was wondering if I use a free site to make my website, ex. www.url.wordpress.com or www.url.blogspot.com will these still rank high in google or does google see them as less important therefore they won't rank as high as just a www.url.com domain. Thanks
I personally think that you should get your own domain. Blogspot subdomains do rank high in SERPs, but people suggest to get our own domain. That way, you will build backlinks for your own site and not for some subdomain on someone else's site.
Personally I have a few friends that don't like spending money on domain names since they still dominate their niche without buying a domain. One in paticular is grizzly which is on top of the make money niche his domain>> http://makemoneyforbeginners.blogspot.com/ no go to google and type in make money and see what address is on top. After seeing this I realized all the hype about buying a domain name was useless. When I checked adwords for exact phrase monthly there are 300,000 searches for those words. He is second for make money online which has 200,000 searches monthly and he did not need to buy a domain so if you really want your own domain go ahead, but this gives some pretty good proof that having a www.yourdomain.blogspot.com will not stop you from dominating a niche.
You will never 'feel' like an independent blogperson if your domain leaches off wordpress or blogger.com, it simply doesn't look proffessional, and you'll leak clicks through blogger's top navigation bar. As a result you'll see less clickthroughs.
Thanks everyone, I do understand that I'll leak some of my clicks away but that is fine as long as I can keep it all free.