Which is Best Practice for creating URLs for subdomain?
-
My website is related to education. We have created sub domains for all major colleges, universities & Entrance exams like Gre, Toefl ETC.
for eg: amityuniversity.abc.com (Amity is Name of University )
Now if have to mention city name in URL as well (college is located in multiple locations)
amityuniversity-delhi.abc.com
amityuniversitydelhi.abc.comNow my Q is can we use hyphens in sub domains if we have to add city name or shall we create without using any hyphens.
In Directory structure we can always separate words with hyphens, can we follow same practice in subdomain as well
Which is a best URL for subdomain
amity-university-delhi.abc.com
amityuniversity-delhi.abc.com
or amityuniversitydelhi.abc.com -
As to:
Here is to the day that we don't have to make a domain registrar rich!
As an old Marine, we have a saying in that proud group that really applies:
COPY THAT! (A Big I agree) especially with regard to a certain daddy that sucks rocks in Arizona, USA and has girls as his spokes persons...
-
I completely agree with the fact that those of us that do this everyday aren't the best to ask in regards to this, though our office is a mixed bunch, not all marketeers.
In general I have noticed that more and more users that I have come across are becoming more aware of what they are clicking on in the SERPs. They are filtering results based on their own judgments, not just trusting the search engines as they may have done in the past. Though as you say with the growth of the last five years there is probably one hell of a lot of people that trust in the SERPs whatever they serve for a query. In relation to this suspicion; I think page titles and descriptions influence this more than EMDs.
It would be an interesting study to see the impact of hyphens(the amount) in EMDs and their click through rates from the SERPs.
As we have both attested, though, we have had success with EMD with hyphens, though this is obviously down to many factors in relation to SEO strategy we have employed, not just a good domain.
Thanks for your input it is very valuable.
Here is to the day that we don't have to make a domain registrar rich!
-
As to the how many is most (typically one or two, cant think of where we used three).
As to those of us who do this daily, I don't think we are a good group to ask because we get used to certain conventions. My experience is that we are ahead of a lot of non hyphen domains in some tough verticals. But, we really bust it with all SEO and try to be cutting edge. (May not have as much to do with hyphens, if anything).
Suspicious users. Maybe in the past. But with the growth of the last five years, I would think it is much less a factor.
With Google, I just do not believe it is a factor, but am willing to be wrong. Again, they are out there everyday and short of going to .whatever, it is easier to use exact match with hyphens at times. Now, if EMD becomes a non-issue, so will hyphens.
We are going into a new area with a client over the weekend and I went in and bought every .com, .net, .info, .org with hyphen and non hyphen today. There were two .coms and a .net missing around roughly 40 root domain permutations. I look forward to the day I can just brand the domain/sub-domain and not make a registrar rich.
Best,
All the best,
-
Very interesting response Robert, with some very good and valid points - though I think you would want a expert in order to carry out that change, although that might not be the right place to find them - a very nice example of why hyphens, in the right situation, are very valid.
When you have worked with hyphens and domains what is the largest number of hyphens on an EMD you have worked on?
This has set off an interesting discussion in the office with the feeling that a domain with multiple hyphens is less trusted by the majority here when they appear in the serps, therefore receiving less click-throughs.
In general do you think users have been educated to be suspicious of domains that appear long and and exact match with hyphens and that is why it is believed to be spammy by some?
The most I have worked on in regards to EMDs with hyphens is one and this dominated the SERPs for the targeted terms.
Do you think EMDs with multiple hyphens possibly set off alarm bells with Google in regard to over-optimization rather than efficient labelling of a resource online, in particular since Penguin?
-
Thanks Robert for your reply
Till date we have used hyphens in sub domain & we have not seen any -ve impact.
We were creating a list of 1000 new colleges so i just wanted to be rest assured, that's y i raised Q.
Also Students are aware of famous universities & colleges so thr is lot of search related to University specific keywords.
In some cases we have seen General level keywords like "Animation colleges Delhi" have less search compare to Particular university which is famous in Animation. In education we have seen thr is lot of search related to university & college level ky.
In hotel Industry its a vice versa
-
Rohan
This is one of my favorite topics and Matt makes great points. But, IMO there is not a right or wrong. Yes, SEOmoz has a great best practices page (see Matt's link) on this and when I look at it I always wonder as to its age or last update. (One of the reasons is that as the web expands, there are less and less .com/.net sites and it clearly says here that:
Top level domains (like .com) are the extensions associated with domain names. For best ranking results, avoid uncommon top-level domains (TLDs). Like hyphens, TLDs such as .info, .cc, .ws, and .name are spam indicators.
Here is why I question this: I do not believe that "spammy" can be quantified and I have yet to find a spammy test that was reliable. Also, I question what a spam indicator is and in the absence of any other relevant 'spam indicator' what affect it might have on ranking. Is it that Google has a spam indicator in the algorithm that absent any other evidence, devalues at some level a hyphen or a .info? I would love to see the proof.
Note: My incredulity is driven by results we achieve using hyphens as needed or .info as needed.
