Image via WikipediaA few months ago I was tweeting with a well known and very well respected member of the social media/SEO crowd. He tweeted that any serious blogger only uses a real domain ie., tommartin.com versus a managed domain like I have tommartin.typepad.com.
I inquired because I wondered if content by any other domain would be the same? He went on to say it was a SEO 101 kind of issue and he couldn't possibly explain it in 140 characters. I disagree, I think I called him on it and he didn't really have an answer.
He had an opinion, one he liked to pronounce as an absolute rule by which all others should folllow. No worries. It's what experts do. They make pronouncements and by virture of their reputation as defined by numbers of times they present at industry conferences, numbers of readers of their blogs or total followers on Twitter -- people just accept that these "rules" are truth. Please don't do that. Subject every thought to Intellectual Darwinism.
Push it, break and and see if the thought really stands on its merit. Hint, lots of times, they don't. For instance, that SEO 101 about using a real domain versus a hosted domain for your blog... this morning I went and Googled myself. Funny, my hosted domain doesn't seem to be hurting my SEO efforts very much. Just saying...
Link to original post