COMMENTS
Awesome post! There's several discussions going on with this topic on several boards I participate in. It's nice to see some new opinions versus the same one's all the time.
I feel these points are very much valid. As long as your blogs are only for Adsense, they do not matter, as Blogger would do anything for you to get the maximum out of Adsense. And that is the prime reason, they let you have infinite space on their servers too...
But for a business blogger, it is not just Blogspot, a subdomain on any of the free blogs might make him lose some value.
Useful post and valid point regarding business sites (including blogs). Looking forward to experiencing HubSpot!
Great post but, very depressing. Thanks for the food-for-thought.
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I'm on blogger, and your "you can't leave and take your SEO" really worries me now.
This article is informative but is indeed depressing. I'm with Blogger and I plan to open my own blog in my own domain name after I'm done with my website class.
Thanks for the info.
http://pinay-ladies.blogspot.com
As Simple Filipina said those facts above are very depressing for people like me and she who are trying to make some little bussines on the BlogSpot. I will also need to move somewhere else or start to use my own domain name.
Thank you for that info and experiences.
The article is really informative. I didnt know about this side of coin till I read this article. Infact I have speeded up my efforts to get a proper website for myself.
Thanks for the info. Hope I'll soon be able to get my own domain.
I wholeheartedly agree. I'm still on blogspot but I'm in the process of obtaining a domain name and web host company. My goal is to use Wordpress as the blog platform. This will probably be messy because yesterday's repeated attempts to import my blog into Wordpress (just as a test) were disasterous.
Thanks for the article - it lends credence to my plans.
I'm a Realtor and can't afford anything more than free right now. But will probably make a change in the future. Good blog I'm getting the feed!
Indeed interesting your post, and worrying also!!
Afortunately, I have begun with my blog not too long ago, so I still have time to migrate with all my stuff to WordPress (I hope). Thank you for your advice.
Thanks for the information. Didn't know about this before.
Thanks a lot. I didnt know about this. Anyway as this is free, I got to accept limitations.
Karthik
Bangalore, India.
I wish I had know this when I started my blog two years ago, but now it ranks on page 1 and I can't stop using blogger.
Wait, what if you just buy out a .com domain name and have it redirect to your blogger? Postsecret, one of the largest websites on the web, does that.
Actually, if you choose to point your Blogger blog to a subdomain on your site as described in Blogger Support (
http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55373), you can ditch the .blogspot URL without loosing the value of your links (in other words, your traffic will still end up in the same place).
Good point about no subscriptions to comments, but I still think Blogger is a very relevant tool. Although I am quickly falling in love with Wordpress, I find Blogger's WYSIWYG is much easier to use and prefer the admin interface of Blogger and its integration with all my other Google tools. Blogger is easy, and that's O.K.
I have three blogs hosted at Blogger. All of them use their own domains and not the *.blogspot.com url. Should I be worried?
I have one of my real estate blogs on Blogger and this IS a bit disturbing. It is not a main source of business as the others are, so I am less concerned, but unhappy nonetheless. Thanks for the info
I think is better have your own host, but if you don´t want to pay a cool option, is go to setting and Custom Domain with your domain name to your blog.
maybe help, a little
Is it realy true that having Blogspot.com is bad for my original website?
I am considering moving my blogs out of blogger.com because of this post... hmmmn.
I have two blogs on blogspot (jbayselfcatering and boostyouroccupancyrate). I hear you but what I like is the rapid response compared with the sluggish experience when browsing blogs on wordpress.
oh dear! i just started with blogger two months ago and now am getting worried if i stay too long with it. will buy my domain name anytime soon... question: what happens to my subscribers if i switch? Email to this noobie your responses pls! EMERGENCY SITUATION HERE!
Bariles: You can minimize the lock-in risk of you get your own domain and point it to Blogger.
As for your RSS subscribers, you can use a service like FeedBurner (this way, if you move your blog in the future, you can keep the same RSS address). Of course, FeedBurner is owned by Google too. The best way to do this is to use a URL of the form rss.yourdomain.com (FeedBurner now gives you the ability to do this for free).
Interesting thread! Somewhere, it could even have been here, I was encouraged to start a blog - any blog - just to get into blogging because it was so important for SEO. The advice was to keep it simple in the beginning and not to worry about pretty pictures and fancy graphics. That is why I went for blogspot that is easy to set up for a beginner and free. Comments?
Great post. We will have to review out blogging strategy though....
Your analysis with regards to my site is very good and i really appreciate it.
I am entertaining the idea that blogger is really not a good one coz i could see other blogsites and it impresses me. Though i know this i am not prepared yet for other blog, but i am conscious of your concern. What is attractive to blogger is its Free..
Important to consider: You won´t be able to tune your blog at Blogger or in a Wordpress MU environment with very useful SEO-related plugins. That will result in a very poor rating of your blog there. Don´t waste your time with that!
I think we will have new strategy...
@ jeff and all the others who use Blogger because it is free:
As mentioned above it will be really annoying,
a) ifyou can't move your SEO value to another site / domain and
b) if you can't change anything in the source code of your blog.
