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Had a quick read through of this, very good. Another important one to add is not to host your blog on a subdomain for SEO. http://blog.example.com http://blog

Had a quick read through of this, very good. Another important one to add is not to host your blog on a subdomain for SEO. http://blog.example.com http://blog.example.com is inferior to http://example.com/blog http://example.com/blog I couldn't agree more about not using it for a corporate news feed, this is one of the main points I tried to get across when I spoke at the HN London event! It's a lazy thing to do, and just appeases a managers checklist of things they must have. Blog? Tick!

Peroni 14y ago
... this is one of the main points I tried to get across when I spoke at the HN London event! And exclusively because of your talk we changed our blog to http://www.hackerjobs.co.uk/blog http://www.hackerjobs.co.uk/blog As far as I'm concerned, the jury is still out on having prominent 'Share This' features. Personally, they piss me off. I think they are ugly and I find them a bit 'needy'. If I think your content is worth sharing with my friends, I'll simply copy and paste the URL into Twitter so that I can append it with my own thoughts. I'm not interested in your company deciding what my tweet is going to say on my behalf.
- TomGullen 14y ago
  The risk with having share boxes is that lots of zero's can look desperate/needy like you say. Getting them to look non-ugly is also sometimes challenging. I agree with you that if someone it motivated to share they probably will, it's a difficult thing to test though.
- acangiano 14y ago
  I see where you are coming from, and it's certainly a choice up to the individual blogger. However, I wouldn't underestimate the laziness of the average visitor. Making it easier for them to share, definitely means more traffic. For example, this article of mine has 1.2K Facebook Likes and 179 retweets: http://stacktrace.it/2012/01/07/10-consigli-per-interagire-con-il-proprio-geek-di-famiglia/ http://stacktrace.it/2012/01/07/10-consigli-per-interagire-c.... Of these, 400+ were made from the AddThis widget. It's hard to say how many would have bothered otherwise, but it'd probably be a smaller number. Also keep in mind that they can act as social proof. Sure, a series of 0s look needy and desperate. But when you are good at promoting your content on your own, these counters may actually give people more confidence to share the content themselves.
acangiano 14y ago
In my book I shortly address the SEO issue by saying: "The subdomain blog.yourcompany.com looks arguably better and is easier to host separately; however, it’s also less effective from an SEO standpoint. [6]" [6] http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/subdomains-and-subdirectories/ http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/subdomains-and-subdirectories/
- larrys 14y ago
  The link you are giving is 5 years old. But more importantly Matt Cutts says this which is not the same as what you are claiming (with support from that link): "My personal preference on subdomains vs. subdirectories is that I usually prefer the convenience of subdirectories for most of my content. A subdomain can be useful to separate out content that is completely different. Google uses subdomains for distinct products such news.google.com or maps.google.com, for example. If you’re a newer webmaster or SEO, I’d recommend using subdirectories until you start to feel pretty confident with the architecture of your site." "Personal preference" and "confident with the architecture" doesn't equal "less effective from an SEO standpoint".
- TomGullen 14y ago
  Website owners could setup blog.example.com to redirect to example.com/blog easily, and when handing out the URL they could tell people to go to blog.example.com and everyone wins
  - acangiano 14y ago
    Solid idea for sure.
damoncali 14y ago
Another important one to add is not to host your blog on a subdomain for SEO. http://blog.example.com http://blog.example.com is inferior to http://example.com/blog http://example.com/blog Has anyone recently moved a blog from a subdomain to a directory and seen observable improvements in search traffic? I find this incredibly difficult to believe these days. Google can sniff out content farms, but somehow blog.domain.com vs domain.com/blog is a mystery? (Yes, I've read Matt Cutts' ancient and ambiguous post on the matter).
- coderdude 14y ago
  It's a matter of PR. A blog subdomain and the bare domain will have two different PR scores. The blog subdomain will receive links and that will add to its PR. If the blog is on the bare domain then PR transferred from links to the blog go to the bare domain. That gives you more PR for the bare domain than if you were to split the two out. It's a design decision in how they see separate domains.
  - deanpcmad 14y ago
    Wait, do people still bother with PageRank these days?
  - damoncali 14y ago
    I've heard the logic. What I'm looking for is evidence that it actually happens for blogs.
    - coderdude 14y ago
      I don't see why it would apply any less for a blog than it would for other subdomains.
      - damoncali 14y ago
        I think the reason is obvious - why would Google want to treat blogs differently because of something so trivial as subdomain vs directory? I'll buy that it may be a challenge to determine which subdomains should be treated as part of the main domain and which should be considered separate. BUT you can make exactly the same argument for directories (or pages for that matter). In the end, the selection is meaningless - either the site is meant to be an extension of the main domain or it's not. Figuring out which is which is an exercise in determining relevance. And given that Google has spent an obscene amount of effort on that very problem over the last couple years, I think it's reasonable to assume they've got this one licked. But I really wish someone had some data. Or even an anecdote. Because I could be totally overestimating Google's sophistication.
ThomPete 14y ago
Are you sure about the subdomain thing? I hear conflicting opinions on that. Thought google actually evened it out.
analog 14y ago
I vaguely remember reading that subdomains being inferior is no longer the case. The Matt Cutts post is from 5 years ago, can't find anything more recent than that, but this post discusses it. http://www.whitefireseo.com/site-architecture/subdomain-or-subfolder-post-panda/360/ http://www.whitefireseo.com/site-architecture/subdomain-or-s...

