Which is the better option in 2012, sub-domains or sub-directories?
-
Pinnion offers online software for surveys and trivia games. Information about our product is at www.pinnion.com and then interested users create their accounts at secure.pinnion.com. The surveys that they create link back to secure.pinnion.com, so we would obviously like to gain whatever SEO benefits we can from that structure.
We've been advised that moving from secure.pinnion.com to www.pinnion.com/secure would be the best way to accomplish this. A 2009 post by Rand seems to support that POV, but then a 2011 post over SEObook claims that everything has changed 100% since then. There was a little conversation here and here in Q&A last Fall that touched on this subject, but nothing really definitive.
Would love to get thoughts on this subject based on the collective wisdom today. Thanks.
-
It depends on the kind of content you are going to have there. As you mentioned, if you expect good quality inks and a lot juice there, I'd suggest doing it on a sub-directory.
However, if you are going to be creating many pages that could be considered 'thin' (little/no content pages, no backlinks at all, no images, etc), I'd say go with the sub-domain so as to have a buffer of its possible repercussions on the main website.
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
-
SEO threats of moving from [.com.au] domain to [.com] domain for a 15yr old SAAS company.
Hey Guys. I work for a 15 yr old SAAS company which originally started with a country-specific [.com.au] domain and later got a [.com] domain as the business grew. The AU website has a DA:56 while the [.com] has as DA: 25. Now we are looking to have everything migrated to the [.com] domain. But, my concern is that we might lose the SEO value of the AU domain. I was wondering if anyone has any experience in this or recommend a case study on this topic. Thanks! Allan
Algorithm Updates | | allanhenryjohn0 -
Duplicate website pages indexed: Ranking dropped. Does Google checks the duplicate domain association?
Hi all, Our duplicate website which is used for testing new optimisations got indexed and we dropped in rankings. But I am not sure whether this is exact reason as it happened earlier too where I don't find much drop in rankings. Also I got replies in the past that it'll not really impact original website but duplicate website. I think this rule applies to the third party websites. But if our own domain has exact duplicate content; will Google knows that we own the website from any other way we are associated like IP addresses and servers, etc..to find the duplicate website is hosted by us? I wonder how Google treats duplicate content from third party domains and own domains. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Domain Migration Question
Lets say there is a brand that has one primary product type at different optional tiers. (Think something like SMB/Enterprise/Individual) Lets also say that 1 year ago this brand migrated from having everything under 1 domain (Domain A) to moving 2 of their product tiers to another domain (Domain B), a new domain. They have done some initial SEO work on this domain and had a pretty successful migration but it has also been decided that they are going to no longer offer one of these product tiers and they intend to eventually migrate everything back under the 1 domain (Domain A) They just are not sure whether they should do this now or later.
Algorithm Updates | | DRSearchEngOpt
During this next year or so there is also going to be some likely re-branding/design, etc...stemming from this decision, on the domain, meaning content changes and all that fun that goes into a migration/re-design/re-branding strategy. The timing of this has not been fully decided on. Here is the question: Should they a) Migrate back to Domain A first and then do the re-design or b) Keep 2 separate domains for now, figure out the re-design/re-branding, make content changes and then migrate Site A over in a year or so after all changes have been made? My concern with option a) is that they migrated a little less than 1 year ago and will be migrating back which I feel could have a negative impact on the content and the domain. The positive side I see here is that this impact could be just as large even if we waited so doing this now might be a better, more efficient use of our time if we can migrate and make content changes fairly close together or concurrently.
