Blog.mysite.com or mysite.com/blog?
-
Hi, I'm just curious what the majority think of what's the best way to start a blog on your website for SEO benefits. Is it better to have it under a sub domain or a directory? Or does it even matter?
-
From everything I've read, I agree that your safest bet is to go with the subfolder.
-
I agree with Tim and Adam and that said, sub-folders are better as a general rule of thumb for sure.
You might also want to refer to other similar questions here on SEOMOZ.
-
http://www.seomoz.org/q/blogs-are-best-when-hosted-on-domain-subdomain-or* http://www.seomoz.org/q/setting-up-a-company-blog-subdomain-or-new-url* http://www.seomoz.org/q/blog-vs-blog
and the post from Matt Cutts as well as the article from Rand that Adam mentioned.
-
-
I think Adam has hit the nail on the head. We recently moved our blog site from a subdomain to a subfolder and 301'd all the old URL’s with the intention that any entries that users find genuinely useful or interesting will be potentially linked to, thereby providing a benefit to the root domain.
As long as your blog is tightly related to your core business activity then I would go down the subfolder root although, in all honesty, I think subdomains potentially look a little more professional.
-
Hi Tim,
I generally prefer to go with the subfolder option (mysite.com/blog) rather than the subdomain (blog.mysite.com). The reason I prefer this option is because having the blog in a subfolder means that it will benefit from the value of the root domain. In other words, links that are obtained by the root domain will pass that value to the subfolders. However, a subdomain is treated as a separate site and therefore not much value is passed via the root.
Rand provides an excellent answer in a previous Q&A of a similar topic:
Hope that helps,
Adam.
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
-
Duplicate blogs across different domains
Hi, I am running a blog for several English speaking websites ( e.g Australia, UK ) and I plan doing SEO for these websites. I want to know if it's a must changing all the blogs for these countries in order to avoid Duplicate Content ?
On-Page Optimization | | kiraftw0 -
Keyword/phrase proximity
I'm curious about opinions regarding how the search algorithms treat multiple key phrases that may reside in one long tail key phrase. So for example: If I'm optimizing for "New York Litigation Lawyer", would that also give me rankings for "New York Lawyer"? My thought is that the former will be considered the primary keyword and rankings will improve mostly for that, but that the latter keyword could also possibly see some lift as well. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | nickturner9221 -
Regarding Google Title 'Width' and changing Meta Titles w/o Penalty?
A vast majority of pages on my site are now too wide (the character count was fine prior to the March update). I want to go through and update them so they display properly and are not too wide.However, I am concerned, as my understanding was that changing Meta Titles is dangerous and can have a negative effect on your rankings and can cause real issues. Is this an opportunity to change my Titles all-together without any kind of penalty? Or can I only trim the end part? In summary: 1. Can I edit all of my Meta Titles without affecting my rankings? 2. If no, how do I edit them properly to fit within the proper width and not cause any issues? 3. If yes, I can go through and change all my Meta Titles to whatever extent and optimize them to reflect latest best practices? There are changes I wanted to make to all my meta titles but I've been afraid to... due to fear of rankings drops etc Any help with this would be greatly appreciated
On-Page Optimization | | lawfirm0 -
Tech/Development Pricing ??
Hi I've submitted some site change request to a clients dev team and they have got back with a rather large quote thats left me gobsmacked, so i want to run it by any of you to get your feedback ? Creating/integrating a dynamic xml site map @ £3450 Fixing Crawl Errors & Warning reported by Moz report (i..e adding canonicalisation tag to each page to deal with dupe content and a few other small/misc items) @ £4850 Setting up/enabling ecom tracking in Analytics @ £910 Setting up 1 events based goal in analytics @ £490 Are these prices even plausible ? Cheers Dan
On-Page Optimization | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Using example.info when example.com is a link farm. Ok? Bad? Doesn't matter?
