Host it with Wordpress or Typepad but do the subdomain hosting option, eg blog.example.com.

This will simplify your life and also give you a place to communicate when (not if) your site goes down. I would also use a dedicated DNS hosting provider (we use worldwidedns.net) with a short TTL on blog.example.com in case you need to switch the IP in a hurry.

I hate to make a me too post, but... Me Too.

This is by far the best advice. You get the SEO value of having the blog be on your domain instead of someone elses, and you get the resiliency value of having the blog be on someone elses server(s) instead of your own.

The most SEO value comes from the blog being as a subdirectory of the main site (like example.com/blog). So when the blog gets links, the domain example.com gets the link, not a subdomain. A subdomain is treated as a different domain name.

Having said all that, you can play the game of hosting teh blog on a subdomain name and thus attempt to dominate the results pages with multiple listings you control, from your main domain name and the subdomain name. It's hard, but you might just get it to work.

Actually, as far as I understand it, anyway (I'm no SEO expert), putting it under a different subdomain does not get you the SEO value.

Instead, what you want is to have your blog neatly slotted in as:

http://mybusiness.com/blog

That will give you the pagerank.

This is absolutely correct.

blog.mybusiness.com is treated as an entirely different domain to mybusiness.com

The only way to get any SEO benefit is to use a subdirectory like: mybusiness.com/blog/

Wordpress is very easy to install just make sure you upgrade it once a month.

That is the ideal, but you can't really do that when the blog is hosted on a different server (barring some really extreme apache rewriting-fu).

The next best option is subdomain.yourdomain.com.

We took a radically different approach and are using Webby (a ruby static site generator) to generate our blog as a bunch of static pages with Disqus comments.

This, by the way, is also the approach I've taken with danieltenner.com.

A good example of this is available on github: http://github.com/ReinH/reinh-com/tree

+

The advantages:

1) It's easy to slot in your blog as mybusiness.com/blog (which should give you extra SEO)

2) Unless your server is absolute trash, even a major slashdotting won't trouble nginx (or even apache) serving a bunch of static files.

3) There's no hassle to do with upgrading versions, security issues, maintenance, possible impact on your site's performance, etc.

4) It is extremely easy to get the blog/subsite to have whatever structure you want, since you define the structure yourself.

5) Webby supports Haml, Sass, Textile, Markdown, Whatever-the-hell-you-want

6) You can test the site locally to know exactly what a blog post will look like before you push it live.

-

The downsides are:

1) Only someone with ruby installed can update the blog

2) You can't have dynamic bits (other than stuff you can include via javascript... which, actually, tends to be all you need. Disqus is pretty much all we're using on ours)

I deemed those to be acceptable downsides, and so far I haven't regretted it.

You can see examples of this at work at:

http://www.woobius.com/scribbles/

and

http://danieltenner.com

and

http://reinh.com

I don't understand the sudden fad for professional companies to host their blogs on Wordpress, Tumblr, etc. It makes absolutely no sense to me. Keep your blog on your own domain as a subdomain or a subdirectory and NOT on example.tumblr.com or example.wordpress.com. Both are great services, but shouldn't be where you host your company's blog.

Can you give a reason why people should do this? We host the Stormpulse blog on Wordpress. It handles the core function of communicating with our user base just fine, and it means that I didn't have to spend any more time on it than absolutely necessary.

My counter reason: what "looks professional" is the kind of thing that makes doctors, lawyers, and real estate agents feel like they have to drive luxury cars. On the Internet, if people love your product, they don't care what you drive.

A big reason for the subdomain is that these days it's all about getting found when someone is searching for something that you sell. There is a lot of "fu" that goes into how Google decides what results to return for a given search, and how Google decides what page or site is the most authoritative for a given search. While nobody knows the exact recipe, everyone seems to agree that your domain name plays into the algorithm significantly. When you spread your content across domains, you're essentially diluting the search value you can achieve for a given query. Maybe it doesn't matter today, because you rank very high now, but that may not always be true.

The other reason is that people will bookmark your blog (if you're lucky ;) ). What if you later decide to switch from wordpress.com to whoknowswhat.com? What if wordpress goes out of business or shuts down for some reason? People will have bookmarks for what is essentially YOUR site on a domain that you ultimately have no control over. It is a bad idea to build up a resource for your company onto a mechanism that you ultimately have no control over.

Your url is still blog.yourname.com you should be paying the $10 a year to have it on you own domain.

Everyone who responded to you pretty much covered it. But, I'll add that integrating your blog with your website is important for a few obvious reasons: (1) keeping your blog on your own website is better user experience; (2) you can more tightly integrate the rest of your website; (3) it's better in terms of SEO (yes, SEO matters); and (4) you have more control over it running on your own servers.

By "looking professional" I mean "acting professional". Acting professional is simply a synonym for delivering a quality service, in my opinion. I'm not talking about putting on a facade here. I'm talking about taking everything into consideration, because even the littlest things affect a person's overall experience with your product.

Can you install plugins/custom themes on blogs hosted on wordpress.com?

If not, that's a big downside.

I host both my company blogs with Tumblr but have custom domains setup and created custom themes that fit our site design so I don't really have a problem with using it. The reason we use Tumblr is so we can follow people, reblog industry things and in general interact with users more then just writing long, boring text posts.

That's perfectly acceptable. I just think keeping it on your own domain -- as you mention -- is important.

From bitter experience: if you can have someone else host your blog, let them do it. WordPress has been a security debacle. You have better things to worry about.

Depending on what your startup does, I'm not sure that the resiliency value will make much difference. If your site is down, in many cases you may be screwed anyway; the blog won't help you get new users. In a long-term sense, other people may be able to benefit from your blog if your startup is not accessible, though.

It won't help you get new users, but it's a good way to let them know you are having problems and communicate when things will be back up. You can't do that if you host it on your own web server and the server fails (unless of course, all your users are following you on Twitter too!)

Own domain using www.squarespace.com with rest of your site. No reason to deal with self-hosted setup, upgrades, and scaling when you have more important things to do when you're starting your company.

Disclaimer: I work here and am biased ;)

I prefer it on my own server, but also a "status" blog at wordpress/blogger/etc. Then you get both the benefits — full control over your blog, and a way to communicate with your users when the main site goes down! :)

Sponty uses tumblr.