Blog setup

[muirford]

There has been some back and forth on the PAII forum about blogs, and I would like to get swirt's opinion/advice - I may have asked a similar question before, actually, but now I am looking at it again.
I understand the difference between using blogger (a 'blogspot' domain) vs. having wordpress on my site in terms of the software you use. It seems there is also a way to have your own domain point to a google blogger page - google help topic on it. Some users of blogger this way - with a domain name blog.myinndomain.com - say that blog entries are indexed by google as if they are new and separate pages and content on your domain, thus increasing your page rank. Others say the only way to really do that is to use wordpress or similar software and put the pages on your website. What is your understanding, and suggestion for the best way to host a blog?

 

[Morticia]

I heard about that on the PAII site. I thought about pointing my blogspot blog to my website & vice versa so that, yes, the domain says 'blog.mywebsite.com' but pulls up the blogger blog. I'm going to have to read up on that link you posted.
My understanding is that the back and forth on PAII came about from someone contacting Acorn's customers and telling them that they were being led astray if they were being told to use anything other than wordpress. I think the kerfuffle had something to do with the email posted in this blog. (But maybe you know that already.)

 

[muirford]

I heard about that on the PAII site. I thought about pointing my blogspot blog to my website & vice versa so that, yes, the domain says 'blog.mywebsite.com' but pulls up the blogger blog. I'm going to have to read up on that link you posted.
My understanding is that the back and forth on PAII came about from someone contacting Acorn's customers and telling them that they were being led astray if they were being told to use anything other than wordpress. I think the kerfuffle had something to do with the email posted in this blog. (But maybe you know that already.).

I did see that blog with that email today, and the original posting about wordpress on PAII was from the same individual. Some of the PAII folks have ventured into the fray, but honestly I am not sure that all of them know what they are talking about from a technical standpoint. I wanted to hear swirt's opinion, because my DH doesn't buy that it matters much either way, but he is admittedly not an SEO expert.
It seems easy enough to direct from your own domain to blogger but does it really make a difference? One of the PAII posters talks about it changing the page rank of his site - and again, does it change the overall rank or just those pages? I am still unclear on the cause and effect of it all.

 

[JunieBJones (JBJ)]

I heard about that on the PAII site. I thought about pointing my blogspot blog to my website & vice versa so that, yes, the domain says 'blog.mywebsite.com' but pulls up the blogger blog. I'm going to have to read up on that link you posted.
My understanding is that the back and forth on PAII came about from someone contacting Acorn's customers and telling them that they were being led astray if they were being told to use anything other than wordpress. I think the kerfuffle had something to do with the email posted in this blog. (But maybe you know that already.).

I did see that blog with that email today, and the original posting about wordpress on PAII was from the same individual. Some of the PAII folks have ventured into the fray, but honestly I am not sure that all of them know what they are talking about from a technical standpoint. I wanted to hear swirt's opinion, because my DH doesn't buy that it matters much either way, but he is admittedly not an SEO expert.
It seems easy enough to direct from your own domain to blogger but does it really make a difference? One of the PAII posters talks about it changing the page rank of his site - and again, does it change the overall rank or just those pages? I am still unclear on the cause and effect of it all.
.

I did see that blog with that email today, and the original posting about wordpress on PAII was from the same individual. Some of the PAII folks have ventured into the fray, but honestly I am not sure that all of them know what they are talking about from a technical standpoint. I wanted to hear swirt's opinion, because my DH doesn't buy that it matters much either way, but he is admittedly not an SEO expert.
It seems easy enough to direct from your own domain to blogger but does it really make a difference? One of the PAII posters talks about it changing the page rank of his site - and again, does it change the overall rank or just those pages? I am still unclear on the cause and effect of it all.

I would like to hear about it also. I recall Swirt saying it didn't matter as long as you mentioned the B&B name and URL in your blog posts. ?
I do know that whenever I google just about anything around here 'we come up' and even B&B this town, B&B this state, B&B this area, we come up from the blog articles...so that is valuable in itself. I will wait to see what our guru has to say.

 

[muirford]

I heard about that on the PAII site. I thought about pointing my blogspot blog to my website & vice versa so that, yes, the domain says 'blog.mywebsite.com' but pulls up the blogger blog. I'm going to have to read up on that link you posted.
My understanding is that the back and forth on PAII came about from someone contacting Acorn's customers and telling them that they were being led astray if they were being told to use anything other than wordpress. I think the kerfuffle had something to do with the email posted in this blog. (But maybe you know that already.).

