What has a better chance of ranking alongside my main site for my company name, a subdomain or new domain?
-
Hi Moz,
Do search engines really treat subdomains as separate domains in this regard? Or are we more likely to get more real estate on the first page with a new domain?
Our goal is to have our main site and this new subdomain or domain ranking in positions 1 and 2 for our company name.
This is going to be a careers site/portal.
Thanks for reading!
-
I think an overall better solution would be to work on developing a strong enough website that the site is given sitelinks, indicating a stronger brand that has extra real estate space at the top of the SERP. With subdomains, you might be able to rank second or third as well and I've definitely seen this happen (although can't replicate it right now). However, Google usually tries to show relatively diverse results, even for company names. You might have trouble ranking content on the same domain, even presented as subdomains, in both top positions. It's more common for Google to pick a social profile, a separate company resource and perhaps a review site for the top results, rather than listing link after link from the same root domain.
-
Is your company name a very unique name or something generic that a lot of other sites rank for? That makes it either very simple or more difficult depending.
SillySamantha'sCookies.com (easy)
FloridaPaintingContractors.com (more difficult)
I wouldn't do a subdomain or a new domain if you are trying to get #1 and #2 positions for your company name. I would optimize some additional internal pages for your company name on the main site and try to get the homepage and and an internal page ranked in the top two spots.
-
I don't think subdomains are the way to go. For your brand name, Google is going to naturally show your page in the first few results, unless your brand name is a common term or phase like "Baseball" or "Health Insurance". It used to be that using a subdomain treats it as a different site, or something close to that, but what I have read recently is that subdomains are treated as the same. At the end of the day, I would keep everything on my root domain in subfolders, therefore building up the power of my core domain at all times.
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
-
Is it worth keeping a decades-old domain that's merely 301 redirecting to the main domain?
Hi fellow Moz SEOs, We have a bigger client who we just did an SEO Site Audit for, and it was discovered that they have several domain names that are simply 301 redirecting to their main domain name. One of their domains in particular is decades old, and the client is asking if there is any value in keeping it (and the others), or simply leaving them as-is. Considering the domain age, does anyone have any recommendations? Much appreciated, Zack Barton
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Zack
Barton Interactive
(833) 442.6853 // office
(408) 910.7750 // mobile
https://bartoninteractive.com0 -
Why am i ranking better in canada?
hi, some of my keywords with high volume are ranking on first page in canada, but in the states i am on 3rd pages first result. what factors are contributing this disparity. what can be done here in this case. is it because of my links and tld distribution or some server location thing. what should i do to rank better in the US? i have shared hosting server in singapore.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sam09schulz0 -
Why site linking domain and backlink are differing.
My site https://www.planmymoment.com and Mobile version site https://www.planmymoment.com/?amp Why my desktop and mobile version site linking domain and backlink are differing.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moz12pro0 -
Using a Sub Domain as a Main Domain?
Hi, I'm working on a site at the moment and the sub domain is acting as the main domain. This occurred when the site was redesigned and built on a sub domain for testing but it was never moved to the main domain when it went live (a couple of years ago). So little or no pages are live on domain.com but all on sub.domain.com. It's a large company but they have very poor rankings. Would you recommend that they move the sub domain back into the root folder? Does this involve renaming/re-pointing URLs? Thanks Louise
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MVIreland1 -
Site re-design, full site domain A/B test, will we drop in rankings while leaking traffic
We are re-launching a client site that does very well in Google. The new site is on a www2 domain which we are going to send a controlled amount of traffic to, 10%, 25%, 50%, 75% to 100% over a 5 week period. This will lead to a reduction in traffic to the original domain. As I don't want to launch a competing domain the www2 site will not be indexed until 100% is reached. If Google sees the traffic numbers reducing over this period will we drop? This is the only part I am unsure of as the urls and site structure are the same apart from some new lower level pages which we will introduce in a controlled manner later? Any thoughts or experience of this type of re-launch would be much appreciated. Thanks Pete
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | leshonk0 -
3 Pages Ranking Beside Each Other | How do I consolidate so one ranks better?
An ecommerce website I own called backyardGamez.com sells outdoor games, for example cornhole boards, bags, etc. One such product is a cornhole board carrying case. If you search the above phrase, my site has three pages that rank on the first page. The term isn't high volume, so I'm assuming that is part of the reason. Is this a good, normal thing or does this mean I have inadvertently broken up my ranking power from one powerful page to 3 OK pages? Does anyone know how I can take two of these pages and use them to make the 3rd page more powerful? For example, I would prefer 1 page ranks higher on page 1 in the serps and the other two fall a bit from supporting the other. Thanks, Adam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Soft-Lite0 -
Launching a new site with old, new and updated content: What’s best practice?
Hi all, We are launching a new site soon and I’d like your opinion on best practice related to its content. We will be retaining some pages and content (although the URLs might change a bit as I intend to replace under-scores with hyphens and remove .asp from some extensions in order to standardise a currently uneven URL structuring). I will also be adding a lot of new pages with new content, along with amend some pages and their content (and amend URLs again if need be), and a few pages are going to be done away with all together. Any advice from those who’ve done the same in the past as to how best to proceed? Does the URL rewriting sound OK to do in conjunction with adding and amending content? Cheers, Dave
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Martin_S0 -
If we add noindex to a subdomain, will the traffic to that subdomain still generate domain authority for the primary domain?
We are trying to decide whether a password protected site, that we will noindex, should be set up as a subdomain or if it should be its own domain. The determining factor here is whether or not having that noindexed subdomain will increase domain authority since its noindexed. Any ideas???
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | grayloon0