SEO brain teaser: what would you do with Zillow Blog?
November 4, 2008
By: David Gibbons
Author's Website: http://www.zillow.com
This is a brain teaser for the SEO geeks. Most SEO decisions require a trade-off and this one has me in analysis paralysis so I thought I’d ask a few friends for their advice. The question is this; is Zillow’s Blog more useful to Zillow on its own domain or on the zillow.com domain?
Here is the background …
www.zillowblog.com is Zillow’s corporate blog. According to Yahoo! Site Explorer, the blog has almost 2 million inbound links. Yes, 2 million – and remarkably, this is about 400K more inbound links than www.zillow.com has. Now you see where I’m going with this. If we move the blog, Zillow could benefit from the additional inbound links.
So … what’s the possible downside to making the move? There are three trade-offs (that I’ve thought of.) First, but not the most concerning, is that ZillowBlog is one of the top referrers of traffic to Zillow.com. Second, the blog gives us more first page search results for many of our branded keywords. And lastly, and most concerning, is the fact that Zillow Blog is a useful tool for strategically placing strong inbound links to Zillow.com content. With Zillow Blog we can easily improve the SEO of individual pages on Zillow.com and loosing this last capability is what has me most worried.
What would you do with Zillow Blog? Or … where do you host your corporate blog and why?
- Stumble it!
- Categories: SEO
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Comments
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Mark Anderson on November 5, 2008 9:53 am
I had the exact same question a couple of months ago when I decided to bite the bullet and start a blog (it’s never too late to jump on the bandwagon!).
I researched it, and asked on a few SEO forums and the general consensus was that a subdomain was as good as a different domain name. Assuming you don’t have a high number of subdomains already (which can look spammy) then blog.yourdomain.com will be classified as a unique website by the spiders.
Or so says the Internetz.
David Gibbons on November 5, 2008 10:01 am
Thanks Mark. You’re right; a subdomain’s SEO typically won’t benefit the primary domain. If I move the blog I would move it to a folder that would be on the domain and not to a sub domain. So the proposal is to move it to something like http://www.zillow.com/blog rather than http://www.blog.zillow.com
Martin Bouma-Ann Arbor Real Estate Expert on November 5, 2008 8:07 pm
When I started my blog I was advised that having it on the same domain would be best for SEO, so as you can see it is http://www.bouma.com/blog. I would think the same would work for Zillow
Foot In Mouth on November 6, 2008 11:16 am
I think this could be quite risky, as all of the inbound links that you are referring to would then need to be 301 redirected to your new URL on the Zillow domain.
I think that this would most likely be a negative move. You already stated that one of Zillow’s top referrers is you! This is because of the saturation reach of two independant sites is better than 1. If you are looking in terms of relevancy.
As was discussed in 2008 SES New York , Organic search panel http://footinmouthdisease.net/2008/03/28/blogs-start-outpacing-static-sites-ses-new-york-organic-listings-panel/ Static sties and static sites interact with Google. Blog postings are more likely to appear quickly, as they are usually less relevant over time, whereas static pages have long term game in mind. Moving your blog site into your static site?? I don’t see the benefit!
bryanslist on November 14, 2008 7:06 am
Can’t the blog just do a mod rewrite to zillow.com, if they wanted to go that route?
Solves all of the states problems, is easy to do and doesn’t really change anything…
Lenda Goulding-Cary Area Real Estate Expert on November 25, 2008 7:42 pm
Branslist: great idea! If Zillow ends up going that route you will have to let us know if they do a mod rewrite to zillow.com or how they decided the blog location.
cheri riley on November 29, 2008 4:10 pm
I have two sites and had several templated page types designed for my static site so a feed from my blog or a catagory of posts from my blog could be run to each page made from those templates. Both sites bat traffic back and forth and while it seemed awkward at first I think it’s a good way to go.