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Ask the Experts: Should I Move My Blog?

July 16, 2007
by Gradiva Couzin

Q: We have a blog at a free blog site which is well linked to and fairly well trafficked. I’m wondering how best to leverage the popularity of the blog to increase traffic to our company’s site. I’d consider incorporating the blog into the main site, but that risks breaking all of the existing links to it. Are there any other options?

A: Your situation is not uncommon – we often hear about folks who for various reasons have two websites and then want to merge them without any loss of page strength. Here’s our take on some approaches to this situation:

Option (1) Move your blog to a new URL location on your company’s main website. Like any website move, this would be best if done with a 301 server-side redirect from each old URL to the corresponding new URL, so that links and search engine robots would follow through to the new address. Unfortunately, setting up a 301 redirect probably isn’t possible with your free blog host.
Option (2) Move your blog to a new URL location on your company’s main website, but without a 301 redirect. This would unfortunately mean a loss of the built-up page strength that you have created for your blog. You would need to manually request updates to all links pointing to your old site, and cross your fingers. The up-side of this approach is that at least your future blog work will be integrated with the primary site. If it is a fantastic blog with loyal readers, you may be surprised that new links and references will build up quickly. (Note that in this option, you keep all old posts at the old location in archived form – no comments allowed – and then continue with new posts on the new location).
Option (3) Keep the blog at its current URL location, but re-skin it so that it includes the global navigation for your company website (similarly add the ‘blog’ link to the primary website so that the navigation is seamless between the two). If this is possible on your blog provider, then this would probably be your easiest option.
Option (4) Keep the blog at its current URL location and brand it with your company, link to the primary site, and periodically include posts that in some way feature your company.

Regardless of how you leverage it, a popular, respected blog is a fantastic asset to your company. Congratulations!

ask the experts

Ask the Experts: How Do I Redirect a Domain?

September 6, 2006
by Gradiva Couzin

Q: We own a number of domain names that are fairly significant in our industry. Can we have these different domain names auto-redirect to our main URL without the search engines perceiving this as a trick? We are very honest people and don’t want to do anything that will be perceived as a trick, but at the same time we want to take advantage of these other domain names in case a user types them in directly into the address bar (we know this will not improve rankings).

A: This is a very common situation, and you should be able to redirect without any problems. Just be sure to set it up with a server-side 301 redirect (your webmaster or host should know what this is), and the search engines will get the message!

You might also want to read our segment on site re-designs in Chapter 11 of Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Dayfor additional SEO redesign tips. And if you’re looking for advice on redirecting a domain after a website redesign, be sure to read “Oops, I Redesigned My Website! An SEO Checklist.”

And be sure to watch out for these potential problems:

Duplicate content – make sure that you put all of your content on your main domain only; and
Outdated Links – make sure that all links (both in your site and other sites) are pointing to your main domain.

By the way, a very similar situation occurs when you have a website that displays both with and without the “www” prefix (for example: //www.yourseoplan.com and http://yourseoplan.com). In this case, the best plan is to use a Google Sitemap, which is a free service provided by Google that send the message to Google about which version of the URL is preferable. Here is a quote from the Google Sitemap guidelines:

“Preferred domain: Is your site available with and without a www prefix? Until now, the recommendation was to do a 301 permanent redirect of one to the other. But some people can’t easily do this. Now sitemaps has a preferred domain tool that lets you pick which you prefer. Make your choice, and Google will list the domain you choose. Behind the scenes, Google will understand the two domains are one and the same for purposes of things like link calculations. Keep in mind that Google says it will take some time before the changes are visible. Also keep in mind that you’ll still need to do 301 redirection for other search engines. “

Ask the Experts: Should I Move My Blog?

Ask the Experts: How Do I Redirect a Domain?

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