If you’re blogging to market your business, you’re making a smart move. A business blog engages, informs and sells to your audience in a way that lends both personality and credibility to your brand.
One of the questions many people have when establishing a business blog is whether on-site or off-site hosting is better. There is no correct answer that works for everyone, but here are a few pros and cons of both:
Off-site hosting
Pros—
- Hosting a blog on an external site creates another domain for companies to rank with
- An external site increases visibility for your brand by giving it two online properties
- Links from the external site can point back to your company website, increasing SEO through backlinks
- More options when it comes to coding and design, and easier installation
Cons—
- Traffic could take longer to get to your site
- Must be maintained with fresh content and design, to avoid an unprofessional look and feel
- Less control over external factors, such as changes to platform policies that may shut down the blog
On-site hosting
Pros—
- Boosts direct traffic to your site by drawing visitors to the site domain
- Increases search engine indexing of your site
- Adds value to your brand by strengthening the visibility of the main domain
- Easy to add fresh content that keeps readers interested and increases page rank and Alexa ratings
Cons—
- Having only one domain means that you can’t rank twice for one keyword
- The blog won’t be able to rank for other search terms, as this might attract the wrong kind of traffic
- Less flexibility with topics, as the company blog on-site will have to focus on only related topics in order to rank for related keywords
Keep in mind that both types of hosting allow you to attract visitors to your blog and rank for your keywords. Your choice will depend upon your available resources, your goals for the blog and what kind of exposure you want to get. For example, if you wish to stick to one topic and rank for those keywords, on-site hosting may be the better choice. If you wish to branch out into related, but more broad, topics—off-site hosting gives you another domain on which to post these topics.
Of course, if you are able to maintain both an on-site and off-site blog, you will reap the benefits of both—although you will need to have the resources to give your full attention to each. A stale site will only drag you down, so make sure that you can keep both domains fresh and relevant. By doing so, you will have double the opportunity to rank and draw traffic.
The main consideration for the success of your blog is not always whether it is on- or off-site. If you are adding fresh, relevant content on a regular basis you will get traffic. If you are centering your content on your best keywords, your blog will thrive. Decide which option works for you (or do both), and analyze the results to determine which hosting option works best for you.
