"Blogs increase your credibility, boost your traffic, and put a personality behind your brand," writes Lindsay Atkinson at the Renegade Search blog. "But how should [a blog] be executed? Should it be hosted on your website or on a completely different domain?"

The short answer is: It depends.

To help you decide where to host your company's blog, Atkinson offers these insights:

Off-site hosting is ideal if:

• Your brand's website has strong rankings, high domain authority, and an excellent PageRank. Instead of using the blog to bolster your primary domain, it can be cultivated as a secondary domain to heighten visibility in search engine results.
• You plan to cover topics that stray from the content at your website. Too many unrelated keywords might muddy the SEO waters at your site and begin attracting the wrong kind of traffic.

On-site hosting is preferable if:

• Your purpose with the blog is driving traffic to your website. If you don't rank well, for instance, a well-received blog could be the thing that moves you to the first search engine results page.
• You rely on the blog for the fresh content that plays a critical role in your rankings. "[H]aving an on-site blog that is updated frequently will help contribute to an otherwise stale site," Atkinson notes.

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