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Launching A Business Blog? Avoid This Common URL Mistake at Blogspot and Typepad

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Possibly the most frequent question people ask me when it comes to setting up a business blog is what URL they should use.  There are basically four options to choose from.  The truth is there is no single right answer.  But, there is one wrong answer however.  Below is an analysis of the 4 ways you can set up a URL for your blog and the benefits and drawbacks of each.

  1. Use a free URL like HubSpot.blogspot.com or HubSpot.typepad.com. This is a bad idea and this is the wrong answer, for two reasons. First, this URL does not belong to you. In any business you want to be building assets that you own and control. The problem with these URLs is that you are building an asset (a website that has a lot of links and good content) and you don't own and control that asset. There is no way to move or change these URLs. You are stuck with them forever. If you change your company name or want to use the content from your blog in a different way online, there is no good way to move the blog.  Second, all of the links that you will be getting into your blog from other websites do not pass any SEO value into your main website.  One of the major reasons to start a blog is to drive more links into your interesting content, and leverage those links to move your company higher in SEO rankings, and having your blog on one of these free URLs pretty much negates these benefits.  In fact, at HubSpot, we could easily allow customers to use a free and simple URL like Customer.hubspot.com for their blog, but we don't allow it at all, for these reasons.  If you want to read another view on this, read about Why Your Buisness Blog Should Not be on BlogSpot.com.
  2. Use a subdomain of your website like Blog.HubSpot.com. This is a great idea and this is what we do currently at HubSpot. Many companies have their blog on a subdomain, and it seems to be starting to be somewhat of a standard. The search engines are treating subdomains more and more as just portions of the main website, so the SEO value for your blog is going to add to your main website domain. If you want your blog to be seen as part of your company, you should it this way (or the next way).
  3. Use a folder of your website like HubSpot.com/blog. This is a good idea as well. I personally like a blog a bit better as a subdomain because it sets it up as a bit more independent from your company website and gives you a bit more flexibility in what you can do from a branding and layout perspective on the blog itself. But, I think there is not a big difference between HubSpot.com/blog and blog.HubSpot.com. Either one can work great.
  4. Use a completely new domain like smallbusinesshub.com. This option creates more work for you, but it can be a good idea as long as you understand the challenges you are creating for yourself. As a brand new website, and a separate website from your main website, you are starting from nothing and will have a lot of work to do to build links into your blog and start to get your blog to get noticed in the search engines. The benefit of putting a blog on an independent URL is that you can have it seem more separate from your company, and therefore less promotional. It also can be a way to pass some SEO juice from your blog back to your main website, but this benefit is somewhat limited. My preference would be to focus your linkbuilding efforts on just one website, but having your blog on an independent URL is certainly an OK strategy. You can even redirect this blog URL back to a URL on your own website later if you change your mind. (We did this at HubSpot, our blog used to be smallbusinesshub.com, and we have moved it to blog.HubSpot.com.)

Note: This article is not intended to indicate that you should not use Typepad or Blogger software.  Their software is fine (though I am biased but I love how HubSpot's blog software is integrated with other marketing tools), but you should not use one of their URLs.

Thoughts?  Have you tried to move a blog from a Blogspot or Typepad URL?  Leave a comment below.

 

Posted by Mike Volpe on Fri, Feb 22, 2008 @ 09:33 AM

COMMENTS

you can actually use your own domain with TypePad blogs - its a pretty simple process called "domain mapping".

posted on Friday, February 22, 2008 at 2:14 PM by ginevra


Hi MIke,
Thanks for the helpful post. I have a follow up question... We have a blog that we started on Wordpress that we now want to brand. What do you recommend is the best way to leverage this existing content?
What we're thinking is to get a new domain and point it at the wordpress site. This way, we could start building some brand equity and backlinks. We realize we wouldn't get any love from the backlinks pointing at the existing wordpress blog (at least we don't think so). Do you see any pros/cons for doing it this way?
Otherwise, I suppose we'd have to get a new domain and point it to a new sever/host. With this option, we'd have to somehow migrate the content from the existing Wordpress blog to the new one. This seems like a potential nightmare (unless Wordpress offers a transfer plug in).
Thanks again for all the great info!