Although you might be a beginner at the moment. When you blog for a while, you'll get into this stuff and want to change something in the design (graphics, layout, ...). But of course, at the beginning you don't want to spend money for your blog.
What I recommend you:
Look for free webspace that supports PHP and MySQL. Sorry, I don't know any international freehosters, but in Germany you may have a look at kilu.de (will show just a small ad banner on your site) or bplaced.net (includes even no ads on your site!). Auf meiner Seite stevie-o.de finden sich auch einige deutsche Artikel über Kilu und bplaced, z.B.
www.stevie-o.de/2008/02/23/kostenloser-webspace-mit-php/Second step is download a blog software and upload it to your webspace. I can recommend wordpress.org, but there are alternatives like Serendipity (s9y) as well [some people say, using Wordpress is like surfing with IE ;-)]
After uploading you have to call a certain .php file (e.g. domain.com/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php or yourname.freehoster.com/wp-admin/install.php ...) and just must do what this site says to you.
That's all. Now you can start blogging, add plugins, personalize your blog, etc.
Later when you are more confident with blogging you can change anything in the blog (code, design, ...) you want. And if you want to move to another webspace (or domain), just upload all your blog stuff there and redirect from your old webspace to the new one (by using 301 redirect the search engines will replace your old blog URL with the new one in their index and therefore you almost won't loose any SEO value).
For Wordpress & co. you'll find a plenty of documents and instructions in the internet. But it's really almost as easy as I desribed above.
For example I use bplaced (free webspace without ads) using Wordpress and just pay 0,19 euros for my .de domain. I could also use stevieo,bplaced,net and pay nothing at all ;-)
I'll be glad to see you on my German site
www.stevie-o.de if you're interested in this kind of stuff.
I am not a computer fundi, just want to benefit from blogging in a small way. Also, I don't want to start a war here.
danakom says "b) if you can't change anything in the source code of your blog....". You do have access to your source code in Blogger. I have seen it, but it looks like I don't want to see it. Admittedly, what you can customise will be limited.
On the point of using WordPress. I regularly go to two WordPress blogs and find they are very sluggish in response (because of bloat?) in comparison with Blogger.
shohreh,rasht,coon,kos
this is such a great website u have, very informative and loved to keep coming back here ur new post, take care and good day!
I dont know i should feel about this, as i have just started blogging on blogger and planned for a 301 later, but it cannot happen. Huh...
Thank your for the information sharing with us.
Great, but I have not found where, how, what to install to use Hubspot's blogging tool...
Good posting - I switched off of blogspot because of my inability to customize the look and feel of the comments section - which is another area where you are stuck.
Good posting - I switched off of blogspot because of my inability to customize the look and feel of the comments section - which is another area where you are stuck.
Actually that is not totally true...
I have a project called Svejo which is a social network and we have a blog. It runs blogspot but the domain name is blog.svejo.net so the ranking is very good when you manage the DNS and use blogspot service for your own reserved domain.
But anyway those things said above are very true!
Hope that helps people ;)
Cheers!
Thanks .
I am a happy Hubspot customer and am considering using Hubspot's bloggging software for our corporate blog (or possibly Wordpress). I am, however, concerned about losing the blog if we ever leave Hubspot for whatever reason.
Charles: Regardless of which platform you pick for your blog, our advice would be to ensure you have control of the domain of the blog.
This gives you the most flexibility long-term of transferring your SEO authority should you ever decide to switch.
So, running on Blogger is OK, just make sure you have your own domain (like blog.mycompany.com) instead of mycompany.blogspot.com.
Of course, we'd be thrilled if you wanted to use HubSpot for your blog (and it's part of the core product, so no additional fees).
i like blogger, it serves me well for what i want to do, i understand your points, but if you want simplicity, functionality and reliability then stick with blogger after all its made by google :)
interesting article.
I currently host my company's blog on Blogger (
www.perceptivitystudio.blogspot.com) and after reading this, am trying to figure out the best way to switch over to my website domain (
www.perceptivitystudio.com). I can either: A) create a subdomain on my site (blog.perceptivitystudio.com) and redirect it to my Blogger page, or B) create a subdomain on my site and through the Blogger link by Fernando above, enter that subdomain in the 'Custom Domain' option in Blogger. Would either of these options work better or worse for improving my SEO for my actual domain in lieu of helping Google?
Your post was very informative and painful as many others commented. I hope Google rapidly corrects this controlling blockade; otherwise they are surely headed down the slippery slope of becoming Microsoft II. I do not use Blogger, but this very well hidden predatory control practice is scary. If Google will do that here, what are doing elsewhere? That is the real problem.
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Nice post
Can you help because I am still on blogspot. 4 months a go one of my site has been delete by google for nothing reasons.
Should I chane to another address?
Great article. I definitely agree that one should have their blog on their own site
How can i have a blog added to my site ?
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Excellent article. Most people would charge you for info like this. Only hub spot lets you get it for free.