A client of mine is starting an industry blog. I can't really go into details but it's a niche market with a substantial amount of traffic and the range of content for the blog is quite huge.

It's just a case of deciding wether to tie it in with the current company/domain or register a new domain and host it there under a related domain. I'm pushing for a new domain that referenences heavily the current company. I feel it would be intepreted as being more 'independent' for the reviews, have greater advertising scope for the future and could have it's own branding etc. They could even add some adSense in there if they wanted and maybe an industry-related affiliate scheme etc

We could have the content via an rss feed appear on the main corporate site and just have a no-index so they aren't penalised by search engines for duplicate content.

Any thoughts?

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Peter Knight - Web Designer
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Eden Web - Web Design Ireland Virtual Tour Company Dublin Photographer

Sounds like a nice idea. Only thing I would question is what is the strategy here? Is this new blog to drive sales for the 'mothership'? Or as a standalone business?

While 'independence' can have upsides in terms of authority and non-biased (and hence more believable) opinion, if the stated goal is to drive sales to the main site then I would be inclined to keep it in-domain. There are obvious SEO gains from this also. If the content retains a neutral bias and is presented as such having it in site may pay dividends.

Of course stated business and marketing goals would also need to be considered. I imagine a good bit of thought should be put into this to weigh up the pros and cons.

Duplicate content for the feeds probably wont be an issue if they are published on a page with other unique content.

Rgds
Richard

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Search Engine Optimisation - Red Cardinal Internet Marketing
Internet Consultant Ireland | Search Engine Optimisation Services
Catering Company Dublin - My sister's handmade canape company!

Thanks for the input Richard. The goal here is to generate more interest in a particular place and by building an seo-friendly blog, to catch a lot of the web tracffic thats flying around the web. Both those points don't depend on an external domain and website but the business owners have a passion for and knowledge of the area and the blog could become a great resource in itself.
When you throw in potential revenue from Adsense and affiliate programs then I think this negates an indomain strategy as it would dilute the code brand and confuse visitors to the main site.