Yes they do.

Over the last few months, I've run across quite a lot of companies who have avoided blogging on Joomla and instead posted on free blog sites such as Blogger.com, Blogster.com or Wordpress.com.

Today's post is a quick rundown of the reasons why you should only blog on your own domain.

1. Visitors hate going clicking on a menu link and being sent to a different domain. We worked with one client recently who had 5 links on their Main Menu. Each link except for "Home" went to a different domain.? In his excellent book, "Don't Make Me Think", Steve Krug says this about having the same navigation on every page of your site:
   
   • It gives us something to hold on to. It's no fun feeling lost. Done right, navigation puts ground under our feet and gives us handrails to hold on to.
   • It tells us what's here. Navigation tells us what the site contains.
   • It tells us how to use the site. If the navigation is doing its job, it tells you implicitly where to begin and what your options are.
   • It gives us confidence in the people who built it. Every moment we're in a website, we're keeping a mental running tally: "Do these guys know what? they're doing?". It's one of the main factors we use in deciding whether to bail out and deciding whether to ever come back. Clear, well-thought out navigation is one of the best opportunities a site has to create a good impression.

Of course, if you go to a Blogger or Wordpress.com page all your navigation is lost and the user has to learn how to navigate all over again.

2. A rising tide lifts all ships. SEOMoz.org have done a great job of explaining this effect here and here. The basic idea is that all your ranking efforts should be focused on one domain, rather than dispersed over many sites. You see this every time you search and find a half-finished Wikipedia page ranking more highly than smaller websites that might contain more useful information.
   
   

   We worked with one client and really didn't do much. Our main recommendation was that they move their blog away from Wordpress.com and instead host it on their Joomla site. It took a while to move all the posts, but as this image on the right shows, it was worth it. The screenshot reflects how their Google keyword rankings have changed for the better since January.

3. Users think free blogs are for spam. And with good reason - Microsoft and the University of California found that 75% of Blogger domains are spam. Your site doesn't need those negative associations.

4. Joomla blogs work. True, it can't quite match the fully-unleashed power of a standalone Wordpress site, but next week we'll look at blogging options for Joomla and help you decide which option is best for your site's SEO.