Marketing Your Blog, #2. Get Your Own Domain
Written by Alfonso Muñoz on June 2, 2008 – 12:36 pmThis post should have been the very first of the series about Marketing Your Blog. This post falls within both categories Marketing and SEO at the same time because it is a very, very important point in these topics. Believe me, you can’t start blogging better than having your own domain name. This is like your business card. Which of the following options sound better?:
- binaryant.wordpress.com
- binaryant.blogspot.com
- www.binaryant.com
I hope you chose the last one, other way we have a problem… No, I’m sure you chose the dot com domain. If you have a blog and you don’t have your own domain I can only think that it is because you don’t know how cheap are the domains nowadays. For example you can register your .com in BlueHost for only $10/year. How much do you spend in sweets every year? Surely more than these $10.
Are you still thinking of you don’t need your own domain? Ok, listen. Imagine that you have your amazing blog under a free sub domain like a .wordpress.com or a .blogspot.com, something like myreallycoolsite.wordpress.com. It is really good so you increase your visitors month by month. You start to rank high on Google and on other search engines because people link your content due to its quality. And suddenly, one day, you realise that you are so good to be hosted under a free, too long, and ugly sub domain. What happen with your ranks, with all those links pointing to your blog, with all the traffic coming to it? That day you will remember the advise someone told you about buying your own domain and start working on it, and also you’ll remember that it only cost $10.
It is true that with some work,effort and time you can redirect the traffic and the links to your new domain name, but as I just said some work, effort and time are needed. So why don’t you save energy and time working on your own domain name from the beginning?
When I started to write this post I told you that it is good to market your blog because it shows a more professional and serious picture of you, but also I told you that it is good in SEO terms. Search engines put more value on domain names that on free sub domain names. And the older the domain is the more value they put on.
I hope to have changed your mind about free sub domains, but if not I’m sure you’ll see it as time goes by and your site grows in popularity.
Tags: Marketing, SEO
Posted in Marketing, SEO |
June 2nd, 2008 at 11:19 pm
I have to agree with you. Having your own domain is very important. Plus if you ever need/want to sell your blog having an domain is important. Its against blogspot TOS to sell your sub-domain blog.
June 3rd, 2008 at 6:44 am
On redirecting from old domain to new: fortunately Blogger (where majority of the newish blogs are) automatically forwards your readers to the new address.
Having your own domain also earns you bragging rights
I mean, it is so easy to register a blog at Blogger, but how many of your blogging friends do actually have their own domains? 
BTW, you do not BUY a domain, you REGISTER it for a specific length of time (at least a year, annual). The distinction is important since technically, nobody except the owners of the root servers own domain names; you just register your domain name.
June 3rd, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Isles Tech, you said that blogger redirects readers, if I’m not wrong it is a 301 redirection. Does blogger do anything about ranks? (PR, Alexa, compete,…).
Well the point of register/buy…I have to admit that you were more accurate
June 29th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
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