

Don't know if this takes it a bit OT, but Barry, are you implying that a load of blogs that are not updated can do more harm than good? If so, are you thinking from a business, or SEO perspective (or both)?

I ask as I am about to go with some, that are controlled by the users - these are related to a particular 'event' in each persons future. Some will die through neglect and those that get used will probably grow stagnent after the 'event'.

[bwelford]

Don't know if this takes it a bit OT, but Barry, are you implying that a load of blogs that are not updated can do more harm than good? If so, are you thinking from a business, or SEO perspective (or both)?

I hope I didn't imply that, rynert. Provided the date is clearly identified on a blog post, I don't find that very old posts become irrelevant. Depending on the nature of your blog posts, you can always label that 'blog' tab with a title such as 'News and Views'.

The other strong point is that because single blog posts become integrated into several other long blog pages (for categories and for the monthly archives), then they can often do well on 'long tail keyword searches'. Some searchers search for the most amazing phrases and these blog composite pages can often rank well in such searches. The hope is that someone clicking on your (blog) page in the SERP will perhaps look around a little even if the SERPed web page is not the most relevant for their search.

The key thing is to not disappoint your visitors. If you have contextual advertising on your web pages, then at the very least perhaps the searcher will find the next step is one of those Adsense ads.

[rynert]

Thanks for the response - perhaps me implying that you were implying was a bit strong!

Just my thoughts were on the blogs, and you post stuck a chord. What you say makes perfect sense