Tutorial Update: Mapping Your Blog Domain

A quick note to let you know we have recently updated the tutorial for mapping a domain to your TypePad blog.  You can get the new tutorial here.

Not sure why you should map your domain?

When you set up your blog on TypePad, the URL for your blog includes TypePad's domain:  www.yourblog.typepad.com

For example, the underlying domain for this blog is nextlevelpartner.typepad.com/babb but the domain you see, that's mapped over the TypePad domain is www.buildabetterblog.com. Which is better? :-)

Rather than promote TypePad, you really need to brand you, your company, your book...whatever your blog is about.  You need to register a domain and then map it OVER the TypePad domain so you are promoting YOUR business and establishing your online brand.

Comments

[Boris Mahovac - Your Ezine Coach]

Great advice for TypePad users, Denise.

For those who aren't yet blogging I'd recommend signing up for web hosting (about $3-4/month) and installing the FREE WordPress software on your own domain. That way you get all the content actually hosted on your domain, which is even better in terms of Search Engine Optimization, plus you can have several blogs for the price of one.

You can get WP at WordPress.ORG - not WordPress.COM which is a hosted service.

[Denise aka The Blog Squad]

With all due respect to Boris, Wordpress is not always the best choice for new bloggers. You still get the benefit of search engine optimization if your blog is hosted on a hosted blogging platform like TypePad.com. And, some people are not comfortable with some of the tech skills required to customize and optimize a platform like Wordpress. You can see our comparison of TypePad, Wordpress and Blogger here: http://www.buildabetterblog.com/2008/04/typepad-vs-word.html

[Ryan]

Denise is right. Self hosting Wordpress is for people that have a clue about web serving and php and mysql.

Most business people could care less and don't have the skills necessary, so you get a raft of blogs installed that are never updated so the latest exploit owns them all.

I am technical enough to handle Wordpress but don't because of all the attacks - even against fully updated blogs. Remember all the plugins and themes are an attack surface too.

I'd go with Typepad or Blogger. Blogger can be your own domain too and you can get rid of the "next" bar at the top of the page, though I think that Typepad blogs would be better if you can afford one, and really what business can't?

[fivekitten]

I've read (well, maybe a month ago or so) that Wordpress blogs have better results in the SERPS.

I'm wondering WHY - besides branding - it's better to host a blog on a "real" domain name. I've seen people saying it's better without a reason why - except your message of branding. (which makes sense)

I have a blog - doing okay for only running a couple weeks I think (100+ visitors? not sure if this is okay, but I didn't expect any and I heard of sandboxing new websites of course I've also heard new websites have a short "new" burst then calm down later..) so I bought a domain name and was thinking of forwarding the blog there..but as my ideas grow (they grow quickly..too quickly)..I'm thinking about leaving blog at blogspot (since it is getting recognized) and then just having a one-way link to the new domain.

I'm curious what are other benefits are of a blog having it's own domain? (I am big on branding though..love studying it...)

And would a subdomain be the same as having it hosted on a website such as blogger? For instance, is there much difference between reportingstatistics.blogspot.com as there is in blog.reportingstatistics on a reportingstatistics.com domain?

Hmmm..just sharing questions...

[Boris Mahovac - Your Ezine Coach]

On the subject of SEO: TypePad vs. WordPress:

A TypePad link to Denise's blogpost "Tom Antion Reveals The Secrets of HIS Success to The Blog Squad" is http://www.buildabetterblog.com/2008/08/tom-antion-reve.html

On a WordPress blog this would be
BABB.com/2008/08/tom-antion-reveals-the-secrets-of-his-success-to-the-blog-squad.html

Now, which link do you think Google like better?

tom-antion-reve.html <-- this even contains incomplete [sic] words
or
tom-antion-reveals-the-secrets-of-his-success-to-the-blog-squad.html

And, btw, you can edit these links, if you wish, to get rid of extra words such as "to, and, the" etc.

Another example, a link from my own blogsite
http://www.yourezinecoach.com/2008/how-to-make-money-with-email-marketing-send-email-promotions.html
is also the permalink to the blog post.

On TypePad permalinks are in the form of: http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/145459/32319900

So what you're doing is building links to TypePad and building their Google Page Rank.

I don't like dealing in absolutes, so I won't say WP is better than TP, but in this particular area WP shines.

[Boris Mahovac - Your Ezine Coach]

Just as I posted my comment here I discovered a flaw in TypePad's rendering of long URLs. Please see this post and compare the display http://www.yourezinecoach.com/2008/seo-for-blogs-wordpress-vs-typepad.html

[Boris Mahovac - Your Ezine Coach]

Correction: The display problem seems to be browser-related. It's FireFox that's having problems rendering long URLs, not TypePad.