Host your blog on your own domain

Posted by Anton Koekemoer on Feb 22, 2010 in Blogging

Many bloggers makes a major mistake with their blogs.  They use a free blogging service like WordPress.com or Blogger (blogspot.com) and they don’t use their own domain name or a dedicated domain for the blog. This is all well and fine but they lose the branding that comes from owning their own domain name.  After all, the objective of blog marketing is to brand yourself or your company as the experts in your niche industry.

Your blog options from best to worst are:

1. Host your blog on your primary domain together with your website such as http://blog.yoursite.com or http://www.yoursite.com/blog.
2. Host your blog on a seperate domain such as http://yourblog.com.
3. Use a free blogging service like WordPress.com or Blogger for your blog – http://yourblog.wordpress.com.

Even though point 1 and 2 is mentioned, by having your blog on your main website brings value to the whole domain. If you host your blog on  a dedicated domain, you gain the value of powerful backlinks to your website from a different domain.

Your blog visitors will be attracted if they find your blog posts which are broadcasted online with RSS (Real Simple Syndication). Search engines and blog aggregators will list your new content within minutes of publishing your new content. Many visitors that reads your blog will explore your website to see what you do and who you are.

Overall, your blog is a natural link magnet. If you write informative, original and interesting content, other bloggers and visitors will link to your blog as they reference to what your writing as they write about the same topic. These powerful links will not just help your blog rankings, it will help your primary website.

There’s ways tha tyou can add your Blogspot blog onto your website.  You can also display your WordPress.com blog on your website using RSS tools and iframes. If you really want to use these free tools, at least purchase your own domain.  You can forward (and mask) the domain to your blog.  This way visitors will see only your domain name when they visit your blog.