By success I mean lots of readers and traffic. The question is, do blogs by themselves (the only thing at the site. www.site.com) or blogs attached to a site with content (blog at www.site.com/blog with lots of content at www.site.com)?
Well, I don't know the technical details, but what I've observed is that the major factors responsible for the success (in terms of readers and traffic) of a blog are content and blog's visibility in search engines. There may be some technical differences in both 'blog site' and 'blog attached to a site', but if a blog is marketed rightly along with king content, it can rock irrespective of the fact that it's covering a whole domain or a part of it. Regards,
I don't see any improvement whether you use one or the other. As Analyst said...it comes down to content and marketing.
Another twist to it. Say I have a site: www.mysite.com. For SEO: Will it make sense to create a blog at blog.mysite.com (how much impact does the traffic have on rankings?) or Will it make sense to create a new blog website www.myblog.com and set links to your own website (www.mysite.com) from the blog. Ok, one more thing. If I do both with similar content, will it become a duplicate content problem? I am too confused on this. Please help.
Not a bad idea if the links on blog are related to it's content. Yes, it'll effect any one of your site in SE ranking as google throws the site with duplicate content at back, but this can be resolved if you just modify the post to a little extent while posting it second time, i.e. on other site/blog.
It all depends on what your site is as a focus. Its like asking whether a forum as part of a site is better than a forum as the main part of the site. If you are building a forum then focus on the forum. If your site is offering another service then your forum should be less prominant .
I have to agree it depends on what you have to offer, my personal blog is like site.com/blog..because I have a few main pages too... But in some small niche sites, I just have the blog and nothing else, and the free ones gotta be just blog anyhow..lol J
Great question! I've often wondered that myself. My blog is about online colleges, but most of the online college information sites out there are regular websites that MAY have a blog attached somewhere. I have often wondered if visitors who happen upon my site are turned off by the format... blog posts as opposed to the regular content provided by most other sites. I've even toyed with doing a separate site that operates along the lines of other sites, but then my site would be just like all the others.... so who knows. I like what a previous poster said... if the main point is a blog, do a blog. If it's a forum, do a forum. I can't argue with that kind of logic. So blogging it is!