Subdomains vs directories on existing website with good search traffic
-
Hello everyone,
I operate a website called Icy Veins (www.icy-veins.com), which gives gaming advice for World of Warcraft and Hearthstone, two titles from Blizzard Entertainment. Up until recently, we had articles for both games on the main subdomain (www.icy-veins.com), without a directory structure. The articles for World of Warcraft ended in -wow and those for Hearthstone ended in -hearthstone and that was it.
We are planning to cover more games from Blizzard entertainment soon, so we hired a SEO consultant to figure out whether we should use directories (www.icy-veins.com/wow/, www.icy-veins.com/hearthstone/, etc.) or subdomains (www.icy-veins.com, wow.icy-veins.com, hearthstone.icy-veins.com). For a number of reason, the consultant was adamant that subdomains was the way to go.
So, I implemented subdomains and I have 301-redirects from all the old URLs to the new ones, and after 2 weeks, the amount of search traffic we get has been slowly decreasing, as the new URLs were getting index. Now, we are getting about 20%-25% less search traffic. For example, the week before the subdomains went live we received 900,000 visits from search engines (11-17 May). This week, we only received 700,000 visits.
All our new URLs are indexed, but they rank slightly lower than the old URLs used to, so I was wondering if this was something that was to be expected and that will improve in time or if I should just go for subdomains.
Thank you in advance.
-
Hi Damien,
So if I'm reading this correctly, the consultant is saying that due to the size of the site (tens of thousands of pages), and the need to categorise its content, that subdomains are the best choice.
I would say that there are far bigger websites using categories within subfolders, notably big retailers, e.g.
http://www.marksandspencer.com/c/beauty, http://www.marksandspencer.com/c/food-and-wine, http://www.marksandspencer.com/c/mands-bank
http://www.waitrose.com/home/inspiration.html, http://www.waitrose.com/home/wine.html, http://www.waitrose.com/content/waitrose/en/home/tv/highlights.html (<-- the last one being a crappy version, but a subdomain nonetheless)
and so do websites that deal with providing content for very different audiences:
http://www.ncaa.com/schools/tampa, http://www.ncaa.com/championships/lacrosse-men/d1/tickets, http://www.ncaa.com/news/swimming-men/article/2014-03-29/golden-bears-and-coach-david-durden-earn-third-national-title, http://www.ncaa.com/stats/football/fbs
Has the consultant provided examples of other websites doing this that would take on the same structure?
There are hundreds of examples of websites whose structure / categories are properly understood despite existing in subdirectories, so I'm still sceptical that this is a necessity.
This is not to say that a subdomain approach wouldn't work and is definitively bad or anything, I'm just not really convinced that the reasoning is strong enough to move content away from the root domain.
I disagree about user experience - from a user's perspective, the only difference between subfolders and subdomains is the URL they can see in the address bar. The rest is aesthetic. You can do or not do everything you'd do with the design of a website using subdirectories that you'd do with a website(s) employing subdomains. For example, just because content sits on www.icy-veins.com/wow/, its navigation wouldn't have to link to www.icy-veins.com/hearthstone/ or mention the other brand in any way if you don't want to. You can still have separate conversion funnels, newsletter sign-ups, advertising pages, etc.
-
Thank you for shedding more light on the matter. Here are the reasons why our consultant thought that subdomains would be better:
In the case of ICY VEINS the matter is clear, subdomains will be the best of course of action and I will quickly explain why
- The domain has over 10,000+ pages (my scan is still running looking at 66,000+ addresses already) which put it in a whole new category. For smaller sites and even local business sites sub directories will always be the better choice
- Sub Domains will allow you to categorize the different categories of your website. The sub domains in mind are all relating to the gaming industry so it still makes it relevant to the global theme of the website.
