A Blog Structure Dilemma We're Facing...
-
We're launching a pretty large content program (in the form of a blog) and have a structure issue:
Big fans of Wordpress for efficiency reasons, but our platform doesn't allow hosting of a wordpess (or other 3rd party) blog on the primary domain where we want it. site.com/blog
Here are the options:
1. Sub-domain: We can easily put it there. Benefit is we use the efficient Wordpress tools and very fast to setup etc. Downside is that the root domain won't get benefit of any backlinks to the blog (as far as I understand). I also don't believe the primary domain will benefit from the daily fresh/unique content the blog offers.
2. Custom Rig: We could create our own manual system of pages on the site to look just like our blog would. This would allow us to have it at site.com/blog and benefit from any backlinks and fresh content. The downside is that it won't be as efficient to manage.
3. External Site: Create a different site just for the blog. Same issue as the sub-domain I believe.
User Experience is a top priority, and all of the above pretty much can accomplish the same UX goal, with #3 requiring a some additional strategy on positioning.
Is #1 of #3 going to be a big regret down the road though, and is the backlink/content benefit clearly worth doing #2?
(correct me if I'm wrong on my assumptions with #1 but at least with the backlinks I'm almost certain that's the case)
Many thanks for your inputs on this.
-
Matt Cutts
Subdomains vs. Subdirectories What's the difference between using subdomains and subdirectories? When it comes to Google, there aren't major differences between the two, so when you're making that decision, do what works for you and your visitors. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/01/feeling-lucky-at-pubcon.html
Deb, it really is a pretty personal choice. For something small like a blog, it probably won’t matter terribly much. I used a subdirectory because it’s easier to manage everything in one file storage space for me. However, if you think that someday you might want to use a hosted blog service to power your blog, then you might want to go with blog.example.com just because you could set up a CNAME or DNS alias so that blog.example.com pointed to your hosted blog service. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/subdomains-and-subdirectories/
-
I also noticed that the sitelinks often include links from subdomains.
And Matt Cutts has said its a personal choice, and GWMB states it makes no difference to them.
I have had good results so far with Sub Domains, I remeber asking you for advice about a year or 2 ago. you recommended good linking between sub and root domains to show the connection.
i have followed that advice, and the sitelinks for my sites in google reflect the subdomians as sub categories of the root.
so i am convinced subdomains act like subfolders, at least they have so far for me.
-
Great idea -- and the link Scot posted is perfect. However our platform doesn't give us access to mod_proxy or htaccess, so we are unable to setup the reverse proxy. unfortunately. Sigh.
-
Agreed - Google is consolidating subdomain links in Google Webmaster Tools, but as far as I know, that does not reflect a change in how the algorithm works. Subdomains can still fragment and split link-juice. The change is more of an accounting trick, for lack of a better word.
-
Thanks, Hugh! I'm in the same boat as SEOPA with 3dcart and this seems like the best solution.
This post by Slingshot SEO seems relevant (What is a Reverse Proxy and How Can it Help My SEO?).
-
Hm. Right, I think I have another suggested solution of sorts - it's tricksy and you'd need an expert to set it up, but it'd solve your problems.
In short, if you run a reverse proxy serving your site itself on a server which ISN'T your BigCommerce server, you can tell it to fetch your main site for your www.yourdomain.com URL, and your blog (live, not cached) for www.yourdomain.com/blog. Probably your best option would be to use a reverse proxy like Varnish or Nginx, both of which are normally used for performance reasons - however, they can also be used to effectively "combine" two servers into one.
So, you'd move your DNS record to point to the reverse proxy, then set the proxy up to fetch content from your ecommerce site and your blog site.
Issues:
-
You'd need another server, and you'd need root access and an expert sysadmin to set it all up.
-
I don't know how well BigCommerce would handle a reverse proxy - but frankly, they SHOULD be able to handle it OK if you talk to their sysadmins.
Advantages:
- This would also give you massive redundancy in case of high traffic - reverse proxy setups are usually used to improve performance. You'd be Digg-proof!
It's complex, but I can see it working! Just another suggestion.
More info on reverse proxies - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_proxy
-
-
Hm. It seems to me that you've just got a routing issue - there MUST be a way to fix this.
