Start a blog on existing site's domain or a new domain?

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Start a blog on existing site's domain or a new domain?

a blog as part of my website promotion strategy

KayCee

7:32 pm on Sep 3, 2008 (gmt 0)

I have a 4-year-old smallish informational site that's done reasonably well in the SERPs for its niche, and I make a modest (but steadily growing) chunk of change with AdSense.

Now I'd like to create a blog associated with the site. I'll use it to post shorter newsy items and highlight what's new on the site. So from a site promotion/marketing standpoint, what do you think are the pros and cons of creating the blog on the site's domain (e.g. smallinfosite.com/blog) vs on its own new domain (e.g. newdomain.com)?

(I don't know if this makes any difference, but there are almost no blogs in my keyword niche area. And I probably could count on one hand the number of my competitors' websites that have blogs, and the blogs that do exist seem mostly dormant - few posts and infrequent updates.)

agerhart

5:15 am on Sep 4, 2008 (gmt 0)

Go with the existing site....you'll get a quicker return with an established site.

kgam

1:35 pm on Sep 5, 2008 (gmt 0)

I have been having this debate with my team for one of our retail sites. We have finally decided to setup the blog on a separate site because:
1) A mid to longer term promotion is more important to us than an immediate bounce, so we have the timeline to play with before a major benefit is released

2) We have an established base of readers on our newsletter and can direct them via both our main site and the newsletter to the new blog domain

3) We will likely open the blog up to a few real enthusiasts of our site and niche. By having the blog on a different domain, we feel that we will have more of an ability to recover from any posts that are off the mark.

4) Many blog directories do not like to list blogs that are part of a retail or commercial site, so we stand a better chance of getting listed

petersa

1:58 pm on Sep 5, 2008 (gmt 0)

I am with kgam on this one.

I think the long term benefits are far greater if you create a separate blog for your business.

caveman

2:32 pm on Sep 5, 2008 (gmt 0)

...so we stand a better chance of getting listed

You also stand a better chance of fighting with yourself in the SERP's.

Like agerhart said, put it in a directory (or, put it in a subdomain, which might help with the issue of keeping it more apparently separate from the main site, and brand it differently).

Putting it on a new domain means roughly twice the work to rank and greater risk of shooting yourself in the foot.

Advantages of putting it on the domain include faster help to the main site, faster rankings for the blog, and no issues of filtering in the SERP's.

KayCee

2:55 pm on Sep 5, 2008 (gmt 0)

Thanks for the further discussion on this. I'm leaning toward putting it on the already-existing domain, but not sure yet if I'd do a subdomain. Any more pointers on this?

kgam, I really like the idea of creating a separate blog where you could invite a few contributors. I can imagine starting a blog (on a new domain) that's tied to my niche but not closely associated with my site. It could create some good networking opportunities and another means of marketing my site. Thanks for offering another viewpoint.