- Splitting up the different categories into subdomains will allow search engine to better differentiate the areas of your website (see attached image named icy-veins SERP – Sitelink.png). At the moment Google do not properly categorize your areas of your website and uses your most popular visited areas as the given site links in the search engine results page)
- However noting that you already have the sub directory /heartstone a .htaccess 301 redirect for that whole directory will have to be set in place for any current. This will ensure that any inbound links from other sites will be automatically redirected to the correct sub domain and index page. Failing to implement the redirect will cause that the correct Page Authority and Domain Authority not to carry over to the sub domain. Technically heartstone.icy-veins.com and icy-veins.com is to separate domains according to the DNS that is why it is important to ensure that the redirects is in place to carry over any “seo juice” that the old directory had.
- Sub domains enhances the user experience of your visitors by keeping to separate themes and topics. This will have a positive impact on your bounce rate (which is currently sitting at 38% for the last 30 days) and better funnelling for goal conversions (i.e. donate | newsletter signup | advertise on our website
- Essentially you are focusing on different products for the same brand
In the end of the day it comes down to your personal preference although sub domains will be a better choice to ensure that your different products are split up and reflects better with the search engine results pages.
-
Hi Damien,
There are cases where subdomains are very necessary or inevitable, usually because of technical limitations (and even then, they can usually be worked around via practices like reverse proxy). When you see subdomains in the wild and aren't sure why they're being used, they will often just be legacies - old set-ups that no one wants to change because it would require redirecting old URLs, which is inadvisable if those URLs don't need to be redirected and if they rank well.
In this case, I'd be really interested to know why the SEO was adamant that the new structure should use subdomains and not subdirectories. Google is much better at working with new subdomains now than it was in years past, but if there is no good reason to use them, subdirectories are still the safer option for SEO purposes, and the content housed on subdirectories should automatically inherit authority from the parent domain. New subdomains seem to be far less likely to inherit this authority, as other responders have said above.
Find out exactly why the SEO wanted subdomains - if their reasoning isn't solid, you may want to place this content in subdirectories and place 301 redirects from the subdomains to the subdirectories. If you are going to do these redirects, doing them sooner rather than later is advisable as redirection usually comes with a short period of lower rankings / traffic.
On that note, redirection does usually result with that short period of traffic loss, but that should happen quite quickly and be fixing itself in 2+ weeks, not getting worse.
-
Unfortunately yes you will need to 301 the subdomains back to the folder structure.
-
Thank you Dean and Caitlin! So, I guess the next step would be to revert the change and switch to directories (using 301-redirects from the subdomains), right?
-
I agree with Dean above. Subdomains split your authority. Basically, this means that Google considers wow.icey-veins.com and hearthstone.iceyveins.com as two separate websites in their book. For this reason, folders would have been the far better solution - the site's authority would have remained the same and any additional folders added to the site and resulting links to that folder would have continued to build up the website's authority.
Don't get me wrong, there are a number of websites that utilize subdomains (typically very large sites). In fact, it use to be very common in year's past. However, subdomains are no longer seen as SEO best practice. ^Caitlin
-
The advice to use sub domains is a wow in it self from an SEO point of view. Sub domains do not pass authority so it's basically like having a new domain for each sub domain.Folders would have been a far better solution in my opinion.
Interesting debate regarding the learning page re domains on Moz here: http://moz.com/community/q/moz-s-official-stance-on-subdomain-vs-subfolder-does-it-need-updating
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
-
New Subdomain SEO questions
I have a main site - mysite.com. I just created a subdomain - leadform.mysite.com I plan to use the leadform.mysite.com as a 1 page lead form only. I will link to leadform.mysite.com from mysite.com and also from other websites I own (myothersite.com etc.) - filtering all traffic to this form to capture leads. (Note - the leadform.mysite.com has CNAME to other server that hosts the backend of the form) My questions are: How should I link from mysite.com to leadform.mysite.com? With dofollow or nofollow? (mysite.com has 1000's of pages and would link from every page with "get a quote' type button) 2) How should I link from myothersite.com to leadform.mysite.com? With dofollow or nofollow? Any SEO risk linking to leadform.mysite.com from an outside domain? (myothersite.com has 1000's of pages and would link from every page with "get a quote' type button) Does it make sense to build links from outside sites to leadform.mysite.com directly to try to get that lead capture page to rank on it's own? 4) Does it make sense to link back from leadform.mysite.com back to mysite.com for seo value? With dofollow or nofollow? Thanks in advance for any help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | leadforms0 -
How do I get the sub-domain traffic to count as sub-directory traffic without moving off of WordPress?