posted on Friday, February 22, 2008 at 2:21 PM by Torque Screwdriver


I really wish I would have had Mike to consult when I was making this decision for my company blog, www.theb2blead.com. Originally the blog was a folder in our corporate site but we wanted to make it distinctly clear that it is a thought leadership blog and not a sales pitch. We soon moved it to its own url. While I think we did gain points for differentiating it from the corporate site, Mike is right that it is a lot of work to build inbound links. In retrospect I think I would have made it a subfolder of our site. The point of starting to blog was of course to help boost SEO but more importantly to position ourselves as thought leaders. We have seen great response to our posts but I fear many of our readers don't even realize it is a corporate blog. Is that a good thing?

posted on Friday, February 22, 2008 at 3:15 PM by Leigh Anne Wallace


Leigh, you say "In retrospect I think I would have made it a subfolder of our site." I think you meant subDOMAIN, right? By the way, I took a look at your blog... interesting stuff. And I LOVE the Marketing-WTF category (How do you not end up putting every post in that, lol?)

posted on Friday, February 22, 2008 at 4:18 PM by Torque Screwdriver


You're right, I did mean subdomain. (this only goes to show how lost I am with the more technical side of blogging) I am better at the fun stuff like Marketing WTF? on my site. I think I could probably have a blog that was solely dedicated to that topic.

posted on Friday, February 22, 2008 at 4:24 PM by Leigh Anne Wallace


This is good stuff, Mike, but I would take exception with #2. Search engines are actually treating subdomains as independent units, not part of the main domain, and you face the same hurdles with building links, overcoming trust factors, etc., as you would with a new domain. From a purely SEO perspective, #3 is the best solution, as links to your blog and main site all benefit the same domain.

posted on Friday, February 22, 2008 at 6:21 PM by Matt McGee


@ginevra - you are correct. You can use your own URL and still use Typepad or Blogger software. As I tried to point out in the note at the end of the article, I am not trying to say the software is bad, just the free URL that they offer.


@Tourque Screwdriver - You are right that you have no way to regain any of the inbound link power to your Typepad URLs. It is lost forever. I would put it on a subdomain of your current website, or a new URL. If you want, you can just set up your current Typepad account to use this new URL. You should not have to migrate anything if you like their software and don't want to switch to something else.


@ Leigh Anne Wallace - The choice you are talking about really comes down to branding. Do you want the blog to be seen as separate? Or do you want to use it to promote your company more directly? My bias is that smaller companies have limited resources and should focus on supporting as few brands as possible. At HubSpot we have decided to have the blog be under our brand, but always have the content be non-promotional, and just valuable, free content targeted to our audience. And PS - I am happy to help you with any of the more technical aspects of blogging or SEO or Internet marketing whenever you want. I just sent you a Facebook friend invite (at least I think it was you).

posted on Friday, February 22, 2008 at 8:47 PM by


@Matt McGee - You are absolutely corrrect that it used to be the case that subdomains were treated as being very separate from the main website. However, because of recent changes, this is no longer the case. See these articles:


http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/015621.html


http://searchengineland.com/071207-090257.php


So, I really think that if you are setting up a blog today there is not a big SEO difference between choosing a subdomain or folder. I prefer the subdomain for personal / optical reasons. And, sometimes it is a tad easier to have blog on a subdomain too since it is a bit easier to have your blog hosted elsewhere or use different CMS/software from your main website if it is a subdomain.