I did see that blog with that email today, and the original posting about wordpress on PAII was from the same individual. Some of the PAII folks have ventured into the fray, but honestly I am not sure that all of them know what they are talking about from a technical standpoint. I wanted to hear swirt's opinion, because my DH doesn't buy that it matters much either way, but he is admittedly not an SEO expert.
It seems easy enough to direct from your own domain to blogger but does it really make a difference? One of the PAII posters talks about it changing the page rank of his site - and again, does it change the overall rank or just those pages? I am still unclear on the cause and effect of it all.
.

I did see that blog with that email today, and the original posting about wordpress on PAII was from the same individual. Some of the PAII folks have ventured into the fray, but honestly I am not sure that all of them know what they are talking about from a technical standpoint. I wanted to hear swirt's opinion, because my DH doesn't buy that it matters much either way, but he is admittedly not an SEO expert.
It seems easy enough to direct from your own domain to blogger but does it really make a difference? One of the PAII posters talks about it changing the page rank of his site - and again, does it change the overall rank or just those pages? I am still unclear on the cause and effect of it all.

I would like to hear about it also. I recall Swirt saying it didn't matter as long as you mentioned the B&B name and URL in your blog posts. ?
I do know that whenever I google just about anything around here 'we come up' and even B&B this town, B&B this state, B&B this area, we come up from the blog articles...so that is valuable in itself. I will wait to see what our guru has to say.
.

One of the wordpress devotees, an innkeeper, said that it (wordpress) is better because she gets a google alert every time she writes a blog post. Well, I get one of those every time I write a post on blogger. And another says that the blog.myinndomain.com helps his page rank. Well, his domain name is www. myinndomain .com, not blog. myinndomain. com, so how does that help? He's a blogger devotee. He also has a big-time broken link on his blogger to his own website, so I'm not sure I want to take advice from him (Bree knows him better and he might be really knowledgeable but I'm just not feeling it). I know the software pusher of wordpress for B&Bs very well, but he's a salesman. Swirt might be the only person I really trust to give me the full and honest scoop.

 

[Morticia]

I heard about that on the PAII site. I thought about pointing my blogspot blog to my website & vice versa so that, yes, the domain says 'blog.mywebsite.com' but pulls up the blogger blog. I'm going to have to read up on that link you posted.
My understanding is that the back and forth on PAII came about from someone contacting Acorn's customers and telling them that they were being led astray if they were being told to use anything other than wordpress. I think the kerfuffle had something to do with the email posted in this blog. (But maybe you know that already.).

I did see that blog with that email today, and the original posting about wordpress on PAII was from the same individual. Some of the PAII folks have ventured into the fray, but honestly I am not sure that all of them know what they are talking about from a technical standpoint. I wanted to hear swirt's opinion, because my DH doesn't buy that it matters much either way, but he is admittedly not an SEO expert.
It seems easy enough to direct from your own domain to blogger but does it really make a difference? One of the PAII posters talks about it changing the page rank of his site - and again, does it change the overall rank or just those pages? I am still unclear on the cause and effect of it all.
.

And how important is page rank anyway?

 

[swirt]

Let me start with the basics...it doesn't really matter.
Now on to the nitty gritty details.
For many years Google has treated a subdomain (blog.mydomain.com) as being a separate website. So whether you use myblog.blogspot.com or myblog.mywebsite.com, the effect on the mainsite's pagerank would be the same. Pagerank is dependent on incoming links to a page so whether you have 20 blog pages coming from myblog.blogspot.com or 20 pages coming from myblog.mydomain.com the incoming value of pagerank would be the same. It has much more to do with how many incoming links are coming TO the blog which then lead links to your site.
Some users of blogger this way - with a domain name blog.myinndomain.com - say that blog entries are indexed by google as if they are new and separate pages and content on your domain, thus increasing your page rank.
They are indexed as separate pages if you choose the option in blogger that lets the blog create separate pages for each post. This has nothing to do with pagerank.
Others say the only way to really do that is to use wordpress or similar software and put the pages on your website.
Google makes no distinction as to whether your pages are literally on your server, or are on your subdomain but on a different server like Google's.
The real issue is that toolbar Pagerank (PR) is pretty worthless as any kind of indication of where a site will appear for a given search. Low PR pages routinely beat out high PR pages. Pagerank is one of roughly 100 factors that are used to determine where a page appears in the search engine results (SERPS). It is more useful to look at the health of a site in terms of how the PR flows to internal pages.
If people really want the blog pages to carry the most value for growing a large site, the best setup is not a subdomain. A subdirectory would be better (www mydomain.com/myblog/) Though the effect is pretty marginal and often a bit harder to set up.
If you are going to go to the trouble of hosting your own blog, then the best benefit can be had from setting it up with its own domain name (especially if it is slightly off topic ... like maybe a travel guide as opposed to just the B&B blog)
To give this a little perspective... I have two blogs that I use. One is set up as its own domain name, the other is set up as a blogspot domain.
If I didn't do web work for a living, I'd be more inclined to use a hosted blog because most people don't take the time / effort to keep their own installation up-to-date with security updates and such. It just increases the likelihood that it will get hijacked.

