Do knowledge base plugins on a subdomain have seo benefit?
-
Hi SEO Moz,
We want to use a knowledge base plugin (cheaper & faster than building it ourselves) where we can have Q&As for our website. We want this to help with our SEO by adding in our keyterms that we want to rank for.
We've looked into TenderApp & Get Satisfaction which look like good solutions - however, as they're both on a sub-domain do we get any seo benefit from this? When people link to our knowledge base, will this help our website at all - or is the benefit going to go to TenderApp/Get Satisfaction?
For instance -
Our website URL is http://widget.products.com
The KB URL is http://widgetsupport.products.com
If the above plugin is not a good solution, is there anything else that is better?
Any help will be greatly appreciated!!
Thanks.
-
Thanks Marcus - really great advice!
We checked out SupportPress on WooThemes and really liked it! Plus you are right as to how we can run it on our own domain.
What we might do is pick 5 keywords we want to rank for, and move all our sites under one domain - this should help spread the link juice through to the less performing sites, as our main site gets a lot more press and links.
Hopefully this is a good strategy!
Thanks for the help.
-
Right, the first issue, there are loads of options. I would personally look at something like this:
http://www.woothemes.com/2011/07/supportpress/This is a WordPress theme that expands on the core functionality and creates a support environment. This is a full theme so you would likely need another wordpress installation in a sub directory but it will give you a rich support environment and all on the same URL.
Alternatively, if you don't want to manage another install, you could use a WordPress forum plugin, BBPress will do the job but there are a list of options here:
http://chasesagum.com/5-best-choices-for-wordpress-forum-pluginsOn your other issue, that is a big vague, the sub domain is a different product / service and essentially a seperate site so it needs to rank (or not) on it's own merit. As it happens, this is the problem you will have with the knowledgebase if you put it on a separate subdomain.
With no URL or an in depth look I can only give you generic advice but really, I would look to bring all of this under one domain and have one, well ranking site rather than 3 separate sites that all struggle.
Hope that helps!
Marcus -
Hi Marcus,
Thanks for that! We use WordPress as the CMS for our site. With something like TenderApp - we want to use it for Q&A but mainly, to have a very large and solid FAQ and Glossary on there (generated by us - and using keywords we want to rank for). I really like the SEO Moz one but I believe it's built in PHP? We don't have the resources or time at the minute to build our own service so we would like to use a plugin, but one that is hosted on our domain. Does something like this exist?
Also, I have another problem. Our website has another subdomain - our main site sells certain paid-for products, but we also offer a self-service solution that is free that is branded differently (though we do associate it with our brand name). Currently, this self-service solution is hosted on a subdomain to our main site - but is not doing very well in ranking for our keywords. What would you recommend we do? Our keywords are not in the domain name unfortunately.
Thanks for your help!
-
Hey
These are essentially forums for you to engage with your customers and not a million miles away from this here Q&A system.
If you are using these to answer common customer questions, build a knowledge base and benefit from user generated content then it would certainly be better to have this on the main domain as a subdirectory than to have it on the sub domain.
Sure, you could have links from the sub domain back to the main site but really, these are two separate entities and in every discussion where people have asked the subdomain vs directory question I have never seen anyone say subdomain.
You want one site with one set of inbound links and one nice healthy link profile if at all possible.
This is a good read:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-micrositesAlso, loads of other articles on SEOMoz answering this question to give you some further reading:
https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ie=UTF-8&ion=1#hl=en&sclient=psy-ab&q=subdomain+or+subdirectory+site:seomoz.org&oq=subdomain+or+subdirectory+site:seomoz.org&gs_l=serp.3...4939.10518.0.10589.34.25.7.0.0.1.253.1620.23j1j1.25.0...1.0...1c.AWvjSgMGrPI&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&fp=6dd2acfce60f574c&biw=1366&bih=643&ion=1What are you using for your main site? A CMS? There maybe an easy solution without having to go this subdomain route. Let me know what you are using and I will try and offer some suggestions as I am sure the rest of the happy shiny seomoz people will as well.
Hope this helps.
Marcus
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 Elements for Canonicalized URLs?
