We’re going to do a bit of a tech post today, since I’ve slowly realized that not a lot of readers may know this.
When you choose to blog, for one reason or another, it may make sense to set up your blog on a hosted site like WordPress.com, or Blogger.com, Typepad.com, ect. Maybe you’re thinking of getting your feet wet with blogging and don’t want to commit to a self-hosted blog just yet. Or maybe website hosting isn’t something you want to get later, when your website is already built up. Sometimes it can even be a straight money issue and we all know we can’t beat free (especially if you’re on a shoe string budget).
There are a lot of reasons to go with the free blogs. And there are many reasons against it. But out of all of them, this is the one I want everyone to know, especially if you are building a business for the long haul:
When you blog at a hosted site, you are building authority and traffic for a domain name that is NOT YOUR OWN. (And yes, that deserved all caps.)
Do you know what that means? It means that every post that you write for your business is boosting up your chosen blog platform and not your business. If you have a grasp at SEO basics and are using them on your posts, you are giving your host an extra leg up, not you.
And we all know WordPress.com doesn’t need a boost in that regard.
So when you finally do choose to move to a self-hosted domain and migrate your blog to your own website, you’re still starting from scratch in Google’s eyes, even if you’ve blogged for years by then. Because none of those links you generated were directed to your own domain. And you can’t just call the search engines up later and say “Hey, that was me at this domain with this business all that time. Can you please move everything I’ve earned over for me?” It doesn’t really work that way.
I know here at Cottage Copy, we stress that you should write for people first, Google and SEO second. But this is one of the few times I’ll say don’t waste your good link karma. If you haven’t blogged yet, but are planning to, start it right and do it self-hosted. If you’re currently at a hosted blog, move it over as soon as possible. And get someone who knows how to move it and still have your permalink structure in tact. So that if someone who read your hosted blog has a link back to one of your posts, the next time they click it, they’ll be directed to the post’s new home on your own website instead of a 404 error page (because that wouldn’t look good).
Also, it’s good to have all of your assets (especially something like a blog) on your own domain. As Laura Roeder had put it, what if, God forbid, WordPress.com faded out of existence? Where would your blog go then?
I had a similar issue, not with blogs, but with communities when Ning.com suddenly announced that it wasn’t going to do free anymore because it wasn’t profitable. And the writing group that I was a part of had to go move all of our stuff somewhere else. It was a pain, let me tell you. And Ning hadn’t even warned any of us that they were going to do that.
So not that WordPress.com is going to suddenly disappear anytime soon. But it’s better to have your blog on your own site, so that if somehow, your favorite blogging platform suddenly becomes a dinosaur, you still have your blog on your website, unaffected, and you won’t have a small business freakout. 
FYI
If you have any questions about this or might be having a small business freakout right now about it (I’m so sorry!!), just leave a comment and I’ll answer anything you want today.
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