 

[swirt]

I heard about that on the PAII site. I thought about pointing my blogspot blog to my website & vice versa so that, yes, the domain says 'blog.mywebsite.com' but pulls up the blogger blog. I'm going to have to read up on that link you posted.
My understanding is that the back and forth on PAII came about from someone contacting Acorn's customers and telling them that they were being led astray if they were being told to use anything other than wordpress. I think the kerfuffle had something to do with the email posted in this blog. (But maybe you know that already.).

I did see that blog with that email today, and the original posting about wordpress on PAII was from the same individual. Some of the PAII folks have ventured into the fray, but honestly I am not sure that all of them know what they are talking about from a technical standpoint. I wanted to hear swirt's opinion, because my DH doesn't buy that it matters much either way, but he is admittedly not an SEO expert.
It seems easy enough to direct from your own domain to blogger but does it really make a difference? One of the PAII posters talks about it changing the page rank of his site - and again, does it change the overall rank or just those pages? I am still unclear on the cause and effect of it all.
.

And how important is page rank anyway?
.

And how important is page rank anyway?

Very little in the sense that these other people are refering to it.

 

[swirt]

Separate from pagerank is the perceived value.... blog.mydomain.com, or www mydomain.com/blog or www someotherdomain.com tends to have some perceived value as it looks to be more "professional" than blog.blogspot.com There is some value in this kind of branding and that should be a bigger concern than toolbar-PR.

 

[happykeeper]

Just can not beat the timing of this thread and if I am hijacking a little- please forgive me. We just launched our new blog as part of our website redesign. The design itself is only through the first half of the site, but the blog is up and running. We have put a button for the blog on the first page and we have added an inline frame on another page that actually shows the live blog.
Please feel free to go to the site if would you like and see what we have done
www.kau-hawaii.com
My research said to get a new domain and use wordpress. We went with inmotions for the hosting because they are business friendly. We plan to take advantage of their other features related to commerce.
We are trying to get into the blog spirit! It looks like it is going to be a great way to show of our partners and our farmers and stuff like that. It may turn into a way to sell their stuff and it will make it easy for us to add events and what all.

 

[swirt]

Just can not beat the timing of this thread and if I am hijacking a little- please forgive me. We just launched our new blog as part of our website redesign. The design itself is only through the first half of the site, but the blog is up and running. We have put a button for the blog on the first page and we have added an inline frame on another page that actually shows the live blog.
Please feel free to go to the site if would you like and see what we have done
www.kau-hawaii.com
My research said to get a new domain and use wordpress. We went with inmotions for the hosting because they are business friendly. We plan to take advantage of their other features related to commerce.
We are trying to get into the blog spirit! It looks like it is going to be a great way to show of our partners and our farmers and stuff like that. It may turn into a way to sell their stuff and it will make it easy for us to add events and what all..

That's great knkbnb. Welcome to the world of inn blogging. You may have already seen this, but just in case you didn't. Here are some guidelines I put together for B&B Blogging.
and we have added an inline frame on another page that actually shows the live blog.
I'd get rid of the inline frame. It doesn't count as a link and will not help promote your blog (search engine wise - they don't read iframes). The link above the iframe helps, but really needs better text in the link. Link text (anchor text) is very important and your own site is one of only a few places where you have absolute control over anchor text. Don't lose the oportunity by using the url as the link. From a user point of view, the iframe is too small to give any kind of good experience with the blog, especially when it gets longer and you start incorportating photos in the posts.
On a side note, I'm noticing very odd behavior with your side-bar navigation links, they are jumping all over the place when you try to use them. When you add new pages to your main site, avoid using spaces in the file names. %20 makes a mess of things. Forego a day or two of scheduled blogging time and get your page titles in order. That is the most important component of onpage SEO and currently "home" and "news" and even "hawaiibedandbreakfast" are not doing much for you.
Back to the blog, a couple of suggestions:

1. Remove the part about "proudly powered by Wordpress" It is just an invitation to hackers.
2. On your blogroll, get rid of all the links to wordpress related stuff. These are default links that have nothing to do with your audience.
3. Get a link to your own B&B in the sidebar as well as some info about you or the business. You want to establish credibility. Authorless blogs have less street credit among human visitors.
4. Give your blog a name...a url is not a name. "Inn Hawaii" is preferable to "innhawaii.org" Better yet would be something like "Inn Hawaii: Your Island Visitors Guide" that gives it a name and some meaning. The blog name shows up in the title which is what shows up as the link in a search. You want it to be meaningful, both to help it show up, and to help it attract people to click on it.
5. There is a setting in wordpress to have it use the name of the post as the page address. Turn that on. You want people to see innhawaii.org/getting-ready rather than innhawaii.org/?p=4

 

[happykeeper]

Just can not beat the timing of this thread and if I am hijacking a little- please forgive me. We just launched our new blog as part of our website redesign. The design itself is only through the first half of the site, but the blog is up and running. We have put a button for the blog on the first page and we have added an inline frame on another page that actually shows the live blog.
Please feel free to go to the site if would you like and see what we have done
www.kau-hawaii.com
My research said to get a new domain and use wordpress. We went with inmotions for the hosting because they are business friendly. We plan to take advantage of their other features related to commerce.
We are trying to get into the blog spirit! It looks like it is going to be a great way to show of our partners and our farmers and stuff like that. It may turn into a way to sell their stuff and it will make it easy for us to add events and what all..

That's great knkbnb. Welcome to the world of inn blogging. You may have already seen this, but just in case you didn't. Here are some guidelines I put together for B&B Blogging.
and we have added an inline frame on another page that actually shows the live blog.
I'd get rid of the inline frame. It doesn't count as a link and will not help promote your blog (search engine wise - they don't read iframes). The link above the iframe helps, but really needs better text in the link. Link text (anchor text) is very important and your own site is one of only a few places where you have absolute control over anchor text. Don't lose the oportunity by using the url as the link. From a user point of view, the iframe is too small to give any kind of good experience with the blog, especially when it gets longer and you start incorportating photos in the posts.
On a side note, I'm noticing very odd behavior with your side-bar navigation links, they are jumping all over the place when you try to use them. When you add new pages to your main site, avoid using spaces in the file names. %20 makes a mess of things. Forego a day or two of scheduled blogging time and get your page titles in order. That is the most important component of onpage SEO and currently "home" and "news" and even "hawaiibedandbreakfast" are not doing much for you.
Back to the blog, a couple of suggestions:

1. Remove the part about "proudly powered by Wordpress" It is just an invitation to hackers.
2. On your blogroll, get rid of all the links to wordpress related stuff. These are default links that have nothing to do with your audience.
3. Get a link to your own B&B in the sidebar as well as some info about you or the business. You want to establish credibility. Authorless blogs have less street credit among human visitors.
4. Give your blog a name...a url is not a name. "Inn Hawaii" is preferable to "innhawaii.org" Better yet would be something like "Inn Hawaii: Your Island Visitors Guide" that gives it a name and some meaning. The blog name shows up in the title which is what shows up as the link in a search. You want it to be meaningful, both to help it show up, and to help it attract people to click on it.
5. There is a setting in wordpress to have it use the name of the post as the page address. Turn that on. You want people to see innhawaii.org/getting-ready rather than innhawaii.org/?p=4

.

Great stuff! I am getting to work on it right away

 

[swirt]

Just can not beat the timing of this thread and if I am hijacking a little- please forgive me. We just launched our new blog as part of our website redesign. The design itself is only through the first half of the site, but the blog is up and running. We have put a button for the blog on the first page and we have added an inline frame on another page that actually shows the live blog.
Please feel free to go to the site if would you like and see what we have done
www.kau-hawaii.com
My research said to get a new domain and use wordpress. We went with inmotions for the hosting because they are business friendly. We plan to take advantage of their other features related to commerce.
We are trying to get into the blog spirit! It looks like it is going to be a great way to show of our partners and our farmers and stuff like that. It may turn into a way to sell their stuff and it will make it easy for us to add events and what all..