I want as much traffic as possible to my main site, but right now my blog lives on a blog.brand.com URL rather than brand.com/blog. What are some good solutions for getting that traffic to count as traffic to my main site if my blog is hosted on WordPress? Can I just create a sub-directory page and add a rel canonical to the blog post?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | johnnybgunn0 -
Duplicate content on subdomains
Hi All, The structure of the main website goes by http://abc.com/state/city/publication - We have a partnership with public libraries to give local users access to the publication content for free. We have over 100 subdomains (each for an specific library) that have duplicate content issues with the root domain, Most subdomains have very high page authority (the main public library and other local .gov websites have links to this subdomains).Currently this subdomains are not index due to the robots text file excluding bots from crawling. I am in the process of setting canonical tags on each subdomain and open the robots text file. Should I set the canonical tag on each subdomain (homepage) to the root domain version or to the specific city within the root domain? Example 1:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NewspaperArchive
Option 1: http://covina.abc.com/ = Canonical Tag = http://abc.com/us/california/covina/
Option 2: http://covina.abc.com/ = Canonical Tag = http://abc.com/ Example 2:
Option 1: http://galveston.abc.com/ = Canonical Tag = http://abc.com/us/texas/galveston/
Option 2: http://galveston.abc.com = Canonical Tag = http://abc.com/ Example 3:
Option 1: http://hutchnews.abc.com/ = Canonical Tag = http://abc.com/us/kansas/hutchinson/
Option 2: http://hutchnews.abc.com/ = Canonical Tag = http://abc.com/ I believe it makes more sense to set the canonical tag to the corresponding city (option 1), but wondering if setting the canonical tag to the root domain will pass "some link juice" to the root domain and it will be more beneficial. Thanks!0 -
4 websites with same content?
I have 4 websites (1 Main, 3 duplicate) with same content. Now I want to change the content for duplicate websites and main website will remain the same content. Is there any problem with my thinking?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | marknorman0 -
Looking for good examples of website's geotargeting
I am looking for some examples of sites that handle their global presence well (geotargeting and languages), ideally from a single .com domain thanks! Stephen
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | firstconversion0 -
Domain vs Subdomain for Multi-Location Practice
I have a client who has 2 locations (Orlando & Tampa) and would like to keep the current domain for both locations (DA 29). We want to target additional cities within each service area (Orlando & Tampa). Each service area would target 2 cities on the main pages and 4-5 cities with "SEO" pages which contains unique content specific to the given city. Would I be better off creating sub domains (www.orlando.domain.com & www.tampa.domain.com), creating subfolders (www.domain.com/orlando, etc) or keeping the domain as is and create SEO pages specific to each city? We want to spread the domain authority to both locations.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Red_Spot_Interactive0 -
SEOmoz recommended Directories
SEOmoz recommends a bunch of directories and some cost money. How much influence do these directories have? Is it worth investing in some where the category makes sense or all where the category makes sense?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur0 -
Links directory: is it worth it?
Would there be any benefit or penalty for implementing a links directory with over 300 external links to websites that somtimes return the link? Or would it be more beneficial to simply ask for one way inbound links when gaining links? For example this section of this website: http://directory.flyawaysimulation.com/ This is their directory and most but not all of the sites in that directory link back to them. Your ideas, thoughts or suggestions are greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Peter2640