I have a blog on a sub domain, would you move it to the rood domain in a directory?
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I have a blog that preforms fairly well on a sub domain, but after reading a post that Rand made to the Q & A I am thinking about moving it to the main domain in a sub directory. What are your thoughts on this? Here are some stats on it. The blog currently gets about 5 x the traffic of the main domain. The domain is older, 2008 creation date. They pretty much register for the same keywords.
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Thanks guys, you have pretty much confirmed what I thought. It looks like I have a fun weekend ahead of me redirecting and testing things out. But it will be a good notch to add to see how the traffic goes.
One thing I wanted to ask about, this is not the case in my instance, but would the recommendation be the same if the subdomain had a higher PR than the naked domain?
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I have always hosted blogs in a subfolder. The reason is I want all the traffic to stay in one place, along with all the link juice. True, a blog on a subdomain may get viewed as two separate entities, and therefore have multiple chances to show up in Google, but I like to have the look, and PR all attached to one specific place.
Personally, I have never seen the benefit of having a blog hosted on a subdomain. It always made more sense to have all your eggs in one basket and to keep feeding your TLD instead of spreading out your efforts.
Here is an article I generally refer to for advice: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/subdomains-or-subfolders-which-are-better-for-seo/6849/
Like EGOL said "If you want your blog to be treated as part of the domain then put it on the domain. If you want your blog to be treated like a separate domain then put it on a separate domain."
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Thanks for elaborating. But what we're debating may prove something else entirely. It seems weird, but it's a very smart dumb machine.
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Google repeatedly changes their mind about some things.
They have repeatedly changed their mind about subdomains.
At some times in the past they treated subdomains exactly like they were part of the root domain. At other times they treated them like a separate site and they have been in the middle some times too I am sure.
If you want your blog to be treated as part of the domain then put it on the domain. If you want your blog to be treated like a separate domain then put it on a separate domain. By doing this you will always be right.
But, if you place it on a subdomain then I am betting that you will be wrong about 1/2 of the time - if you are lucky.
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Personally, I've never put a blog on a sub. More people are saying there isn't any difference, but more people may be saying that because a few more have said as such. Lovely how that works?
It was about four years ago we were told that EMDs were losing their potency. Upon hearing that, I jumped right on the bandwagon. Bad move, at least for a little bit. It would be years before a non-EMD, all things equal, could easily compete with an EMD.
What is said and what is are often at chronological odds.
Are you talking about this post?
Perhaps a new URL for the same pages could cause the Googles to 'reconsider' the content, for better or worse. Hopefully it would be for the better. I think you're going to do it anyway, so please take notes. It has the makings of a post I would love to read.
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thinking about moving it to the main domain in a sub directory. What are your thoughts on this?
If this was my site I would move it to /blog/ (or a folder with another name) immediately and use 301 redirects.
All of my blogs are in a folder on the main domain.
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