Would it make more sense to create a blog that is part of your site's domain or a separate blog?

Hi Caty - It's always good to have a blog on your domain, but that is not the only kind of blogging that works. In fact, I think this is the way people typically do it, and why corporate blogging kind of stinks.

I would suggest that people consider several factors, and to put linking aside, because search engine optimization can be established in many different ways. In fact, you can generate your own inbound links by not putting the blog on your site, and instead linking to your site from the blog's domain.

Case in point: I have a client who has a blog on their website. It is intended to reach college students. College students are actually on Tumblr of all places,so we created another blog there. We've had much more success by creating the satellite Tumblr blog that reaches the target audience where they are at in the format they find acceptable and interesting.

2nd case in point: I always use Proctor & Gamble as an example, but it's because their blogging strategy is right on. They have a "traditional" corporate blog. I suppose that is for shareholders and people who are P&G fans. But they have other, totally separate blogs that really reach their target consumers.

These blogs are on their own domains, have registered trademarks, and don't look or feel at all like a company blog. They don't talk about Proctor & Gamble, either. This would be almost impossible to achieve if those blogs were part of the main website.

@Zaki, you said "Especially for an organization thats old-school, too sales-driven or too introvert." which is true for many companies. But if they want to compete in this age of social media and information driven traffic, then they need to adapt to some "new-school" methods, or they'll just be like the brick and mortar shops waiting for people to come to them.

And really, if they have a product line they're proud of, how hard would it be to take each one and write about it informatively?

It's usually best to create a blog on your domain and as a subdirectory for SEO and get enough traffic to make it worthwhile But if you really want to use a vanity domain such as NameBlog.com you can just use a URL forwarder and send them to your blog i.e. http://name.com.au/corporate-blog/

I do agree with Tia if you have the resources look at niche satellite blogs that focus on video (YouTube), picture (Flickr) but typically most businesses should be trying to centralise this content on their own domain/site.

It can depend on you theme/topic and how it relates to your corporate/company brand on if you hosted locally using a CMS or reduce the strain on your WebDevs and use a free hosted platform like Wordpress.com.

The reasons that I use platforms like Wordpress.com for my own blog is that I don't have to worry about upgrading, hosting or maintenance and can just focus on creation of content.

One other item to consider is using Bit.ly PRO for short URLs using a custom domain such as http://Foc.us/article# which makes it easier to share via social media and helps with branding.

I actually go along with Tia. What she's referring to is what we call "cluster blogging."

Using her example, the company would set up their main blog on domain with posts relating to the company (i.e. history, product lines, contact, location, mission statement, etc.) The product line page could have links for each type of product linked to their storefront.

Then considering how most people use the Internet to get information about things that interest them, and how not everyone uses the same social media to navigate around, the company could then set up smaller information blogs relating directly to each product type outside of their main domain.

Each of these blogs could then be linked to the main domain either through the blog or the storefront, sending traffic to the main domain as well as giving them back links.

This would also give them the opportunity to utilize popular blogging platforms like Wordpress.com, Blogger.com, and Tumblr that helps with search result listings for specific keywords particularly when it comes to information based content.

To follow up with what Zaki said - in his last point - it's *always* good to develop a blog around a cause/action/event or campaign. Blogs that are "all-encompassing" or have no particular purpose don't do well in terms of conversion. They may serve a great purpose to drive traffic from search engines, but there had better be some excellent lead generation there if you're going to turn search engine traffic into clients or customers.

Regarding analytics, just because a blog is on its own domain, that does not mean you can't use Google analytics. You just own several properties instead of one, and put analytics on every site.

I think this a good discussion but its tilting towards online communities - such as Focus.com. As you realize that kind of effort requires considerable manpower and resources.

Also suggesting using multiple blogs is all well intentioned, but in practicality its very hard work. Especially for an organization thats old-school, too sales-driven or too introvert.

@Tia: At the end of the day, I want to measure conversions, and how much value I'm getting per goal. If I've too many domains, either I use the same GA code in all those domains (which prevents me from tracking other things) or I use different snippets (which dont carry over the wing-man conversions from other blogs).