posted on Friday, February 22, 2008 at 9:19 PM by


By the way, I took a look at your blog... interesting stuff. And I LOVE the Marketing-WTF category

posted on Saturday, February 23, 2008 at 4:41 AM by Sybian Portal


Great article. Wished you had written this one earlier. I have recently read about a lot of people complaining about losing their blogger and wordpress blogs without warning. I can understand that some blogs have violated their TOS but I do know of several good blogs that had good and original content lose their blogs. You can avoid these kind of heartaches by running your blogs on your own domain and hosting.

posted on Saturday, February 23, 2008 at 5:45 AM by Marketing Man


yes I agree with (marketing man0 but still this article give me some points :)

posted on Tuesday, February 26, 2008 at 11:20 PM by amelia


I think it's always best to brand yourself with a unique website and if you want to have different blogs as subfolders of the site. Then at least while you're tweaking and changing things you can still retain ownership of your material and associated brand.

posted on Wednesday, February 27, 2008 at 10:16 AM by Internet Marketing Badger


After reading this article, I've decided to move our blog to a Sub-domain on our site. Thanks for this. It's gems like this that keep me going online!

posted on Thursday, February 28, 2008 at 1:01 PM by Yasmin Razaq


Just realized our name links are no-followed :0(

posted on Thursday, February 28, 2008 at 1:06 PM by Pete


@pete - The nofollow on blog comment links is pretty standard. If you don't do that, you get a TON of blog comment spam.

posted on Thursday, February 28, 2008 at 3:10 PM by


I realize it's pretty standard. Some blogs I post to don't have it which is nice. For some reason I thought yours didn't include it. No big deal though... Thanks again for the great posts!

posted on Thursday, February 28, 2008 at 3:18 PM by Pete


Mike,
Great post! I concur with Leigh Anne that I wish I'd had this info when I started.
As you can see from my website link, my blog is hosted on Wordpress. It's worked well so far, but as I've reached more readers I've wanted some independence from Wordpress. I searched for the leadonpurpose domain the other day but someone beat me to it (it's parked free on GoDaddy.com).
Since I'm not in a position to host my own site yet, I've thought about a few different URLs I could use (Wordpress allows you to use your own domain similar to TypePad) and wanted to get comments from you and your readers on my idea. What do you think about adding "blog" into the domain name? I am considering leadonpurposeblog.com. Thoughts?
thanks,
Michael

posted on Thursday, February 28, 2008 at 5:48 PM by Michael Ray Hopkin


Michael,
I wouldn't lose too much sleep over your domain choice from an SEO standpoint. That is, you're not going to try and leverage SEO juice from your domain name. Sometimes people put their keyword into their domains (eg, BuyNikeShoes.com) and by the nature of people linking to them, it helps them rank for the phrase "buy nike shoes."
So, whether you use whatever.com or whateverblog.com, you're developing a brand that will need to draw traffic from quality link building, and of course, providing killer content that can't help but get shared ;0)

posted on Thursday, February 28, 2008 at 5:58 PM by Pete


While it is a nice thing to host your own blog and it may be in Hubspot's interest to promote moving blogs to many folk who don't have the ability to take this on themselves. My thoughts are that blogspot at http://www.blogger.com offers a great free service with lots of nice enhancements for blogs hosted at blogspot. These simple free widgets cannot be hosted if the blog is hosted on your own site.
The most important component of your blog is indeed the feed! By getting a free account at feedburner.com you can own your feed and move it at any time you move your blog, so subscribers will never lose you. I think it is important in the interest of full disclosure to give the easy do-it-yourself solutions if possible. Mike, you also glossed over the topic of subscribe by email, which is also a free service that is available at feedburner.com . . . granted, you've got a service to offer, but for the do-it-yourselfer, there really isn't anything wrong with hosting the blog on blogspot.com... in fact, I've seen very good search results for these blogs in Google. . . . so it's not an SEO issue either.

