Don't make this common blog setup mistake
There are a variety of reasons blogging should be part of your inbound marketing strategy, but its ability to improve your SEO should be at the top of the list. Before you start your keyword research, writing articles and producing slide decks and videos it is important that you consider the setup of your blog.
When we say setup we are not referring to the layout or design of the blog. We are referring to the location your blog resides. Too often, we speak to prospective clients who have a blog that is not set up to maximize its SEO benefit. Without going into technical details, there are basically three ways to host a blog and they vary in their effectiveness (from a search perspective).
The best way is to create your blog as a subfolder, which will look like this:
The second best way is to put your blog on a subdomain, which would look like this:
The last choice would be to host your blog on a separate domain. Not the ideal solution, but if you are diligent about creating links and driving traffic back to your main site then you can maximize the value of a blog with this type of setup.
If you are considering starting a blog (or have an underperforming one now) be sure it will be hosted in a way that will help you meet your SEO goals.