Content for your website is important for SEO, but so are links back to your website. With this in mind, how important is actually having a blog on your own website as opposed to using a free hosted blog such as WordPress or Google’s Blogspot? If you use one of these free services you can create a hosted blog in minutes and link to it from your own website. You can add as much content as you wish, and then link back to your own site.
It’s free, quick and easy and it creates links to your own site. Surely that’s a good thing?
Well, in a way yes it is. Obviously having links to your website is good for SEO, and having links from a site that features lots of original content such as a blog hosted with WordPress is also good. However, spending your time writing content for a free hosted blog isn’t as worthwhile as writing content for your site.
Think of it like this: Google wants to show its users something that answers their query. They want to show the most relevant website to a user’s search. Therefore they’ll offer up results that feature content relevant to that search. While having links from a free hosted blog tells Google what your website is about, it doesn’t give Google a reason to rank your website highly.
Links, and SEO for that matter, tell search engines what your website is about and what sort of keyphrases you expect it to rank for. The content on your website gives the search engines a reason to rank your website.
There is nothing wrong with using a free hosted blog to generate links to your website, but without the content on your own website you’re wasting your time.
