Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Subdomains and SEO - Should we redirect to subfolder?
-
A new client has mainsite.com and a large numer of city specific sub domains i.e. albany.mainsite.com. I think that these subdomains would actually work better as subfolders i.e mainsite.com/albany rather than albany.mainsite.com. The majority of links on the subdomains link to the main site anyway i.e. mainsite.com/contactus rather than albany.mainsite.com/contactus. Having mostly main domain links on a subdomain doesnt seem like clever link architecture to me and maybe even spammy. Im not overly familiar with redirecting subdomains to subfolders. If we go the route of 301'ing subdomains to subfolders any advice/warnings?
-
Thank you. THANK YOU!
-
In 2010 we redirected two subdomains into folders. The results have been kickass. KICKASS!
-
If you look at a some of the site links you see on google, that is the deep links listed under the main links, you will see that they list subdomains as sub links. WMT recently stated counting links from subdomains as internal links, make of that what you will, but Matt Cutts has stated time and time again that subdomains or subfolders will not make a difference.
-
Thanks.
-
Google has recently changes the way sub folders work so Google now treats sub domains as the same website,
That been said the sub folder is normally a far better option due to internal linking factors behind the domain and it works as a more powerful option over time from my experience.
You can do internal re directs, we have done 100s over the years and not had many dramas, just make sure you map out the correct re directs to correct folders.
I would really research the level of localized traffic per sub folder, research into the new Google changes into sub folders, and look at Google ad preview for GEO based serps based on your domains based per state to see what the potential problems could be. You really need to do a risk analysis for the client, we have done a few of these recently for global travel clients who have had similar issues.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Redirection of 100 domain to Main domain affects SEO?
Hi guys, An email software vendor managed by a different area of my company redirected 100 domains used for unsolicited email campaigns to my main domain. These domains are very likely to get blacklisted at some point. My SEO tool now is showing me all those domains as "linking" to my main site as do-follow links. The vendor states that this will not affect my main domain/website in any way. I'm highly concerned. I would appreciate your professional opinion about this. Thanks!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anagentile0 -
We are redirecting http and non www versions of our website. Should all versions http (non www version and www version) and https (non www version) should just have 1 redirect to the https www version?
We are redirecting http and non www versions of our website. Should all versions http (non www version and www version) and https (non www version) should just have 1 redirect to the https www version? Thant way all forms of the website are pointing to one version?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Caffeine_Marketing0 -
How to create a smooth blog migration from subdomain to subfolder main?
Hi mozzers, We have decided to migrate the blog subdomain to the domain's subfolder (blog.example.com to example.com/blog). To do this the most effective way and avoid impact SEO negatively I believe I have to follow this checklist: Create a list of all 301 redirects from blog.example.com/post-1 to example.com/post-1 Make sure title tags remain the same on main domain Make sure internal links remain the same Is there something else I am missing? Any other best practices? I also would like to have all blog post as AMPs. Any recommendations if this something we should do since we are not a media site? Any other tips on successfully implementing those types of pages? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ty19861 -
The Great Subdomain vs. Subfolder Debate, what is the best answer?
Recently one of my clients was hesitant to move their new store locator pages to a subdomain. They have some SEO knowledge and cited the whiteboard Friday article at https://moz.com/blog/subdomains-vs-subfolders-rel-canonical-vs-301-how-to-structure-links-optimally-for-seo-whiteboard-friday. While it is very possible that Rand Fiskin has a valid point I felt hesitant to let this be the final verdict. John Mueller from Google Webmaster Central claims that Google is indifferent towards subdomains vs subfolders. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h1t5fs5VcI#t=50 Also this SEO disagreed with Rand Fiskin’s post about using sub folders instead of sub domains. He claims that Rand Fiskin ran only 3 experiments over 2 years, while he has tested multiple subdomain vs subfolder experiments over 10 years and observed no difference. http://www.seo-theory.com/2015/02/06/subdomains-vs-subfolders-what-are-the-facts-on-rankings/ Here is another post from the Website Magazine. They too believe that there is no SEO benefits of a subdomain vs subfolder infrastructure. Proper SEO and infrastructure is what is most important. http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2015/03/10/seo-inquiry-subdomains-subdirectories.aspx Again Rand might be right, but I rather provide a recommendation to my client based on an authoritative source such as a Google engineer like John Mueller. Does anybody else have any thoughts and/or insight about this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB3 -
Canonical Question: Root Domain Geo Redirects to SubFolder.
Howdy, Working on a larger eComm site that 302s you based on your location. With that in mind should I canonicalize the final page. domain.com => 302 => domain.com/us/, domain.com/fr/, etc... (Should these all have a canonical pointing to the root domain.com?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | blake.runyon0 -
301 Redirect of subdomain?
Fellow Mozzers, I'm having a hard time wrapping my brain around a redirect issue and thought it was worth posing the question to the Moz community. I did a search first but couldn't find the exact answer I was looking for. How does a 301 redirect work when you redirect a sub domain example.homepage.com to www.homepage.com but you keep the sub directories of example.homepage.com/page-1 active and are trying to rank them? I'm dealing with a current project where this is happening and this doesn't make sense to me, to redirect the subdomain if you're also trying to rank/create search traffic for pages, sub directories on example.homepage.com. This also get's into the debate of if a sub domain site is viewed as it's own website and therefore has to rank itself. If this is true, it seems like we're kind of killing the authority of the site by redirecting it. Additionally, www.homepage.com has a much stronger link profile than example.homepage.com I hope this makes sense. Any thoughts are appreciated. Thanks for your time.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SMG-Texas0 -
Follow or nofollow to subdomain
Hi, I run a hotel booking site and the booking engine is setup on a subdomain.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vmotuz
The subdomain is disabled from being indexed in robots.txt Should the links from the main domain have a nofollow to the subdomain? What are you thoughts? Thanks!0 -
Redirect a subdomain to a subdirectory for SEO purposes.
Hi, I have a site on wordpress and I want to add eCommerce to it. We want to go with Shopify but Shopify only allows to host their platform on a subdomain. I like to have it on a subdorectory, so my question is: Would it make sense to redirect the whole subdomain to a subdirectory (move everything from shop.domain.com to domain.com/shop) for SEO purposes? Would Google see these pages as if they were part of the main domain? Thanks! Julien
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | julienraby0