How much SEO power lost when you move WP blog to your own hosting?

I'm not a pro at this, but I would think you'll lose a lot. Any backlinks you have won't follow to your new site, and any internal linking you've done will also be lost.

Is there a way on the Wordpress site that you could do permanent redirects to direct some of your old links to your new site? If you can do that, you would be able to bring a substantial amount of your SEO "heft" with you.

I moved a web site from one domain to another and started using a self-hosted Wordpress blog on that second site to hold the data that used to be straight web pages on the first site. In the process I set up permanent redirects from the old pages to the new, and within a few weeks it was clear Google had applied my old SEO power to my new site. I did not have many backlinks to my old site, so I did not have to worry about whether or not I would be losing those. I think that permanent redirects can also take care of transferring backlinks power to your new site, but I wonder if that power will disappear once the redirects go away (I'm assuming they'll go away at some point). Not sure on this last point, though.

Thanks for the reply! I understand your point.

I actually should have made my self a bit more clear in the original post so sorry for that. The blog on either end isn't up yet. I'm talking about starting from scratch and which ones are stronger and weaker.

Sorry for the confusion!

Wordpress.com hosted blogs provide a litlle seo benefit, eg their tag pages often rank well, however they place restrictions on commercial content so it's not much good if you're trying to make money.

I suggest you get a domain and hosting account and host your own wordpress blog. Then create a free wordpress.com blog just to build links back to your own blog.

Andrew

Another reason I've heard for hosting your own blog is for control. Some people apparently have set up blogs on WordPress.com and they unknowingly posted something that violated the terms of use. WordPress.com shut them down without warning and would not reopen their web site, so they lost all of their SEO power.

Plus with all the flexibility you have on your own site, I've got to believe you have options available to you for SEO that you don't have on WordPress.com.

i think you have more power to rank on your own in google with your own wordpress blog ...

e.g. yes the tag pages for wordpress blogs do rank well, but you have no control over which blog wordpress decides to show in the results - whether its yours or whether it's someone else's ...

plus is you have a lot more power to properly seo your blog when it's your own one .... and google tends to give a bit of love to newly discovered sites, so it's all about how you utilise that love

Guys awesome insights and suggestions. Much thanks!