My concern with option b) is that the tier they no longer offer makes up the majority of that sites business and traffic, leaving us with not much in terms of content that ranks well and garners much traffic. Trying to optimize for the remaining product tier by itself on it's own domain could be quite hard and then having to migrate it in a year or so back to Domain A could negatively impact any small organic impact I can make on applicable pages/domain. Does anybody have any input here? I am leaning towards Option A and but wanted to get some other opinions. Thanks Everybody! Edit: So far, this has received a lot of views but no input. I am hoping to have a bit of a dialog on this so any ideas or input is welcome.0 -
US domain pages showing up in Google UK SERP
Hi, Our website which was predominantly for UK market was setup with a .com extension and only two years ago other domains were added - US (.us) , IE (.ie), EU (.eu) & AU (.com.au) Last year in July, we noticed that few .us domain urls were showing up in UK SERPs and we realized the sitemap for .us site was incorrectly referring to UK (.com) so we corrected that and the .us domain urls stopped appearing in the SERP. Not sure if this actually fixed the issue or was such coincidental. However in last couple of weeks more than 3 .us domain urls are showing for each brand search made on Google UK and sometimes it replaces the .com results all together. I have double checked the PA for US pages, they are far below the UK ones. Has anyone noticed similar behaviour &/or could anyone please help me troubleshoot this issue? Thanks in advance, R
Algorithm Updates | | RaksG0 -
Having 2 domains with same name - Impact on SEO
Hi AllAs we still dwindle with the rankings not coming in line with the efforts.I have a question: We have 2 websites 1. http://www.example.com/ (which lost traffic and rank in Jan 2013). So we assumed that it was due to some penguin penalty. So we worked on disavow extra but nothing actually helped.Though there was no manual penalty mentioned in the GWT. Frustrated with this we thought of having another website 6 months back: 2. https://example.org/ - we did all the right things and by the book. But we are not seeing ranking here too. We did backlink analysis on all competitors and worked on only quality links they had. So all our links are highly highly relevant. But still the ranks are not moving beyond third page...in fact they moved to 6-7 page in last 2-3 days. Please suggest .. 1. is it due to same name of domain (our brand name) causing the issue. If yes should we go for 302 or 301 redirect to save ourselves from any penalty that our last website may have got. We can not leave that name unattended as our cataloges etc have that website mentioned. i will expect a scientific reply here not gut feeling please. 2. Is it to do with .org domain extension that it should not be with commercial organizations like us Kindly reply at the earliest Regards Aman
Algorithm Updates | | Aman_1230 -
SEO For sub locations for specific services
Hey Guys, I am currently creating a website for my business that will be marketing through SEO very heavily. I Live in NYC, and i'd like to rank up for the individual locations such as Queens, Brooklyn, Long Island and eventually if my domain authority and other long hall metrics kick in NYC. What I find very tiring is targeting these locations all separately, it means I need to create the same site 4 times with completely different and unique content. Should this setup work for me, and is there a risk that Google will see 4 web design pages, and basically say even though the content is unique your ranking up for web design with a location too many times? from my understanding this is not a problem now, but is this a future risk? It also becomes extremely difficult for site navigation with about us pages, contact us pages, and other pages that either have to be duplicated or all pages shown on sidebar for navigation. Please share your thoughts with me, THANKS!!!
Algorithm Updates | | tonyr70 -
Do search engines penalize for too many domain aliases?
I have a main domain name and 20+ related alias domains pointing to it. Is there a danger, penalty or concern that I should be aware of related to alias domains? I saw something on Google "Apps Administration" under "What is a domain alias" saying "you can add up to 20 domian aliases" but I don't use Google Apps. Please advise... Thank you, Chris
Algorithm Updates | | caliboyz0 -
Is a slash just as good as buying a country specific domain? .com/de vs .de
I guess this question comes in a few parts: 1. Would Google read a 2-letter country code that is after the domain name (after the slash) and recognize it as a location (targeting that country)? Or does is just read it as it would a word. eg. www.marketing.com/de for a microsite for the Germans www.marketing.com/fr for a microsite for the French Or would it read the de and fr as words (not locations) in the url. In which case, would it have worse SEO (as people would tend to search "marketing france" not "marketing fr")? 2. Which is better for SEO and rankings? Separate country specific domains: www.marketing.de and www.marketing.fr OR the use of subfolders in the url: www.marketing.com/de and www.marketing.com/fr
Algorithm Updates | | richardstrange0