I got an email from a colleague at another e-marketing agency here in town. In the email he asked:

Q: “Hey, what are thoughts on the best SEO practice for a company/corporate blog: Sub-domain vs. different domain? Which one will increase rankings most?

A: “All ships rise with the tide… By putting it on your own domain (whether it’s blog.url.com or url.com/temp) – any of the authority & credibility (read: links) your blog receives get attributed to your own domain as well. Use a totally separate domain and there’s no way for a search engine to associate your blog with your corporate site aside from links back & forth… You can still market your blog under a separate domain name – bringbackflockofseagulls.com – but I’d recommend a 301-redirect to www.corporatesite.com/temptitle or blogtitle.corporatesite.com”

I know there’s some dispute about whether or not to use a subdomain (like we currently do with this blog) vs. a sub-folder. I think we may switch over to using a sub-folder to lock-up any ‘link juice‘ our domain or blog gets. But the separate listing in the results pages with the sub-domain is nice for online reputation management. Like anything else – it depends on the situation & priority.

Any experts out there want to confirm or dispel my recommended approach? Which way is better?