Can you run a mod_rewrite .htaccess or similar on the server?
-
It's a platform issue. BigCommerce. Everything else has been fantastic with them, but our only option for WordPress is to host on a subdomain.
The clear answer is that having it in a directory is better, but doing so means we need to have a very manual setup and lose the efficiencies/functionality of wordpress.
-
No opinion here.
In late 2010 we redirected to popular subdomains to folders in the root. The results have been kickass. Kickass.
-
Here is a post from earlier in the year with a similar discussion (didn't see that one before I posted this). Also looks like similar differences of opinion, though some more sources sited. http://www.seomoz.org/q/corporate-blog
Because of the lack of consensus, I'm curious to research more. Just want to make sure I/we didn't miss anything over the past few months.
-
The problem with this idea, it occurs to me on second thoughts, will be comments. Having dynamically user-generated content will be tricky with this workaround.
Aside from that, rsync and W3TC are both enterprise-level stable solutions, so it SHOULD work - but I agree, it's doing something new, and new's always a bit risky.
Would you be able to go into any detail as to why you can't host WP? Is it a hosting company issue, a platform language issue, or something else?
-
James: do you have a source for the statement that Google now treats subs as a key site element?
-
Interesting. I need to research this more. It sounds like it's prone to errors, but maybe not.
-
If I could not have the blog that is going to receive massive work in a subfolder I would be looking for a different platform for the site or a different method of creating the blog.
Placing that blog on a subdomain or on a satelite site is like tossing away great content imo.
-
Google now treats sub domains as a key element of the site
[citation needed]
Though I know you're talking about - http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/08/reorganizing-internal-vs-external.html
However, as far as I'm aware, there's no information yet as to how Google are changing the weighting of these links (or even if they are), so I'd still be wary of charging ahead with a subdomain
-
Can you rsync or otherwise automatically copy content onto your primary web server? If so, there may be a way to combine the best of all worlds.
Set up your Wordpress platform somewhere else - doesn't matter where. Make sure Google isn't crawling it to avoid duplicate content penalties.Install a caching solution like W3 Total Cache which writes the entire blog as static HTML to the disk.
Now, have a frequently-updating automatic synchronisation tool copy those files from the location on your blog server to the local directory on your web server corresponding to yourdomain.com/blog . Set up the same rewrite rules on your main server as W3TC uses on your blog server.
You should now have an automatically-updated static copy of your blog hosted under yourdomain.com/blog . As a bonus, it'll be fast as hell and stable as a large room full of horses.
The actual setup's a bit of a faff, but my (non-pro SEO) intuition is that it'll be the best solution SEO-wise.
-
Thanks for the input, James. Agreed on the external site. I didn't know about subs being treated as a key element now. So other sites linking to posts on the blog (if the blog is on blog.site.com) will still benefit the primary domain?
Having it in a folder is doable, but more difficult to manage ongoing. I think it's a question of 'how much better' is it to have at site.com/blog...
-
If you can not get it onto a sub folder ie site.com/blog then the next best is to have it on a sub domain blog.site.com
Google now treats sub domains as a key element of the site, yet sub folders work better for internal linking.
I would not put it on an external site.
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
-
Site structure for location + services pages
We are in the process of restructuring our site and are trying to figure out Google's preference for location pages and services. Let's say we are an auto repair company with lots of locations and each one of them offer some unique services, while other services are offered by all or most other locations. Should we have a global page for each service live with a link to the location page for each shop that offers that service? OR Should we built a unique page about each service for every location as a subfolder of each location (essentially creating a LOT of sub pages because each location has 15-20 services. Which will rank better?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MJTrevens1 -
Only homepage is ranking after site re-launch
We've been moving all our sites over to a new platform (Demandware) this year. In the process, they've all gotten updated designs (from the same template), on-page optimizations, etc. Since they're all on the same platform and are essentially copies from one template, any technical issues found have been fixed across all sites. The problem I'm seeing is there are a few sites that haven't really seen much/any recovery from the site launch, and these are sites that were done 4-5 months ago. There's one in particular that's especially concerning, since it's showing issues that none of the other sites seem to have. In my Moz reports, it looks like of all the keywords that are ranking, they're only ranking the https version of the homepage (and from what I'm seeing, the https version wasn't picked up and ranked until the beginning of October, which was also the time that WMT shows a huge drop in clicks and impressions). I've crawled the site (ScreamingFrog), done a site search in Google (all pages look to be indexed), etc. and I haven't come across any specific problems there that would suggest a technical issue. We're wondering if it might be a link authority problem, since this site had the most dramatic change in navigation. The navigation used to be product based (Boots, Shoes, etc.) and is now broken up by gender. I've noticed that a few other pages that are ranking are dual gender pages that also existed on the old site, whereas all of these new categories aren't ranking at all and I'm not seeing this happen with any of our other sites. I've gone down a bunch of different paths trying to figure this out, but I haven't come up with any concrete answers as to why this is happening and how to fix it. Any thoughts as to what else I can look into or try for this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WWWSEO0 -
Website with only a portion being 'mobile friendly' -- what to tell Google?
