wayne on August 20, 2008
There comes a time when you might consider giving your blog or web site a personalized domain name. When is it a good time? Should you do it before you begin blogging, or can you do it later on down the road? As a blogger, you will more than likely ask yourself these or similar questions when you consider migrating to a personalized domain name.
Inexpensive domain names are pretty easy to come by, especially considering the cost of gas these days, but do you really need one for your blog? Maybe not, maybe so.
A little background
For those that are not familiar, let me explain a little about what I am talking about. If you own a blog or web site on any free service, you are most likely given a sub-domain URL to access your site. For instance, my test blog on Blogger is accessed by typing 'http://wayneonblogger.blogspot.com'. I have a sub-domain named 'wayneonblogger' on the 'blogspot.com' domain. If'n I wanted to, I could buy a domain and use it on my Blogger account so that I could advertise and promote my blog under a specific URL such as 'http://www.viewsonlife.net', which is exactly what I did in the latest Blogger.com Help Lesson on Publishing Settings.
If you have used the Internet for any length of time, you might immediately recognize that many blogs you access on the Blogger.com system are using the default sub-domain account. Makes sense that you would find that because they do that for free, and everyone likes free. However, you will also find some that have a personalized domain.
Same goes for any other system where they allow you to create a free web site I suspect.
Migrating can cause things to break
Some things to consider before going to a personalized domain name are (I use Blogger.com's BlogSpot domain as an example, however they provide URL redirection services so your users will not get lost after the URL switch):
- After you make myolddomain.blogspot.com turn into www.mynewdomain.com, what will happen to the users trying to access the old domain?
- What about all the inbound links you spent so much time building? Will those still work?
- How about my feed? If you are using a Feedburner account that accesses the feed from your blog under the sub-domain, will I screw things up after I switch to a personalized domain?
- Most importantly, will users that have subscribed to my feed still get my feed after the change?
As you can see, I can probably build a huge list of items revolving around one central theme, "how will all the existing traffic and services be routed to my new domain?". The answer my friend is called URL redirection.
I can't speak to all services, but Blogger.com provides redirection services. What that means is that when you type in the old sub-domain URL into the address bar, Blogger.com recognizes that you have quit using that sub-domain, and that you are now using a new domain, and will redirect your traffic to your new domain. This is quite handy since you might be able to imagine what it would take to establish a redirection mechanism for years of posts! That's not something I'd want to do on my free time.
So why bother buying a personalized domain name?
Why bother paying money for a domain when you seem to be getting by just fine on a sub-domain? The answer isn't simple. In fact there are many things, and many emotions, that go into the decision to upgrade your sub-domain account to a primary domain. As you can also see, there are many things you need to consider before doing so.
Reader Gary brought up some very good questions in the comments of my Publishing Settings post. He noted my mentioning that having a sub-domain is not optimal and wanted a bit of clarification as to why that would be. So why would it not be considered optimal? I can tell you in one simple statement
Sub-domains are a dime a dozen. Anyone can create them, anyone can own one. Same is true for a personalized domain name you might say. However, I am of the opinion that someone that uses a personalized domain name has taken their blog more seriously.
While that is not necessarily always the case, it does give off that perception. Now don't think that if you don't have a personalized domain that no one is taking you seriously, because that is not the case. I think you might agree that there is a level of perception that goes along with a personalized domain that creates a 'one is better than the other' in ones mind.
Consider the business angle of owning a blog. If you are selling services or products on your blog, would you want to be found under a sub-domain, or a personalized domain? Like I said, this is completely subjective to your own personal thoughts on differences between a sub-domain and a personalized domain name and how people might subconsciously perceive them.
Writing is no different than selling in many respects. When you write a post, you are trying to convey your thoughts on some topic, essentially selling your ideas to others to gain them as a reader and/or subscriber. So when I say optimal, this is what I mean. In my opinion, the initial perception of visitors to your blog is influenced to some degree by the domain name they are accessing.
Conclusion
Google considers both domains and sub-domains as unique web sites, I'm not sure about any other search engines, so there isn't any Search Engine reason to be concerned about. While there may not be any technical reason why you should migrate your free blog or web site to a personalized domain, you might want to for other, more personal and psychological reasons.
There are many posts floating around out there that state there are no differences between a sub-domain and a personalized domain name, however, I have not found any that speak to the psychological differences between the two.
One thing is for certain, if you are selling products and services, you are better served using a personalized domain name than a sub-domain off a third party, free web site service. How many GeoCities web sites have you seen where they are selling products and/or services? I shy away from every single one. If they cannot afford $5 to $10 for a domain name for a year and put their name behind it, then I probably don't want to do business with them.
What do you think? Is there a perception difference between a blog or web site being on a sub-domain versus a personalized domain? Do you have reason to migrate to a personalized domain, and if so, why did you make that decision?
