Should your blog be hosted on your site?

[Ellen C. Braun]

If I understood correctly, Roy told me that a blog hosted on your site with good and constantly new contant, will boost your sites rankings in the SE's.

I'm wondering, Lynn, that being the case, why you host your blog at clicknews.com/blogspot instead of adding it here, like selfstartersweeklytips.com/blogspot?

I'm wondering if I should start a blog on my new site, or host it elsewhere and link back to my site... ????

Thanks!

[Lynn Terry]

[johndilbeck]

I've tested dozens of blogs to see which did better in the search engines.

I truly can't tell if it's better to host on my own site or somewhere else. Some of my blogs on blogspot rank better than those hosted on there own domains. One does much better on its own domain.

Surprisingly, most of my blogger blogs on blogspot outrank WordPress blogs on their own domains.

The biggest surprise was when my test blog at bravenet.com outranked some of my other blogs.

It's a matter of testing with the same messages (or very similar messages) on multiple blogs and then testing the search engine rankings a month or two later.

I spent most of the last year trying to answer this question to my satisfaction and still don't have the answer.

As with many things related to online marketing, perhaps the best answer is "it depends."

(Now, if I only know what it depends upon!)

I know this isn't a very helpful reply, but it's based on my experiences.

All the best,

JD

[theuniek1]

I personally prefer having my blog on my own servers because it affords me a lot more control over the blog itself.

As for which will rank higher or faster in the search engines, it really does depend. There are a lot of factors which go into rankings - number of inbound links, the actual content, the template coding, etc. - that said, I've not had a problem getting any of my non-hosted/non-blogger blogs ranking well for their specific keywords.

I did notice however that joining Yahoo's publisher network boosted the site I had placed their ads on...coincidence? Most likely, but it was neat to see my site go from page 10 to page 1 virtually overnight...LOL.

[Ellen C. Braun]

[theuniek1]

WordPress is very flexible when it comes to customization which makes it pretty easy to use it as a content management system.

I've done just that on a couple of sites I put up for clients: and are a couple that come to mind off the top of my head.

I also use it for a number of my niche affiliate product sites - none of which actually looks like a blog.

If you have any questions, feel free to let me know and I'll try to help out as best I can

[Ellen C. Braun]

Thanks Teli,

I am very excited to begin building my site with WP. I don't know HTML at all, so this looks like a simple alternative to buying and learning Dreamweaver.

Does the program support Mouseover functions (I think that's what it's called!) like the taps on the top of this site turn into flowers when you scroll over them: www.freelancemom.com ?

[theuniek1]

[Ellen C. Braun]

[theuniek1]

[Ellen C. Braun]

[Sharon & Roy]

[giftsolution]

[v2005]

Hi Adrianna,

Here's a couple of articles I wrote recently on RSS and How to create an article feed for your web site:

http://www.isitebuild.com/rss/rss-feed.htm
http://www.isitebuild.com/rss/rss-marketing-1.htm

Roy - I enjoyed reading your tips..thank you!

Herman

[flyer727]