Today there are too many instances where hyphens are needed just to be able to figure out what it says. (Or to insure correct interpretation: expertsexchange.com is the classic in this group) Yes, if this is an EMD and if it is in a branded or common context someone who already knows of it might not use the hyphens.
But, if we are looking to capture those who are searching for something they don't yet know of, they are not typing in amityuniversity delhi with or without. They are searching for something like universities in Delhi, graphic design schools delhi, etc. They are not going to the SERPs and on finding what they want, going to the address bar and typing it in; they are clicking the link in the SERP and going to the page.
So, my rule is this: Use Hyphens to clarify a long or confusing domain/sub domain name. Use hyphens competitively if you desire an EMD where one is not available for a high impact page.
We are an agency and do a lot of sites that clients come to us with no domain name for. We use hyphens and non hyphens. I have yet to see where a hyphenated domain is negatively impacted to a level that gave me pause. I am sure based on experience that a hyphenated EMD does have more impact than a non hyphenated domain that is not exact match.
I look forward to a vigorous discussion on this oft discussed issue!
-
Hi Rohan,
You can use hyphens in sub-domains, however when using hyphens in relation to any domain or sub-domain I tend to stay away from them, if possible, as they tend to be related to spam practices, especially with multiple hyphens. I think you will find this SeoMoz best practice in relation to domains a good guide as to what is the best tactic to take - http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/domain
Hope this helps
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
-
Blogs created by a company for us and another company
Hi, we are not a big company and as well as creating our own blogs, a company for a while now has provided us each month with blog posts. But hey also provide other companies in the UK with the same content. Each month we create 2 or 3 of our own generated blog posts relating to the services we provide. Also we receive on average 10 blog posts (pulled in to the site through a word press add in and an rss feed from the company) to the site. The content is about specific topics which people will be searching for and they are really well optimized pages. Our own blog posts are looked at more often 80% to 20% but we do have a great link from a national site with a DA of 97 linking to one of their blog posts. But I wondered if google penalizes us because there will be other companies across the UK with the exact same content as us? Or whether these blog posts will help us because it is great content, even though other companies will probably have the same posts on their site? Nobody in our area uses this content as we have an agreement with the company which provides it. Many Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | danieldunn100 -
Which URL Structure is best for New Website?
Hello All, I have one client and he want to develop his website but the he want the URL structure for his website page like below: http://www.example.com/category/xxproduct.html But I have suggest him below URL Structure http://www.example.com/category/xx-product.html So Can you people please suggest me that from above which URL structure is better from SEO side as well as from Visual side..? Is using - is better to separate the words in URL?
On-Page Optimization | | jemindesai0 -
Changing the url of a page
Hello. I would like to change the url of a page. It currently has very few inbound links. I would set up a 301 redirect to the new url. Is there anything else I should take into account before changing the url? Is there a downside to changing a url? Do inbound links carry the same value when a 301 redirect is involved? Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | nyc-seo0 -
Contact Form On Homepage - Best Practices
How important is it to have a contact form on the homepage of a service-based business? I am trying to decide if having a form on front page will increase the number of people filling it out.
On-Page Optimization | | TheSEODR0 -
301 redirect and then keywords in URL
Hi, Matt Cutts says that 301 redirects, including the ones on internal pages, causes the loss of a little bit of link juice. But also, I know that keywords in the URL are very important. On our site, we've got unoptimized URLs (few keywords) in the internal pages. Is it worth doing a 301 redirect in order to optimize the URLs for each main page. 301 redirects are the only way we can do it on our premade cart For example (just an example) say our main (1 of the 4) keywords for the page is "brown shoes". I'm wondering if I should redirect something like shoes.com/shoecolors.html to shoes.com/brown-shoes.html In other words, with the loss of juice would we come out ahead? In what instances would we come out ahead?
On-Page Optimization | | BobGW0 -
What's the best practice for implementing a "content disclaimer" that doesn't block search robots?
Our client needs a content disclaimer on their site. This is a simple "If you agree to these rules then click YES if not click NO" and you're pushed back to the home page. I have this gut feeling that this may cause an upset with the search robots. Any advice? R/ John
On-Page Optimization | | TheNorthernOffice790 -
Is it good to have dashes in url's
When using keywords in url's for internal pages, isn't it a good idea to use dashes or underscores in the url between the keywords?
On-Page Optimization | | BradBorst0 -
2 URLs, same content, 1 with keywords. Does this hurt me?
I'm in the process of adding some new features to our site and have a question about our URLs. Most of our URLs consist of either sitename.com/contentname or sitename.com/content/contentid I'm in the process of building a directory to those pages. The directory has a number of filters which will ultimately point to the destination page. sitename.com/filter1/filter2/contentid or sitename.com/filter1/filter2/contentname The destinations will have references. From an SEO perspective, I would think I want the filter1/filter2 version of the link indexed since this will add keywords that someone might search for. However, since the filters are dynamic, if someone just searches for contentname I would want to have sitename.com/contentname returned in the search results. Do I get any SEO benefit out of building those filter links as described if they are not the canonical links?
On-Page Optimization | | JoeCotellese810