I have a website for desktop that does a lot of things, and have converted part of it do show pages in a mobile friendly format based on the users device. Not responsive design, but actual diff code with different formatting by mobile vs desktop--but each still share the same page url name. Google allows this approach. The mobile-friendly part of the site is not as extensive as desktop, so there are pages that apply to the desktop but not for mobile. So the functionality is limited some for mobile devices, and therefore some pages should only be indexed for desktop users. How should that page be handled for Google crawlers? If it is given a 404 not found for their mobile bot will Google properly still crawl it for the desktop, or will Google see that the url was flagged as 'not found' and not crawl it for the desktop? I asked a similar question yest, but it was not stated clearly. Thanks,Ted
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | friendoffood0 -
- Truth ? ''link building isn't considered a suitable way of promotion as per recent search engine updates''
I need SEO. A SEO consultant said: ''link building isn't considered a suitable way of promotion as per recent search engine updates'' they mention: ''Therefore we would be undertaking a range of promotional exercises such as blog postings, social book marking, press release, etc that are more effective for ensuring best possible rankings for the website.'' Do you agree? Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BigBlaze2051 -
Doubts with URL's structure
Hi guys i have some doubts with the correct URL structure for a new site. The question is about how show the city, the district and also the filters. I would do that: www.domain.com/category/city/disctict but maybe is better do that: **www.domain.com/category/city-district ** I also have 3 filters that are "individual/colective" "indoor/outdoor" and "young/adult" but that are not really interesting for the querys so where and how i put this filtters? At the end of the url showing these: **www.domain.com/cateogry/city/district#adult#outdoor#colective ** ? Well really i don't know what to do with the filters. Check if you could help me with that please. I also have a lof of interest in knowing if maybe is better use this combination **www.domain.com/category-city or domain.com/category/city **and know about the diference. Thank you very much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | omarmoscatt0 -
What NAP format do I use if the USPS can't even find my client's address?
My client has a site already listed on Google+Local under "5208 N 1st St". He has some other NAPs, e.g., YellowPages, under "5208 N First Street". The USPS finds neither of these, nor any variation that I can possibly think of! Which is better? Do I just take the one that Google has accepted and make all the others like it as best I can? And doesn't it matter that the USPS doesn't even recognize the thing? Or no? Local SEO wizards, thanks in advance for your guidance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rayvensoft0 -
Google's Structured Data Testing Tool? No Data
I'm stumped as to why some of the pages on my website return no data from Google's Structured Data Testing Tool while other pages work fine and return the appropriate data. My home page http://www.parkseo.net returns no data while many inner pages do. http://www.parkseo.net Returns No Data http://www.parkseo.net/citation-submission.html Does Return Data. I have racked my brains out trying to figure out why some pages return data and others don't. Any help on this issue would be greatly appricated. Cheers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | YMD
Gary Downey0 -
Should I 'nofollow' links between my own sites?
We have five sites which are largely unrelated but for cross-promotional purpose our company wishes to cross link between all our sites, possibly in the footer. I have warned about potential consequences of cross-linking in this way and certainly don't want our sites to be viewed as some sort of 'link ring' if they all link to one another. Just wondering if linking between sites you own really is that much of an issue and whether we should 'nofollow' the links in order to prevent being slapped with any sort of penalty for cross-linking.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | simon_realbuzz0