Author: Gautham A S

A 19 year old guy who loves blogging and guest posting on other blogs, the editor of iGau, a blogging help blog.You can find him on Google+.

5 Reasons To Use Custom Domain For Your Blog

Custom DomainsYes, when you first get into Blogging, you should try Blogger or WordPress.They are easy blogging platforms and can be used by anyone with basic knowledge of Blogging and web design. But when you start to get serious about blogging, you need to invest some money and get a custom domain name, something that can take your blog forward and in the right direction.So why should you move your Blogger/WordPress Blog To a Custom Domain? I will give you 5 good reasons for it –

1. Top Level Domain Good For SEO

A top level domain has the potential to get a higher Search Engine Rankings than a Sub-Domain, this difference may not be too much but it is big enough to make a difference.Search Engines prefer Top Level domains to sub-domains, this is a common fact and a well documented one.This can be proved by taking the example of top ranking sites for any keyword, you will find more top level domains than sub-domains.

Some SEO services do not accept sub-domains as customers, this can hamper your SEO, if you do not know how to do it yourself properly.

2. Brand

No one will buy a product from you or hire you for the services you provide if you have  a .blogspot.com or a .wordpress.com sub-domain.If you wish to make sales, then having a custom domain is a must, no customer will trust a Brand online that does not even have a custom domain name.However good your services and products may be, you won’t makes sales unless you get the trust of customers.

I found out that my Tech Blog, which was hosted at a Blogspot Sub-Domain (Page Rank 4) did not earn great respect from visitors, hence I moved to a custom domain with a .org, Top level domain (TLD) name, after which my Facebook Likes, Twitter Followers and Subscribers has tripled.

3. Advertising Programs

Many top advertising-publishing programs (CPM Ad Networks) do not accept Sub-Domains into their program as they feel that including sub-domains will decrease their reputation as a top publishing program.

You can clearly see by this that there is more respect to be had if you own your own Domain Name.

Even with Ad Networks such as Blogads, advertisers are more willing to advertise on your site if it is a top level domain, I have had first hand experience with this.

4. Domain Remembrance

People are more likely to remember your website name and visit it again if you have a custom domain.I had a blog-spot domain that had more than 20 letters in it, hard to remember isn’t it? So I moved to a simple top level domain with only 7 characters in my Domain Name, much easier to remember.I have to say that my direct traffic has increased a lot in the week following the transition to a custom domain.

5. Problems with Blogger and WordPress

Blogger:

  • Limited Templates.
  • Lack of customization options.
  • Permalink Re-Structure not allowed.
  • Not Great for SEO.

Read in-depth about the problems with Blogger.

WordPress:

  • Cannot Place Google Adsense Ads.
  • Limited Plug-Ins.
  • Not Great For SEO.
  • No Great Improvements in the Free WordPress Blogging Platform over the years.

I hope these reasons are enough for you to consider moving to your own custom domain, I did it and I am happy with the results, I am sure you will be too.

6 Reasons Why Blogger Is A Mediocre Platform

Blogger PlatformBlogger is a free blogging platform from Google that allows private or multi-user blogging features. Blogger was originally BlogSpot which was bought over by Google in 2003. Blogger platform can be great for new comers into the arena, it has a very simple user friendly layout, with simple widgets, simple template designer Etc. But it is just a mediocre platform for Blogging, for those who want their blog to stick out and for professional bloggers, you have to move on. So here are the 6 Reasons why Blogger is a mediocre platform for Blogging.

1. Limited Template Options

Blogger has a few templates that one can choose from while they are starting a blog and most of these templates are very similar to each other, which does not facilitate bloggers being creative and customize their blogs. There are a lot of custom templates available for Blogger, but their installation and customization to meet the needs of a new blogger, may be out of their skill level as they are relatively new bloggers. Most of these custom templates come with some small glitches that are hard for a new blogger to fix.

2. Limited Customization Options

Blogger Blogs have the basic Page Elements Page where you can move around your widgets, it has a Template Designer where you can adjust widths of the sidebar, change the color of background, text, borders Etc.Apart from this there is little else you can do in terms of customized editing. The only other way of editing a blogger blog is by the “Edit HTML” method, where you go and edit the source code of your blog, to make changes in them, I have done a lot of these changes to my Customized Tech Blog, the home page being my proud possession.But this level of Editing the Blogger HTML does not come about until you know a lot about HTML Codes, CSS Styling and have a lot of experience blogging on the Blogger Platform, so this is out of the question for new comers or even those who been blogging for a while. So editing is one huge drawback of Blogger.

3. No Plug-ins

Unlike WordPress, Blogger has no Plug ins, no SEO Plugins, no meta tags Plugins Etc. All this work has to be done manually for each and every blog post. So SEO will be a big pain if you are running a blogger blog. The lack of Plugins also makes Guest Blogging very difficult, you will have to manually receive articles through mail and only then can review and upload it as a guest article.

4. No Permalink Editing

Blogger uses an automatically generated Permalink, which uses the first 5 or 6 words of a Blog Post, but in WordPress we can alter the permalink so that we can fit in all the keywords, those who understand SEO well, will understand the importance of this.

5. CommentLuv does not work on Blogger

Commenting is a huge part of blogging and the blogging community, Blogger Blogs do not support CommentLuv or KeywordLuv Comments, this is only for WordPress, although there are some complicated hacks which may work on certain Blogger Templates, but I would not bet on seeing  CommentLuv comments on a Blogger Blog. Blogger has its own comments section and its not a pretty sight, not many features either.

6. Labels do not get Search Indexed

Labels in blogger do not get search indexed due to the pre-loaded robot.txt file which is in all blogger blogs, this makes it difficult to SEO, as you may have to optimize each and every post, which it itself is a pain as I have described above.

I would like to say that Blogger Blogs can be great for new comers, or those that are just Blogging for a few Friends or Family, but if you are a serious Blogger who wants the world as your audience, then I would suggest switching to a custom domain under WordPress.I too am going to switch to WordPress soon, so I thought I should blog about this.Even Blogging greats such as Amit Agarwal shifted his Labnol blog from Blogger to WordPress as soon as he got really serious about it.

In a future post I will concentrate on the few benefits of Blogger, so stay tuned for that!