Blog best practices?

[jason_sot]

Hey Refugees!! Long time no see... hope all is well!

It's been a long time (and I was never that good in the first place lol) but I am going to set up a blog for our site (again... killed the old one after the revamp but want to do this one right).

What is the best way of doing this? I remember hearing that you want to use WordPress. Do we want to host it on our own domain for the content? Or do we want to host it on WordPress for the links?

Any other tips on getting the most out of your blog?

[skitzzo]

Hey man, good to see you again!

I would highly suggest hosting the blog on your own domain. That way when other people link to it your main domain will also be benefiting. It's pretty easy as well since most hosts offer 1 click installs of WP.

[dazzlindonna]

Definitely self-host on your own domain. Here's the way I look at it.

Retain control at every opportunity. The more control you relinquish elsewhere, the more you will regret it later.

There absolutely will come a time when you will wish you could make changes to your blog that wordpress.com doesn't allow.

There absolutely will come a time when you will wish you could move the blog, or change the code within the theme, or any number of other possible scenarios, but you'll be severely hampered because you are under the rules and restrictions of wordpress.com.

[jason_sot]

Awesome! That's what I was hoping to hear!

And I just looked at our hosting company and it is fully integrated with WP

Well, we are focusing back on getting optimized again so i am looking forward to hanging out here again a bit more

Good to see some familiar faces

[jason_sot]

ok so... subdomain? or subfolder?

Also, should it be keyword specific? like http://keyword.domain.com or www.domain.com/keyword?

[pops]

I'd take the time to think through the words and phrases you want to target and set up your categories and tags accordingly. It's a pain to rework those things later.

[skitzzo]

ok so... subdomain? or subfolder?

Also, should it be keyword specific? like http://keyword.domain.com or www.domain.com/keyword?

I've been seeing better success with subfolders lately and yes, I would try to include the main keyword in the url.

Maybe domain.com/keyword-blog or something along those lines?

[dazzlindonna]

What Skitzzo said...

And have a look at the SEO for WordPress presentation that I put online in HTML format for some other things to consider.

[rmccarley]

Welcome back Jason.

My preference for WP is to set it at the root and then use permalinks to make the pages or posts domain.com/keyword

And (as always) pay attention to DD.

Maybe Skitz too

[skitzzo]

My preference for WP is to set it at the root and then use permalinks to make the pages or posts domain.com/keyword

That's usually how I do it as well for just a blog but in this case I'm guessing they are already using the index page of their site so putting the blog on a subfolder would be the best option.