posted on Wednesday, March 19, 2008 at 3:09 PM by todd lucier


@Todd - Maybe I wasn't clear. It is not a question of what server the blog is hosted on or what software is used to power the blog. It is ONLY a question of the URL. I am OK with people using Blogspot software and having their blog hosted on Blogspot servers. You can use whatever software and widgets you want. But it is essential for a business blog to have its own URL. Not a URL that is part of a different company. So, for your business blog, I really do think that if you want to use Blogspot software, you can. If you want to host with them, that's great. But the URL of the blog should not be on blogspot.com. Your own URL costs only $8-10 per year. It is a trivial investment.
For instance, it is not possible to redirect mikevolpe.blogpost.com to mikevolpe.com. So, all of the links (SEO value) that I have built for mikevolpe.blogspot.com can never be passed anywhere else. If I ever want to upgrade/change my blog software, or if blogspot.com gets shut down, etc., then there is NOTHING I can do. If I had just used my own URL (even with blogspot software and hosting) I would have a lot more options open in the future.
In short, on the web the links to your URL is something of value to your business. As a business you should want to own and control the things that are valuable to your company. If you use a Blogspot or other free URL, you do NOT have control over it, and that is just a really bad idea for all the reasons mentioned in the article.

posted on Wednesday, March 19, 2008 at 6:09 PM by


@Todd -
For instance, your blog is at Tourismkeys.ca, and appears to use Blogspot software. That is totally fine. If some day there is some other cooler blog software, you can actually move your blog.
If your blog were on tourismkeys.blogspot.com, then you could not.
So, you are doing what I recommend!

posted on Wednesday, March 19, 2008 at 6:12 PM by


Mike,
Thanks so much for all that you share. I watched your blogging webinar this week, and wanted to ask a question that didn't get answered there:
In our case, while I pushed hard for #2, or 3 (subdomain, or /blog directory of our main site), technical issues forced us into #4 (a seperate URL altogether).
You've mentioned here, and in your webinar, that this is an acceptable as long as we understand the challenges we create for ourselves. I'm not sure that I do--or if I do, I'm not sure I know how to overcome them. Could you share with us what steps we need to take to leverage the SEO juice of our blog site, towards getting our main site to rank?
I hope that makes sense? Again, thanks for all your advice (this feels like a "dear abby" column for bloggers :)!

posted on Friday, March 21, 2008 at 12:21 PM by Craig Key


@Craig - Basically, you now need to do a full SEO program for TWO websites, instead of just one. For starters, you should link to your blog using the right anchor text from your main website.

posted on Sunday, March 23, 2008 at 9:53 PM by


Thank you for pointing to your article! I didn't even think about TOSs, moving content and other horrors.

posted on Tuesday, April 08, 2008 at 2:32 AM by Marina Feygelman


Hi Mike, regarding the subdomain. I'm considering creating my website based on wordpress's CMS. What I want is for the blog's URL to be separate from the main URL.
for instance main website URL(http://www.bla.com) and blog URL2 (http://www.blu.com). can this be done withing the same CMS or would I have to have two separate hostings for each domain. Or just create a subdomain (as you have) for the blog and redirect it to URL2 so that it appears as that.
what do you think? Thanks Mike.

posted on Wednesday, April 09, 2008 at 10:43 AM by Jorge


I use blogger.com and host it on my site. It can be found at www.crookedmonkey.com/blog.html. But when i use websitegrader.com it tells me that my site does not have a blog?? How do i rectify this, and is my site not reaping the "rewards" from having a blog?

posted on Thursday, May 22, 2008 at 5:44 PM by Micha


@Jorge - I am not a technical CMS expert, you'll have to figure out how to have your blog and website on the URLs you want. the key is to just not use a Free URL you don't control.
@Micha - Website Grader is not finding your blog because (1) your RSS feed is not discoverable on your homepage, (2) the link to your blog does not contain the text "blog" (it is an image, so website grader can't see it) and (3) even on your blog, the RSS feed is not discoverable (automatically by a browser)

posted on Thursday, May 22, 2008 at 6:13 PM by


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