With so much conflicting advice thrust upon us, it’s no wonder that many of you are really not sure whether your blog should be an integral part of your website, or totally separate with its own domain.

We are often asked which is better for SEO and getting a good Google ranking – for a blog to be part of the website, or something quite separate. And to this the answer is always that your website and blog must be written with your visitors, be they potential clients, members, or whatever, in mind. What is going to be most appealing to them and encourage them to take the action you want them to take? Successful Internet marketing has this at its core.

So to answer this particular question – it depends! What makes the most sense? Is the blog highly relevant and directly linked to your website? Does it make sense for it to be within your website? If so, then that is where it should be. If instead it makes more sense for your blog to be on its own domain name, then that is what you should do.

There are many considerations and it’s tempting to write an essay on this. But I’ll try to keep it succinct.

A common misconception is that having links from a separate blog to your website will be most useful for a higher listing on Google. Well that is not true.

If you want to give your SEO a boost you’re better off having your blog within your website and concentrating on attracting some genuinely quality links to it – those individual links are regarded more highly than having lots of links from one place. And having a blog with fresh, relevant content is going to appeal to your visitors, and, as it happens, to the search engines too.

In nutshell terms, Google places a value on each link from a website. The first link from a good website or blog to another is worth, let’s say, 1, and then any further links go down in value because your site has already been given the recommendation of that 1 point. So – if you instead have 10 links from different websites or blogs, that is of a higher value as far as Google, etc are concerned. Mark White has explained it very well in his blog post here – with some excellent graphics that make it very easy to understand. Meanwhile, your active blog, full of highly relevant content is going to appeal – to visitors and, yes, to the search engines – they will take note and reward you justly.

So – the best thing you can do is to focus on your intended visitors – offer them what they want to see – give them fresh, relevant content (and a blog is perfect for this) and you will reap the rewards.

The issue of relevancy and how to understand that we’ll cover next week…

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