Peroni 14y ago

... this is one of the main points I tried to get across when I spoke at the HN London event! And exclusively because of your talk we changed our blog to http://www.hackerjobs.co.uk/blog http://www.hackerjobs.co.uk/blog As far as I'm concerned, the jury is still out on having prominent 'Share This' features. Personally, they piss me off. I think they are ugly and I find them a bit 'needy'. If I think your content is worth sharing with my friends, I'll simply copy and paste the URL into Twitter so that I can append it with my own thoughts. I'm not interested in your company deciding what my tweet is going to say on my behalf.

TomGullen 14y ago
The risk with having share boxes is that lots of zero's can look desperate/needy like you say. Getting them to look non-ugly is also sometimes challenging. I agree with you that if someone it motivated to share they probably will, it's a difficult thing to test though.
acangiano 14y ago
I see where you are coming from, and it's certainly a choice up to the individual blogger. However, I wouldn't underestimate the laziness of the average visitor. Making it easier for them to share, definitely means more traffic. For example, this article of mine has 1.2K Facebook Likes and 179 retweets: http://stacktrace.it/2012/01/07/10-consigli-per-interagire-con-il-proprio-geek-di-famiglia/ http://stacktrace.it/2012/01/07/10-consigli-per-interagire-c.... Of these, 400+ were made from the AddThis widget. It's hard to say how many would have bothered otherwise, but it'd probably be a smaller number. Also keep in mind that they can act as social proof. Sure, a series of 0s look needy and desperate. But when you are good at promoting your content on your own, these counters may actually give people more confidence to share the content themselves.

acangiano 14y ago

In my book I shortly address the SEO issue by saying: "The subdomain blog.yourcompany.com looks arguably better and is easier to host separately; however, it’s also less effective from an SEO standpoint. [6]" [6] http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/subdomains-and-subdirectories/ http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/subdomains-and-subdirectories/

larrys 14y ago
The link you are giving is 5 years old. But more importantly Matt Cutts says this which is not the same as what you are claiming (with support from that link): "My personal preference on subdomains vs. subdirectories is that I usually prefer the convenience of subdirectories for most of my content. A subdomain can be useful to separate out content that is completely different. Google uses subdomains for distinct products such news.google.com or maps.google.com, for example. If you’re a newer webmaster or SEO, I’d recommend using subdirectories until you start to feel pretty confident with the architecture of your site." "Personal preference" and "confident with the architecture" doesn't equal "less effective from an SEO standpoint".
TomGullen 14y ago
Website owners could setup blog.example.com to redirect to example.com/blog easily, and when handing out the URL they could tell people to go to blog.example.com and everyone wins
- acangiano 14y ago
  Solid idea for sure.

damoncali 14y ago

Another important one to add is not to host your blog on a subdomain for SEO. http://blog.example.com http://blog.example.com is inferior to http://example.com/blog http://example.com/blog Has anyone recently moved a blog from a subdomain to a directory and seen observable improvements in search traffic? I find this incredibly difficult to believe these days. Google can sniff out content farms, but somehow blog.domain.com vs domain.com/blog is a mystery? (Yes, I've read Matt Cutts' ancient and ambiguous post on the matter).

coderdude 14y ago
It's a matter of PR. A blog subdomain and the bare domain will have two different PR scores. The blog subdomain will receive links and that will add to its PR. If the blog is on the bare domain then PR transferred from links to the blog go to the bare domain. That gives you more PR for the bare domain than if you were to split the two out. It's a design decision in how they see separate domains.
- deanpcmad 14y ago
  Wait, do people still bother with PageRank these days?
- damoncali 14y ago
  I've heard the logic. What I'm looking for is evidence that it actually happens for blogs.
  - coderdude 14y ago
    I don't see why it would apply any less for a blog than it would for other subdomains.
    - damoncali 14y ago
      I think the reason is obvious - why would Google want to treat blogs differently because of something so trivial as subdomain vs directory? I'll buy that it may be a challenge to determine which subdomains should be treated as part of the main domain and which should be considered separate. BUT you can make exactly the same argument for directories (or pages for that matter). In the end, the selection is meaningless - either the site is meant to be an extension of the main domain or it's not. Figuring out which is which is an exercise in determining relevance. And given that Google has spent an obscene amount of effort on that very problem over the last couple years, I think it's reasonable to assume they've got this one licked. But I really wish someone had some data. Or even an anecdote. Because I could be totally overestimating Google's sophistication.

ThomPete 14y ago

Are you sure about the subdomain thing? I hear conflicting opinions on that. Thought google actually evened it out.

analog 14y ago

I vaguely remember reading that subdomains being inferior is no longer the case. The Matt Cutts post is from 5 years ago, can't find anything more recent than that, but this post discusses it. http://www.whitefireseo.com/site-architecture/subdomain-or-subfolder-post-panda/360/ http://www.whitefireseo.com/site-architecture/subdomain-or-s...