Second question of the day- I'm helping a friend with his law firm site. He is using example.info because example.com is being used by a link farm. Is this hurting his search efforts? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | ahossom0 -
SEO for Blogs - Top Tips
Hi People, This may have been covered before (i am sure it had) but I was wondering if people use the same SEO tactics for blogs as they do for other sites. Really wondering if there are any tips for blogs specifically ? 🙂 Thanks all
On-Page Optimization | | wedmonds0 -
Small Site Title Tag / Structure Question
Bit embarrassed to ask this question, but will ask it anyway! I have done some quite reasonable basic SEO for clients in the south of Spain with small sites and had reasonable success. My wife and I came to the Pyrenees in the south of France to take over and run bed and breakfast in a lovely old farm and some self-catering accommodation in one of the pastures (with my continuing to do a bit of work for clients too). We are running and developing the place for friends who are away 3-4 years. They had an abysmal site, so we designed one to together: http:www.loubetaspyrenees.com/ (I have given the French version because it's what I am most concerned with - there is an English version in case I can tempt you to a holiday here!) It's been very well received by users, so that's great. We have the place on about 12 agencies amd almost all link to our site, so it serves as a good showcase. Here's my issue (for the French site): It went online 11th Feb and is already doing well for more "long tail" searches, and for more local and specific searches, but is proving slow on our prime search terms. The prime market is French, and they key terms are "Gîtes" for the self-catering accommodation, and "Chambres d'Hôtes" for the Bed and Breakfast. Our key Geographical term for the French market is "Hautes Pyrenees" - it's a departmental area. In Google.fr We are around result 100 out of 600k results for "Chambres d'hôtes hautes pyrénées" and aren't in the first 200 for "Gîtes Hautes Pyrénées". This is a competitive market and we are competing with optimised and long-established agencies but still hope to do better. I know I am losing from poorly constructed title tags cannibablising the results, but cannot see how to solve this: Home Page Title tag: "Gîtes et Chambres d'Hôtes dans les Hautes Pyrénées | les Baronnies" I have two main pages on the Gîtes: Gîte for 2-3 people Title tag "Gîte dans les Hautes Pyrénées pour 2-3 personnes en les Baronnies"
On-Page Optimization | | PeterMurray
Gîte for 3-9 people Title tag "Location Gîte dans les Baronnies Pyrénées pour groupe 3-9 personnes" ("Location" means rental) Google understood the above and put us no 1 out of over 1miillion results for a search for a gite for 9 people in the south west of France ("gite sud ouest 9 personne") And 2 pages for the Bed and Breakfast: B&B in the farm building: "Chambres d'Hôtes dans les Hautes Pyrénées dans une ferme restaurée"
B&B in gite apartments with sitting rooms: "Chambres d'Hôtes dans les Hautes Pyrénées avec salon et terrasse" I am not sure how to handle the titles for the Home Page and for the 4 subpages - sounds silly, but have you any advice on how I might handle these titles better? I thought of using more general terms on the Home Page ("Holiday accommodation in the ..."), but on such a small site (18 pages in each language version) I feel that would be unwise. It seems I must try to find some way of differentiating the titles on the other 4 pages so that i am not cannibalising but where there are so few alternatives I am not sure how! Oh dear, sorry this was so long!0 -
Social media links/buttons - best practices
Has anyone tested social media buttons, to see which types, styles, and placements get the most clicks? Should they go at the top of an article, or are they OK at the bottom? Should the icons definitely have labels? Display # of tweets and Likes? How big should they be? My preference is for discrete buttons with a smallish, plain icon and a label. I don't display tweets or Likes, unless it's a healthy number. And I still think a "share by email" icon is important. I put them at the bottom of the article, to keep the home page uncluttered and lead the eye into reading the article. I'm also concerned about leaking rank from the homepage, especially for a site that's still establishing itself. But if moving buttons to the top gets more shares, that's probably better. Is there a Wordpress plugin that you really like? (I haven't found one yet - I'm still hardcoding my social media buttons.) Opinions are great, but test results are better! Can anyone share?
On-Page Optimization | | mattotoole1
