Hello - I am thinking of doing the following: setting up a blog on my own domain (I am learning on blogs, rss feeds, and broadcasts); I use Frontpage (I know, I know - well, now I know, but my webmaster experience is all of about 1 month...). I would like to blog using wordpress and my server's fantastico scripting (tool?). My question is this: I have read that what formerly used to aid getting the word out for one's site - a ton of keyword optimized, relevant pages linking to other pages in one's site - is now being discounted by google heavily, in favor of external links, from different domains. See: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=800 Would having one's blog on one's domain fit within this category? How does the community feel about setting up a blog on one's site as a means to provide fresh content to the web, whenever any new updates are posted, thereby aiding one's SERP's? (Also - if anyone knows if there are issues using Frontpage with Wordpress, and Fantastico, on a server where in order to set up my files, I enabled FP extensions and obliterated some things per Lunarpages' directions, I'd appreciate it... That was a heck of a run-on sentence.) Many thanks, Paul
I think GoogleBot would realise pretty quickly that the blog and the site were "as one" regardless of what you do, so for the sake of your users and yourself, I'd put the blog on your domain. However by making the feed available and by writing quality content you can get the inbound links you require to each of the articles and build it up that way. And those are the inbounds that GoogleBot will reward you for!
Tnank you, Sarah - so, you're saying, since Google will know a subdomain is related to the domain, it will, for Google's purposes, be considered internal linking, correct? If so, thanks (actually, thanks either way, for responding). I do think I remember reading this somewhere as well. Actually, what I am thinking of doing is adding two things to my website - a blog and a forum - the blog to be more freewheeling, and for the rss/update and pinging capabilities, the forum to be a more logical place to post by various categories. (My site is an outdoor gear-oriented site), so, in my case, a forum which divides by my various sports categories, say, fishing - and within each fishing category, a section on species, specific techniques (e.g., ice fishing), regional reports, etc. The forum will be more of a static thing, the blog, well, what I said above - a way of informing the web via feeds and pings. If I hear you right, the benefit is less the "fresh posting of content" gold-google stars from a separate domain, but the internal links from the articles on the blogs being picked up via pings, correct?
I'd be inclined to make the blog just another section on the forum but that's a different decision. Google allows subdomain to be different sites but where it's clearly serving the interests of another site (even on a diff. domain) it will treat the links differently I believe. They're still good links but more like internal links than inbound links. The fresh content is still all important - and that's regardless of blog, forum or 100% static html. Fresh works well - on an old domain The articles on the blogs will be picked up via pings or plain old rss refreshes.
Thank you, Sarah - particularly the blog imbedded within the forum, excellent. I hope you don't mind if I coopt the idea! So, if I could run this by you - for ease of my viewers, I'm bagging the subdomain idea. I'm creating a folder in my root directory and calling it "forum," to be developed, including the blog. These are the only directory structural changes I'll be making. Make sense?
Great - and let us know when it's up so we can come visit - especially the moutain biking and bmx sections!!! If the main part of your site is the normal selling bit then yes, put the forum in a subdirectory - but from what you've said don't call it forum because it's not going to be used as a classic forum. Call it articles or something like that that gives users and googlebot some idea of what it will actually be getting.
Sarah, I guess I am envisioning what I know of a classic forum, and a blog - the forum categorized as forums are, with members and users, the whole bit, free to post information, such as hourly fishing reports, etc.; and with one of the categories being a blog, within the forum. Are you saying because forums and forum software are themselves a whole other thing, that I won't be developing a classic forum? If so, maybe something like "community resources..." Or, now that I think of it, I do have a "latest-articles" page, which is a list of the latest articles in each of my several categories (fishing, hunting, camping, climbing, etc.). Maybe it just makes better sense to create another category on this page, the "blog." Thanks again - so much to learn and to know; this is all interesting. (Sorry to say my site doesn't really deal in BMX - mostly, wilderness oriented material and gear... Paul