Your Business Marketing Blog: Same or Separate Domain?
February 25th, 2010 Posted in BloggingSo, you have a business, and your business has a website. But your business’s website is unhappy lately because it doesn’t have many friends. On your search for a solution to this unhappiness, you meet a blog. You think, Ah! A blog is perfect for my business’s website, and you go to work creating a blog that will be compatible with your business-website relationship.
But then something goes wrong. Your business’s website and your blog get in a little tiff because the website thinks that the blog is getting all the attention. While this may be true, resulting in a 10 percent sales increase for your business, you decide that your business’s website and your blog need a little space to cool off. With some extra cash, you purchase a separate domain for your blog, and everyone’s happy (except for your website, but she’ll never be fully satisfied).
A separate blog-specific domain may work for some businesses but not all of them.
Here are some questions to consider when asking yourself the important blogging question, separate or same domain?
What’s the purpose of my blog?
Consider your intentions for creating a business blog. To reinforce your main brand? To focus on a specific product? Complement or supplement your website? Communicate directly with customers?
“Your business’s website and your blog get in a little tiff…”
Let’s say you have a business like EcoSMART. EcoSMART uses a same domain blog full of articles about bug identification, green living, and, of course, their organic insecticide spray. The point of the blog is to make sales, but they do so while showing the unique personalities and interests behind their business. Their blog articles encourage employee-customer discussion, and, overall, promote a sense of person to person contact rather than just person to computer or person to product.
However, consider creating an independent blog with a separate domain if you want a blog that is:
- Product-specific
- Not directly related to the purpose/interests of your business
- Focused on a subset of your business
You can check out Orient Watch USA’s blog for an example of a separate domain blog.
Keep in mind that if you choose to have a separate domain blog, you will need sufficient resources to fully market and promote it apart from your website. Whatever blog type you choose, you should incorporate blog specific marketing elements, which include being aware of your audience.
“Discover your audience—it’s definitely worth it….”
Who’s my audience?
Discovering your audience (if you haven’t already) will require some research, but it’s definitely worth it.
If your website and your blog aim to attract the same audience, then they should share the same domain. This will make your website more interesting and appealing to your viewers. However, if you have a website that sells cat and kitten products, don’t include a blog about your favorite dog products. That needs to appear in a separate domain (but you can link it to your main website if you want to).
“Your blog’s SEO status will start from the bottom and work its way up the numerical scale.”
How will this affect my SEO potential?
A blog adds content and value to your website. The more frequently updated content you post, the more search engine spiders will visit. Also, as more websites/blogs link to your website/blog, your SEO status will increase.
Again, this doesn’t mean your blog must be included on your website. If your blog domain is separate from your website domain, your blog’s SEO status will start from the bottom and work its way up the numerical scale as your website did. And remember, when your blog links to your main website, it can gain more value and credibility (and so can your website!).
So to wrap up…
Choosing a blog domain is sort of like life. Whatever path you choose, remember to keep your (blog’s) overall purpose in mind and everything else will fall into place.
| By Marlee Gallagher
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