I am helping a client with SEO for their ecommerce store. They have around 65 products, but close to 500 URLs all for those same products. Basically they have a bit of an index bloat problem but long story short restructuring was too much of a lift for them, so I got them set up with a canonical URL strategy to ensure all duplicate pages point to one "main" product page. Getting to the point: They also need an on-page overhaul. I've created keyword optimized titles, metas, H1s, etc. for each product. Do these elements need to be added to every single one of the 450+ product pages OR do I only need to add them to the 65 "main" product pages that everything else is pointing to, since that will ultimately be the page that gets crawled?
Technical SEO | | AJTSEO0 -
Express js and SEO?
Hi fellow Mozzers, I have been tasked with providing some SEO recommendations for a website that is to be built using express.js and Angular. I wondered whether anyone has had any experience in such a framework? On checking a website built in this and viewing as a GoogleBot etc using the following tools it appears as though most of the content is invisible: http://www.webconfs.com/search-engine-spider-simulator.php http://www.browseo.net/ Obviously this is a huge issue and wonder if there are any workarounds, or reccomendations to assist (even if means moving away from this - would love to hear about it)
Technical SEO | | musthavemarketing2 -
Does an subdomain hosted offsite provide SEO value
We have a job board hosted through an applicant processing system which we've setup as a subdomain (jobs.ourcompany.com), most of the assets are hosted on our primary domain (ourcompany.com). My question is does having it hosted offsite provide any value? Do we get credit for that content being shared and distributed on the web or does the applicant processing system? As I see it the options are (correct me if I'm wrong): Host the job listings on our primary domain (ourcompany.com/jobs) and have it point to the application on the subdomain. Advertise the job listings pointing to the primary domain on the paid sites. The free job listing sites will automatically point to the sub-domain because the applicant processing system automatically submits them. Host the job listings entirely on the sub-domain applicant tracking system and link to it from our primary site navigation. Advertise the job listings to the sub-domain so that both free and paid point to the same place. Obviously the second one would be much easier just not sure on the technical side of our website getting credit by search engines as the one who has produced the content.
Technical SEO | | r1200gsa0 -
Schema Wordpress plugins
Hi Can anyone recommend a good Schema plugin for wordpress sites, does anyone know if Yoast SEO plugin has schema features ? Cheers Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Subdomains
Hello Seo Experts, Can any one help me with this issue... I do have issues with my subdomains, My site name is http://www.bharatdesi.com, should I have subdomain http://www.bharatdesi.com/hyderabad this way or hyderabad.bharatdesi.com. Please any can answer my question, which way I have to organize my subdomains... and also give me some examples.. Thank you.
Technical SEO | | Vinss0 -
New Forum: SEO considerations.
We're going to add a new forum to our website. We don't anticipate very large volumes of users. I read somewhere in The Art of SEO that forums should be 'built in bbPress'. I'm very much a programming novice so I'm still trying to get to grip with the basics of forums. I'd be grateful to know the main SEO considerations (however basic) that I should tell my web developer who is building the new forum.
Technical SEO | | JacobFunnell0 -
Subdirectories vs subdomains
Hi SEO gurus 🙂 Anyone has input on what's better? blog.domain.com vs domain.com/blog store.domain.com vs domain.com/store etc I think the subdir (/xyz) will concentrate authority on the same subdomain so should be better? However sometimes it is tidier on the server to maintain online stores or blogs in a separate strucutre so subdomains work better in that sense. I just want to make sure that doesn't affect SEO? Cheers!
Technical SEO | | hectorpn0 -
SEO Friendly Calendar System
Does anyone have a recommendation for a calendar system that is SEO friendly? I have been using Helios Calendar but the current version lacks proper SEO bones (canonical URLs, mini calendar generates links to empty events from 1950 to 2020, 302 re-directs, and it is generating thousands of crawl errors in Google Webmaster Tools. The developer has plans to implement some fixes, and I would rather not rip apart what is currently there to fix core issues. I have found that calendars in general are a nightmare. If anyone has any suggestions, or has experience in tidying up Helios I would be interested. Thanks, Dan
Technical SEO | | DanLaBate0