When you first start blogging you might wonder if you need to spend the money and host it yourself or if you can just get a free blog from wordpress or blogger. Don’t. Always, always, host it yourself. Here’s why
Many of the free blogging platforms won’t let your own ads, promote affiliate products or drive traffic to your blog via PPC. That’s means it will be harder for you to make money directly from your blog. Which maybe isn’t your goal if you just want to share your life story or promote your services. But at some point you might re-think it. Start smart from the beginning.
Using your own domain name will make it shorter and easier to remember. If not you will wind up with something like this: http://www.mycoolsite.com.wordpress.com vs the short and sweet www.mycoolsite.com. Which would you rather type in – which would your customers and visitors?
Also, at any time if your blog hosted on blogger or wordpress could be taken down and removed – for any reason – ok so you they probably think you violated some terms and conditions. Maybe you did, maybe you did – but the last thing you want is for your blog to disappear. That doesn’t happen when your blog is your own.
And of course, probably the best reason to host your own blog – as you blog you’re building up content on your site that points to you. This is good for SEO or Search Engine Optimization. SEO basically means that your blog is well designed, set up and written to be found by search engines. So when someone goes to a search engine and types in a question or a topic that relates to your blog, the search engine will process your content and present one of your pages in the (hopefully) top search results. This is a lot easier to do when your content is on your own domain. You will be able to build the authority and traffic of your blog. If you’re hosting on a blog extension, well you’ll just be promoting them.
And finally, hosting your own blog just looks more professional. It says you have invested time and money in your blog and business and that you’re ready to be taken seriously.
Many of the free blogging platforms won’t let your own ads, promote affiliate products or drive traffic to your blog via PPC. That’s means it will be harder for you to make money directly from your blog. Which maybe isn’t your goal if you just want to share your life story or promote your services. But at some point you might re-think it. Start smart from the beginning.
Using your own domain name will make it shorter and easier to remember. If not you will wind up with something like this: http://www.mycoolsite.com.wordpress.com vs the short and sweet www.mycoolsite.com. Which would you rather type in – which would your customers and visitors?
Also, at any time if your blog hosted on blogger or wordpress could be taken down and removed – for any reason – ok so you they probably think you violated some terms and conditions. Maybe you did, maybe you did – but the last thing you want is for your blog to disappear. That doesn’t happen when your blog is your own.
And of course, probably the best reason to host your own blog – as you blog you’re building up content on your site that points to you. This is good for SEO or Search Engine Optimization. SEO basically means that your blog is well designed, set up and written to be found by search engines. So when someone goes to a search engine and types in a question or a topic that relates to your blog, the search engine will process your content and present one of your pages in the (hopefully) top search results. This is a lot easier to do when your content is on your own domain. You will be able to build the authority and traffic of your blog. If you’re hosting on a blog extension, well you’ll just be promoting them.
And finally, hosting your own blog just looks more professional. It says you have invested time and money in your blog and business and that you’re ready to be taken seriously.
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