What are the best way to get a new subdomain ranked properly
-
Our main site (blog with 700 high quality articles) ranks pretty well and we recently launced a rapidly growing forum (55.000 posts in the first 11 weeks) on a subdomain.
What would be a good strategy for ranking the forum quickly
-
Ok, all the best with your fitness site and forum, it looks great
-
Thanks. I'll keep it on the subdomain since the articles are high quality and forum posts tend to be lower quality.
-
Hi there, a sub domain is a separate website when it comes to Search, so there is likely no quick method of ranking highly by ethical methods.
As you opted for the sub domain route, you'll have to approach SEO in the same way as for any new website, great content and great inbound links, amongst all the usual other important factors.
If it's not too late, consider moving your blog into a folder on your main website, e.g. www.example.com/blog as you'll then benefit from your main site's strengths, history, authority.
Hope that helps, Regards, Simon
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
-
What is the best way to structure website URLs ?
Hi, can anyone help me to understand if having category folder in URL matters or not? how to google treat a URL? for example, I have the URL www.protoexpress.com/pcb/certification but not sure google will treat it a whole or in separate parts? if in separate parts, is it safe to use pcb/pcb-certification? or it will be considered as keyword stuffing? Thank you in anticipation,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SierraPCB1 -
I am lost at where to go. My optimization rating is 95% + and rankings are on pages 4+. I would like to know what I should do to increase my rankings.
My site is Glare-Guard.com. My Domain Authority has not moved from 17 in a long time. i have done everything to optimize the different pages. I have 90%+ ratings for the various pages, yet I am still not even close to the first page for many of the keywords I am looking to rank for. Do you have any tips or ideas? Should I try to rewrite my content and add more information? I am just at a loss for where I should go to get the right traffic to my site. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bigskyinc0 -
Moving to subdirectory from subdomain, where subdomain PR is equal to root domain PR
Hi all, I'm currently in the process of revitalizing my company's blog. Currently, the blog sits on a subdomain (blog.rootdomain.com). SEO best practice dictates that I should move this (and 301 redirect the old URLs) to rootdomain.com/blog to concentrate link equity and avoid the risk of having search engines treat the subdomain as separate from the root domain. However, the PageRank Status extension for Chrome is reporting that the PR for the blog on the subdomain and the root domain are the same. Is there any benefit to migrating the subdomain to a subdirectory? Is that data accurate enough to base decisions off of?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brad-causes0 -
Site rankings down
Our site is over 10 years old and has consistently ranked highly in google.co.uk for over 100 key phrases. Until the middle of April, we were 7th for 'nuts and bolts' and 5th for 'bolts and nuts' - we have been around these positions for 5-6 years easily now. Our rankings dropped mid-April, but now (presumably as a result of Penguin 2.0), we've seen larger decreases across the board. We are now 5th page on 'nuts and bolts', and second page on 'bolts and nuts'. Can anyone please shed any light on this? Although we'd fallen some before Penguin 2.0, we've fallen quite a bit further since. So I'm wondering if it's that. We do still rank well on our more specialised terms though - 'imperial bolts', 'bsw bolts', 'bsf bolts', we're still top 5. We've lost out with the more generic terms. In the past we did a bit of (relevant) blog commenting and obtained some business directory links, before realising the gain was tiny if at all. Are those likely to be the issue? I'm guessing so. It's hard to know which to get rid of though! Now, I use social media sparingly, just Facebook, Twitter and G+. The only linkbuilding I do now is by sending polite emails to people who run classic car clubs that would use our bolts, stuff like that. I've had a decent response from that, and a few have become customers directly. Here's our link profile if anyone would be kind enough as to have a look: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.thomassmithfasteners.com Also, SEOMOZ says we have too many links on our homepage (107) - the dropdown navigation is the culprit here. Should I simply get rid of the dropdown and take users to the categories? Any advice here would be appreciated before I make changes! If anyone wants to take a look at the site, the URL is in the link profile above - I'm terrified of posting links anywhere now! Thanks for your time, and I'd be very grateful for any advice. Best Regards, Stephen
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stephenshone1 -
Getting a Sitemap for a Subdomain into Webmaster Tools
We have a subdomain that is a Wordpress blog, and it takes days, sometimes weeks for most posts to be indexed. We are using the Yoast plugin for SEO, which creates the sitemap.xml file. The problem is that the sitemap.xml file is located at blog.gallerydirect.com/sitemap.xml, and Webmaster Tools will only allow the insertion of the sitemap as a directory under the gallerydirect.com account. Right now, we have the sitemap listed in the robots.txt file, but I really don't know if Google is finding and parsing the sitemap. As far as I can tell, I have three options, and I'd like to get thoughts on which of the three options is the best choice (that is, unless there's an option I haven't thought of): 1. Create a separate Webmaster Tools account for the blog 2. Copy the blog's sitemap.xml file from blog.gallerydirect.com/sitemap.xml to the main web server and list it as something like gallerydirect.com/blogsitemap.xml, then notify Webmaster Tools of the new sitemap on the galllerydirect.com account 3. Do an .htaccess redirect on the blog server, such as RewriteRule ^sitemap.xml http://gallerydirect.com/blogsitemap_index.xml Then notify Webmaster Tools of the new blog sitemap in the gallerydirect.com account. Suggestions on what would be the best approach to be sure that Google is finding and indexing the blog ASAP?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sbaylor0 -
Has this new Dmoz link put my rankings at risk?
About 7 months ago, I applied for a link at Dmoz. This week, the link got approved. The only problem is that it seems there are hundreds of link directories that scrape Dmoz. Open Site Explorer is now showing about 130 new links to my site that are essentially Dmoz scrapper sites. Do you think Google will mistaken this as me buying directory links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JenniferDacosta0 -
Easy way to get some do-follow links for a new site
I am launching a new website and when I search for "list of do-follow websites" I find lots of people posting their list. Rather than individually sign up for hundreds of sites for one link at a time, is there a tool that can automate this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | StreetwiseReports0 -
My homepage doesn't rank anymore. It's been replaced by irrelevant subpages which rank around 100-200 instead of top 5.
Hey guys, I think I got some kind of penalty for my homepage. I was in top5 for my keywords. Then a few days ago, my homepage stopped ranking for anything except searching for my domain name in Google. sitename.com/widget-reviews/ previously ranked #3 for "widget reviews"
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wearetribe
but now....
sitename.com/widget-training-for-pet-cats/ is ranking #84 for widget reviews instead. Similarly across all my other keywords, irrelevant, wrong pages are ranking. Did I get some kind of penalty?0
