The advantages of setting up and maintaining a blog has been quick to spread across the diverse internet population. 2008 has witnessed an explosion in Blogs on the internet. The number of blogs has increased manifold and quality blogs continue to command a large proportion of the overall Internet traffic.

Web design companies and search engine marketing experts have long debated the benefits a blog can bring to a website or a business. We too have discussed the advantages of having a blog on your website in many of our previous posts. From professional bloggers & online marketing exerts to small businesses; the benefits of having a blog on your website is acknowledged by all.

When you are looking to set up a blog on your website, one of the first questions that will arise is whether to install a blog on your main website or on a separate website. Each approach has its advantages.
Adding a Blog on Your Main Website or a Separate website

You can either start a blog by creating an account on one of the many available blog platforms such as Blogger .Com or WordPress.com or by installing your own blog software on your existing website. Setting up a blog as a part of your existing website (in a sub folder of your website) is a more professional approach and often preferred by those who wish to use their blog as a tool to boost their website’s rank on search engines.

Search engine ranking

Installing a blog in a sub-folder of your existing domain name also provides search engine ranking benefits to your main website. Any new content that is added to your blog will be treated as new content part of your main website. Blog posts are indexed much faster than regular web pages. It thus helps promote better indexing and visibility of your parent website, if the blog is installed on the same domain name.

Brand focus

On the other hand some company’s or website owners can choose to start a blog on a completely new domain name. This can help if you wish to differentiate between the branding of your website and that of your blog. If the blog you are setting up is not directly related to the content on your main website, then you may not wish to combine the two on the same domain name.

If you want to focus on enforcing a collective brand for your company rather than creating a new brand for your blog, installing a blog as a part of your main website will help. If a blog is installed in a sub folder of your existing website, the blog URL will include your primary domain name in the address bar and appear as a cohesive entity.

Cost

Another common reason for setting up an external blog outside of your main company website is the possibility for using one of the many available free online blog hosting services such as Blogger or Word Press. Most leading social networking websites such as Face book also allow users to set up their own blog using their website platform. These services are usually free whereas setting up a blog on your main website or private domain name will require web hosting space and technical infrastructure.

Technical resources

If you are setting up a blog on your main website or domain name, you will require a certain level of technical skills in order to install the blog and add the database. If you are starting a blog using one of the free blog platforms then no software installation is required and a blog can be set up in a few easy steps.

Link benefits

If you put in time and effort to write quality content on your blog, your articles will easily attract back links. If you host your blog on your main website then all back-links will benefit your main website. If your blog is on an external domain name or website then back-links will not be directly passed on to your main website. Your main website can still benefit if you are able to leverage PR and link benefits through cross linking your external blog and main website. However your externally hosted blog will need to be fairly successful in order for cross linking benefit to be meaningful.