Is there any SEO disadvantage in using a subdomain to host a blog on Wordpress or Blogger? I don't want to go to the trouble of creating a blog module for my site - I'd rather just set up a CNAME entry and point a subdomain to a free Wordpress or Blogger account. Will Google punish me for doing this by claiming that I have "duplicate content" - i.e. the intro text for each blog entry will be on my main site and the full details will be visible on Wordpress/Blogger? Is it better to incorporate the blog functionality into my main site? Are there any other potential disadvantages to this subdomain/external hosting approach using a free blog host?
There are a lot of advantages to self-hosting your blog.
You can do whatever you want with your own self-hosted blog. On Wordpress you could get banned and lose all of your content.
You can host ads or and do other commercial stuff not possible on Wordpress. (The free wordpress blog doesn't allow any advertisements other than their own ads).
Better ranking opportunity in search engines by using your own top-level domain.
You can modify your functionality at will.
It looks more professional and gives you bragging rights.
On Wordpress you may run up against bandwidth restrictions if your blog gets really popular - you won't be able to do anything about it.
Willem Obst answer makes some excellent points, but two serious accusations that are not correct. I know these are incorrect because I am part of the WordPress.com team.
Num 1. If there is a ToS issue, we work with our customers to resolve the issue. In the rare case, where a blog is suspended, the customer is still assisted with exporting their content.
Num 6.We have no bandwidth limits and never have.
Many companies use free WordPress.com for their blog. Here are some examples
http://wordpress.org/showcase/flavor/wordpresscom/
WordPress.com is also is a blogging community which gives you access to a large audience and the community features like the global tag pages.
It's a great way to get a blog going, and there is no lock in. Here is an example of a blog by some friends that started on WordPress.com and since moved to host it themselves to gain the additional flexibility Willem describes so well:
http://blog.bootuplabs.com/
Finally to the original question. It's a mixed bag.
The nay sayers to using a subdomain will focus on Google and other search engines generally treating the subdomain as it's own domain with it's own authority.
The pro subdomainers will focus on it being another opportunity for a result in Google and the search engines. As is the case for the "bootup labs" example. (Although, Google's Matt Cutts over a year ago promised this was changing.)
Unrelated to SEO, many teams use a subdomain or separate domain all together for web security reasons. You may notice that http://blog.flickr.net/ is on flickr.net instead of flickr.com primarily -- I understand -- for this reason.
No in one word
Actually a good idea. Self hosted blogs tend to have a lot integrated into them e.g autopinging
In answer to the question.... NO.
The question you asked is also a little ambiguous. Are you wanting to host your own blog ie run it on your own server under a subdomain, or are you wanting to add a CNAME entry that links to your blog.
There are benefits to both:
Running your own - Advantages:
You can control every aspect of it
You can change the design/layout as much as your coding ability can handle
If you have a fast server, your blog will be served to viewers extremely well
You can advertise on your own blog - Google Adwords/Adsense etc...
You can setup advanced analysis of traffic and see every little detail about everyone who visits your blog
You can tweak the SEO of your blog to the 'n'th degree
Running your own - Disdvantages:
Hosting a blog (especially a popular one) requires a pretty powerful web server
You have to maintain the blog and security of the blog eg. users and permissions
Dedicated Server hosting can be expensive
Hosting blogs use a lot of bandwidth
Using a third party blog - Advantages:
Generally free
No strain on your server/bandwidth
Security and permissions management is limited but managed by the host
Generally hosted blogs have an extremely user-friendly GUI
Using a third party blog - Disvantages:
Sometimes include advertising that benefits the host not your company/blog
Very limited ability to customise/edit the design of the blog
Limited control over the security and user management
Other hosts can choose to stop offering a blog hosting service
In regards to SEO and blogs:
Your blog is not going to suffer or be penalised by GOogle/Yahoo/Other search engines if you use a CNAME redirection to another host.
You will not get penalised by a search engine for duplicate content if the content is not completely duplicated on, for example if your main domain uses the title and summary of what is on your blog hosted on the subdomain.
If you adhere to the main SEO principles there is no reason why your blog would suffer on a subdomain:
Using relevant addressing methods eg. yourblog.yourdomain.com/title-of-blog-article.html
Use W3C compliant/correct XHTML/HTML/CSS code
Use appropriate and relevant META data (keywords, descriptions, titles) for the blog and the articles.
Relative linking instead of absolute linking
Hope this helped. If you have any other questions feel free to ask
Related
Web newbie. I'm setting up a family website for sharing photos, etc. I plan to purchase my own domain name and will rent space on some hosting platform. I'm thinking ahead and will eventually want to create two more websites (another family website for my father's side of the family and a personal one for me). The frugal side of me would like to limit the number of domains and hosts I have to purchase/rent.
I want the family websites to be hidden as much as possible (no SEO and requiring a login just to get to the main page), but I want my personal website to be public.
So far, what I've read says the above is difficult or cumbersome to do with wordpress multisite. If this is true, then is it safe to assume separate wordpress installs are more appropriate? Or, should I consider a new/different domain for my personal website?
Thanks,
Jim
I would:
Buy one domain example.com
Buy one hosting (shared or VPS if you have the skills)
Create multiple independent Wordpress, and use subdomain site1.example.com, site2.example.com
protect some websites with Htaccess (some free plugin may also do the trick, but with htaccess you are sure Crawler (like Google) won't access it.
