Blog Relevance

Hi all,

I'm a new member of this forum... I'm busy trying to learn SEO... so I would say I know some things... but I'm not an expert yet.

I have some questions about the link building stage... in particular... in relation to using a blog as a strategy for bringing in traffic and increasing page rank. I would greatly appreciate any insights from your experience on this topic.

Here are the questions:

Assuming you want to build traffic and pagerank to a website (Let's call it Site X)... by building a blog (which of course has links to the desired pages on Site X)....

1) Is it better to host the blog on the same domain as site X or better to have a separate domain (distinction between internal links or external links)?

2) Obviously the ideal is to have the blog relevant (same topic) as site X... but would you say a blog is still beneficial as a strategy for traffic / page rank even if it is a different topic. For example, a blog about a hobby I know well... perhaps a hobby I know very well... this would mean that the blog would likely succeed in gaining link popularity but not really for the keywords I'm trying to rank site x for.

What do you think?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts?

Sincerely

Eddie

P.S. Obviously, if the blog is going to be off topic for site X it would be hosted on a different domain. I'm trying to determine if an off-topic blog can still help.

Please forgive me for posting again. I'm trying to find the answer to my questions above myself, but because I'm relatively new to SEO I don't know the answers difinitively - hence my request for help.

I have an example of why I'm asking this question. I intend to start working with alternative medicine practitioners... I already have some contacts that are energy healers (think Reiki and Healing Touch). They are individual practitioners, with generally simple websites and generally low budgets. I want to help them identify ways to stand out above the vast number of other individual healer websites on the net.

I'm asking specifically about whether an off-topic blog linked to their website can still help raise PR for their website... because in some ways, after they have explained on their website "what is energy healing", they may have very little more to say about it, accept for come try it. I know of some energy healers that have managed to help people with their health issues but can't necessarily explain HOW the whole process of energy healing works - it's kind of spiritual based and hard to express scientifically. That is why I'm asking whether there is any merit to suggesting that if they can't blog about their main topic, perhaps they should try blogging about something they can more easily write about... hence, the idea of blogging about a hobby... travel... food... etc.

Any thoughts would really be appreciated.

Sincerely

Eddie

P.S. Again, I DO understand that an on-topic blog would obviously be best -- I'm just trying to determine whether in the case described, an off-topic blog is better than no blog at all. I'm guessing that a blog they feel that they can more easily write about is better than none at all -- but I'm looking for some backup from more experienced SEOs.

Gazzahk has posted some very interesting comments regarding the power involved in relevant links. I suggest searching here for gazzahk relevance and/or gazzahk relevant.

The blog would contribute some power to it, provided the blog garnishes it's own trust. IE, a site that ranks for nothing is unlikely to help another site rank for anything.

Your blog, if related, will be best if hosted on the same domain (and subdomain) as your site. www.domain is a different location than blog.domain, and therefore would require it's own set of optimization. To get around that, put the blog at www.domain/blog/ or something along those lines.

There are other, more important factors to consider when starting a blog, so look around the forums some more, and you'll find some deeper tricks.

Thanks jsteele823,

I'll look into what Gazzahk has to say about blog relevance and perhaps post back if I have any comments.

I'll also try to look further into the more important factors to consider when starting a blog also (as you had mentioned)... although, at this time, I'm not too sure what you might be referring to -- any hints or one or two word pointers would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you so much for your input.

Eddie

Well.... since you asked...... The standard answer as to why blogs are helpful for SEO is that blogs are only going to help you if you're regularly posting great content. As blogs are notorious for pushing content deeper and deeper in your site.... the great content you post eventually gets buried so deep it's hard to find. So eventually you begin to leave the great content out, and post it instead in an articles section, or something of the sort, leaving nothing but filler content for the blog.

What's the point of the blog now? .........

Now comes the conclusion..... (and the real answer IMO) - Blogs are only good if they engage your site's visitors. They sign up, contribute regularly, and tell other people about it. That is how you get links for your blog (without having to post content on your own, btw) and still manage to gain ADDITIONAL links for that great content you decided to post somewhere else on your site (that articles section mentioned earlier).

Very interesting. Thank you jsteele823. I hadn't thought of it in those terms. I knew that quality content would be required to get any links at all... but I hadn't thought about the ramifications if the quality of the content isn't CONSISTENTLY good. I'll have to let the consequences of that possibility settle in my mind a little.

Your very good answers are now triggering even more questions in my mind... but I'm shy to ask them now because it's not fair for me to just ask you what probably took you and others a lot of time and research to determine for yourselves.

I'll intend to stick around these forums. There is obviously a lot of useful information for me to learn here.

Thank you for your help.

Sincerely

Eddie