How quick can I get results from a blog that is not hosted on my website, the blog is 9 months old. My website is a channel advisor multichannel site and it has limitations for seo, and a blog is one of them.
So it looks like my only option is to use my old wordrpess blog that is 9 months old and add lots of new content and deep link it to my actual website
Is there a massive disadvantage of not having a blog hosted on your website server?
Or can you still achieve big results from an externally hosted blog?
My actual website that the blog will link to is 6 years old and has great ranks already, just want to get more content on the main site regularly
Ideally, your blog should be hosted on your main site URL. One of the benefits of blogging is that it’s a great way of adding fresh new content to your site, which Google loves. If the blog is hosted elsewhere, you won’t get this benefit.
However, if you can create a blog that becomes trusted and achieves good results (in the SERPs) in its own right, then you can use is as a way to direct traffic and links to your main site. You won’t get any SEO benefit, but you may be able to increase the volume of traffic to your main site.
No, makes no difference what server it’s on. It’s on a different URL though right? That will make a difference.
Yes, some people try to create this situation artificially as a way to boost rankings. IMO this blog would be better on your main site.
One of my favourite SEO myths ‘fresh content boosts rankings’… wish it was true, I could just add content to my site faster than anyone else and rank number one… no … wait… a eureka moment! That’s why it ISN’T true!!!
Thanks for your reply, unfortunately because of the systems I use I can’t host the blog on my url it will have a different url. Am I wasting my seo efforts promoting this blog, google has been sending about 20 visitors a month from this blog to my site so there is some activity.
So question is should i continue pushing this blog or just keep posting articles directly to article sites?
I actually have to disagree here! Fresh content is a very important part of SEO! What would Google prefer to show in their results - a site that hasn’t been updated in two years, or a site that regularly updates its content? As a customer of Google (i.e. a searcher), I would rather visit a site that has up to date content. Google understands that.
I’m not saying it’s the biggest or only influencing factor on search engine results, but it should be something that is undertaken as part of an website/online marketing strategy.
And unless you work for Google or another major SE and have access to its algorithm, how can you say with such certainty that it’s a ‘myth’?
Anyway, going back to the main point of this thread. If maintaining this blog isn’t taking too much time, I would recommend sticking with it. If it’s starting to generate traffic to your main site, then I’d say it’s worth it. Just keep an eye on the traffic it sends and the quality of said traffic.
You’re making the mistake of thinking that a site not updated regularly can’t be useful, Google don’t care about ‘fresh’, they care about useful. If your site happens to do both that’s fine, that’s how most Authority blogs and news sites rank well so quickly but it’s because Google has identified them as sites that need to be treated like that. But… if they ranked any old blogs purely on how often they were updated then it would be easy to spoof rankings and Google don’t want that.
What about a train timetable site? It will hardly ever change but it’s very useful, should it lose rankings to a site just because it doesn’t get updated very often? No.
Be useful, don’t be regular. If you’re useful you’ll get the rankings you deserve. Spamming your own site with content just because you think there’s a fresh content boost will just be a waste of your time unless that content is useful.
Haven’t heard this one for years, the funniest thing is I could just turn it around on you but I’m not going to. No, I don’t know the exact algorithm but do I understand what Google want and the basics of how they acheive it? You betcha.
I do agree that it’s about useful content. No one likes spam or content for the sake of content. But I have to say that I can’t think of a topic that never ever changes. Take Wikipedia for example. Essentially that’s an encyclopaedia. Now if I needed to find out about a particular topic I could dig out my old copy of Encarta which hasn’t changed since the mid 90’s when I bought it. But I would rather go to Wikipedia because I know it’s the most up to date resource – and hence the most useful.
Nothing stays the same forever – even train timetables (although I wish they bloomin would!). I honestly don’t think that a site that had fantastic, useful content when it was first created five years ago could compete with a similar site that regularly updates it’s content. Especially at the rate the world is moving now – things change so much faster and the goal posts are constantly moving. If you manage a website, you need to keep on top of changes in your industry, and I feel that means ensuring your content is fresh, helpful and up to date. That’s what I, as a visitor, would find useful.
And no, I can’t say that I’m 100% correct on this – this is just my opinion based on what I’ve seen, experienced and read, and from my perspective as a customer of the search engines and my demands.
Would i not be better off adding the articles to the bottom of my actual product pages on my main wesbite, this way it would show as on site content immediately.
Like I said Dan, ask yourself ‘what do your users want and what’s the best way to deliver it to them?’ You gotta figure that out before you make any decisions about how to proceed.
But now you’re talking about lots more ranking signals than just how often a site is updated. For a new site that gets updated regularly to outrank a site that hasn’t changed in 5 years, it would have to prove to Google that it is now more useful than the old site because Google want to show their own users ‘Useful’, not ‘recent’ (unless the two are both true). Now we’re tallking about backlinks, not how often it’s updated.
Believe me, if you did a search and all you got was what had been posted in the last half hour you wouldn’t use Google anymore. But if they were smart enough to take a load of other stuff into consideration too when deciding on the SERP return (which luckily they are) then your search return would be full of old and new content, all of it useful because Google have used other factors to determine that, not the freshness of the content.
Yeah this is true. If you have a good traffic on your independent site, you can have it redirected to your main one. Alternately, if you can make a blog on your existing site domain, then you should.
I honestly don’t think that a site that had fantastic, useful content when it was first created five years ago could compete with a similar site that regularly updates it’s content.
I don’t think that’s totally true because there is information that never does change therefore cannot be “updated” or always “fresh” - yet can remain useful and provide value for someone interested. For example, a recipe is a recipe. If you change it to “update” it, you’ve got a different recipe hence a different result. You can’t just “change” it to “update” it - a good one is timeless and always useful.