There is a plugin called My private site which allows you to achieve what you are looking for:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/jonradio-private-site/
A full detailed step by step (blogpost) tutorial on how to make your site private is published here:
https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/how-to-make-your-wordpress-blog-completely-private/
We have a wordpress site which we are planning to serve in different language on different domains. I did a lot of research on Google and went through numerous articles regarding this topic. However, I can not decide where to start, so this forum is my last resort. Can anyone please guide me.
Here are facts which I hope will be useful to anyone willing to help:
The site content will be same for all domains
Different domain will serve different languages
Users who comes to our main site, which is in English will be given a option to switch to their regional domain
What I need help with are as follows:
How to do this? Would multisite be a good answer to this?
If multisite is the solution, will it slow down our site? Given that we have same plugin and content for all domains
Plugins for auto translations of the contents based on domain?
I really need to get this started, so any help is heartily welcome.
You can add the Weglot Plugin.
I am part of the co founding team, we are available to answer any questions and help.
Key features include:
- Easy integration: less than 3 minutes, then users only take care of translations
- Improved usability: a unique dashboard gathering all translations in a single place, offering the possibility to edit and purchase translations
- Complete and rich range of translations sources: a first layer of machine translation automatically offered at subscription; professional translations; users and their team members
- Optimized SEO: following Google best practice, Weglot creates unique URL (/en/page) for each language, all tags and meta translated,
- Fully compatible: Yoast, Woocommerce and many others
- Light plugin: keeping the full performance of the website
- 7/7 support: dedicated team only focusing on developing the best multilingual plugin experience
Is it possible to share blogroll links between different Wordpress Multi Network sites? I would like to link all sites to eachother (about 15) in a Network widget/menu on the right. All are pretty much in same niche.
I would not mind being able to manage some content as a Users database and Blogroll links centrally, I have been unable to find out how to do this.
It seems unique tables were generated per site, which makes me doubt if this is possible.
How can I get pretty statistics per subdomain? I don't want to create 15 sites in Analytics or Piwik, if this is no necessary.
Any tips for running Wordpress in an Networked environment are welcome.
There are a number of (unfortunately) premium plugins that will do as you ask:
Sitewide blogroll links
is purely a blogroll that can be centrally published. For something a bit more specific to the network, look into:
WP Social Blogroll
That one takes a little bit of doing to configure it, but it does work in Network mode.
For stats, you don't have a lot of good choices. I would tend to stick with Google Analytics, run a single master UA code and just use filters to shard off each of the network sites for reporting purposes. Depending on how your network is configured, there is (again, unfortunately) another premium plugin that specifically supports WordPress Network mode. If you are running it in sub-domains, that plugin should automatically track by sub-domain.
I need a intranet portal for a Repair factory in which 100 Technician worked.
The main purpose of this portal is "sharing technical information (like technical bulletins etc)".
I also create a simple website/portal with HTML,Javascript. Which is running sucessfully.
But Now we need a Blog like site in which Technician can share own experience/knowledge with other. for this requirement i tried with Joomla,wordpress, drupal etc.
firstly suggest me which platform is best? i have beginning knowledge of PHP, JavaScript and JQuery.
requirement:
Technician can post a article within one or more defined categaries.(like model,level of information,Electrical or mechnical etc.)
After submitting articles, it sent to the Technical Specialist or Technical Editor for approval.
after approved it is published to Blog with ranting,commenting option.
Which theme,plug-in is suitable?
Take a look at Plone (http://plone.org/), I think it fits perfectly for your needs.
Plone lets non-technical people create
and maintain information for a public
website or an intranet using only a
web browser. Plone is easy to
understand and use — allowing users to
be productive in just half an
hour — yet offers a wealth of
community-developed add-ons and
extensibility to keep meeting your
needs for years to come. "
For those looking these days and who want / need WordPress you can use Woffice (https://woffice.io/) or Thrive. Both have all these features.
I've been adding quite a few blogs to sites and I'm wondering if it's better to add blogging software on the site or use an external blogging service. The major reason I can think of adding a blog to site is if you want to customize it later on (other than look) such as more integration with the site. If I put it on the site, I'll probably use WordPress as I'm familiar with it.
Is there any major advantage to one method or the other?
I would go with putting the blog on your website itself. This will help with a number of things:
Transparency: Your users will feel as if they are on the same website, because they in fact are. Your blog will become simply an extension to your website. On the other hand, a blogging service will most likely appear as though you are going to a completely different website.
Integration: You are able to integrate everything on your website with your blog. This includes any existing user bases, or future ones. Also, the look of your blog can match your website perfectly, much more so than with a blogging service.
Customization: You get 100% control over every single feature of your blog. If you want some new crazy feature, you can program it. Blogging services are typically much more closed than this.
The downsides will be that you have to maintain it, and any features that you want you have to put in yourself.
One of the advantages of having blog on your site is that all the content will belong to your site, which is good for search engine since it will increase your site visibility through SERP. But you will have the price to pay: installation and maintenance.
It's not cut and dried:
(Assuming this is for clients) do you have an ongoing relationship with the client and time scheduled for upgrades? Most blog software needs at least some upgrading or security patching from time to time.
Are you relying on some sort of social media network effects from these blogs? If so, you may get better mileage from a hosted product as they often promote related sites within their networks (e.g. Wordpress has the "Possibly related posts" feature).
As Brian said, integration could be an issue if you have other areas of your site that rely on logins. In that case, probably better to host it yourself.