That's great knkbnb. Welcome to the world of inn blogging. You may have already seen this, but just in case you didn't. Here are some guidelines I put together for B&B Blogging.
and we have added an inline frame on another page that actually shows the live blog.
I'd get rid of the inline frame. It doesn't count as a link and will not help promote your blog (search engine wise - they don't read iframes). The link above the iframe helps, but really needs better text in the link. Link text (anchor text) is very important and your own site is one of only a few places where you have absolute control over anchor text. Don't lose the oportunity by using the url as the link. From a user point of view, the iframe is too small to give any kind of good experience with the blog, especially when it gets longer and you start incorportating photos in the posts.
On a side note, I'm noticing very odd behavior with your side-bar navigation links, they are jumping all over the place when you try to use them. When you add new pages to your main site, avoid using spaces in the file names. %20 makes a mess of things. Forego a day or two of scheduled blogging time and get your page titles in order. That is the most important component of onpage SEO and currently "home" and "news" and even "hawaiibedandbreakfast" are not doing much for you.
Back to the blog, a couple of suggestions:

1. Remove the part about "proudly powered by Wordpress" It is just an invitation to hackers.
2. On your blogroll, get rid of all the links to wordpress related stuff. These are default links that have nothing to do with your audience.
3. Get a link to your own B&B in the sidebar as well as some info about you or the business. You want to establish credibility. Authorless blogs have less street credit among human visitors.
4. Give your blog a name...a url is not a name. "Inn Hawaii" is preferable to "innhawaii.org" Better yet would be something like "Inn Hawaii: Your Island Visitors Guide" that gives it a name and some meaning. The blog name shows up in the title which is what shows up as the link in a search. You want it to be meaningful, both to help it show up, and to help it attract people to click on it.
5. There is a setting in wordpress to have it use the name of the post as the page address. Turn that on. You want people to see innhawaii.org/getting-ready rather than innhawaii.org/?p=4

.

Great stuff! I am getting to work on it right away
.

This should help with better page titles, this will help with basic B&B SEO.

 

[swirt]

Updating this here: In the debate over subdomain vs subdirectory for a blog, the issue from the search engine point of view no longer exists (for Google anyway). Since Google started, it has treated a subdomain as a separate website from the main domain. As of a few days back, Google now treats a subdomain as part of the main domain. So whether you use blog.mydomain,com or www.mydomain,com/blog makes no difference. It is now all counted as the same site.
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/08/reorganizing-internal-vs-external.html
There are still considerations in terms of branding or ease of configuration, but there is no longer a google based reason to chose one over the other.
WARNING: Whatever you do, don't go changing anything you are already doing and screw up your site's history.

 

[muirford]

Updating this here: In the debate over subdomain vs subdirectory for a blog, the issue from the search engine point of view no longer exists (for Google anyway). Since Google started, it has treated a subdomain as a separate website from the main domain. As of a few days back, Google now treats a subdomain as part of the main domain. So whether you use blog.mydomain,com or www.mydomain,com/blog makes no difference. It is now all counted as the same site.
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/08/reorganizing-internal-vs-external.html
There are still considerations in terms of branding or ease of configuration, but there is no longer a google based reason to chose one over the other.
WARNING: Whatever you do, don't go changing anything you are already doing and screw up your site's history..

There are still considerations in terms of branding or ease of configuration, but there is no longer a google based reason to chose one over the other.
WARNING: Whatever you do, don't go changing anything you are already doing and screw up your site's history.

Thanks for the update, swirt!

 

[EmptyNest]

Updating this here: In the debate over subdomain vs subdirectory for a blog, the issue from the search engine point of view no longer exists (for Google anyway). Since Google started, it has treated a subdomain as a separate website from the main domain. As of a few days back, Google now treats a subdomain as part of the main domain. So whether you use blog.mydomain,com or www.mydomain,com/blog makes no difference. It is now all counted as the same site.
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/08/reorganizing-internal-vs-external.html
There are still considerations in terms of branding or ease of configuration, but there is no longer a google based reason to chose one over the other.
WARNING: Whatever you do, don't go changing anything you are already doing and screw up your site's history..

We can always count on your to "clear up the muddy waters" in a the most understandable way. Thank you!

 

[toddburme]

Are you sure that this is an algorythm change and not just a structural change to webmaster tools? Google is not always clear on when it is one or the other.

 

[EmptyNest]

Are you sure that this is an algorythm change and not just a structural change to webmaster tools? Google is not always clear on when it is one or the other..

SWIRT always knows what he is talking about.

 

[swirt]

Are you sure that this is an algorythm change and not just a structural change to webmaster tools? Google is not always clear on when it is one or the other..

Are you sure that this is an algorythm change and not just a structural change to webmaster tools? Google is not always clear on when it is one or the other.

Good question. Indications are that it applies to both search architecture and webmaster tools. The simplest example is doing a site:mydomain.com now returns all indexed subdomains of a domain. It is not absolute proof that it applies to search, but it is a pretty strong indicator.

 

[JBloggs]

More on this subject, which comments below that might be valuable as well - click here (not sure if these are the same comments) but here tis anyway.