Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Use of subdomains, subdirectories or both?
-
Hello, i would like your advice on a dilemma i am facing. I am working a new project that is going to release soon, thats a network of users with personal profiles seperated in categories for example lets say the categories are colors. So let say i am a member and i belong in red color categorie and i got a page where i update my personal information/cv/resume as well as a personal blog thats on that page. So the main site is giving the option to user to search for members by the criteria of color. My first idea is that all users should own a subdomain (and this is how its developed so far) thats easy to use and since the domain name is really small (just 3 letters) i believe subdomain worth since personal site will be easy to remember. My dilemma is should all users own a subdomain, a subdirectory or both and if both witch one should be the canonical?
Since it said that search engines treat subdomains as different stand-alone sites, whats best for the main site? to show multiple search results with profiles in subdomains or subdirectories?
What if i use both? meaning in search results i use search directory url for each profile while same time each profile owns a subdomains as well? and if so which one should be the canonical?
Thanks in advance,
C
-
C
This is one of the reasons I love this forum: it requires thinking because many who ask questions are thinking. (think about it;) While I understand what eyepaq is saying in one sense that search engines "could" treat them as stand alone; it appears search engines do/could because as the subdomain holder you are not seeing links going only to the main domain or other subs, you are the one who controls it, can move its hosting, etc. But, according to Google, they do not in the sense of linking:
If you own a site that’s on a subdomain (such as googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com) or in a subfolder (www.google.com/support/webmasters/) and don’t own the root domain, you’ll still only see links from URLs starting with that subdomain or subfolder in your internal links, and all others will be categorized as external links. We’ve made a few backend changes so that these numbers should be even more accurate for you.
Note that, if you own a root domain like example.com or www.example.com, your number of external links may appear to go down with this change; this is because, as described above, some of the URLs we were previously classifying as external links will have moved into the internal links report. Your total number of links (internal + external) should not be affected by this change.
So, as for external linking, it is clear that if there ever was a question about domains and subdomains, there is none now. But, that does not mean you should not use subdomains. Eyepaqs point around user abuse is an excellent one, but you should also be monitoring this like a hawk.
At the end of the day, I would think that using subdirectories is going to be easier if you are planning on a large site. But, the ease you mention for the user with the short domain name is intriguing. I agree with Muhammad on sub domains might get a little expensive and, if your choice is to use both (I wouldn't as it seems to me that you are creating more and more work for your dev team) the canonical should be the subdomain.
Again, thanks for the thought provoking question.
Robert
-
Hi,
Since it said that search engines treat subdomains as different stand-alone sites,
** Search engines could treat subdomains as different stand alone sites. Usually they don't. A good example when they do that is the blogspot subdomains - and that is because those are in fact separate stand alone sites.
In your case however, since it's about users, similar with blogspot somehow - google can treat them at som point as separate websites.
whats best for the main site? to show multiple search results with profiles in subdomains or subdirectories?
** My personal opinion is that from a user point of view you should go with the subdomains as you do right now - it make sense, it's easy for them to use those urls, to link to them and so on.
You could lose some link equity for the main domain if some or all subdomain will be at some point treated as separate domains but if you put everything on a scale, it will balance as advantages on the subdomain approach anyway.
What if i use both? meaning in search results i use search directory url for each profile while same time each profile owns a subdomains as well? and if so which one should be the canonical?
** To be honest I do see the point / advantages in doing that.
One other advantage is that if you go with subdomains and google will count them as separate websites, if one of your user is ding something stupid (trying to rank with it and start building gambling and porn links to that sub domain you will be safe with the root domain and the other users won't be affected.
Hope it helps.
Edited to underline the word could
-
Hi HaCos,
Well it depends on how many users are there? thousands of users with thousands of sub domains is an expensive option. Go for user subdirectories instead of sub domains. And as each user got a sub domain too, so make that sub domain canonical of user sub directory. Hope this answers your question.
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
-
Subdomain cannibalization
Hi, I am doing the SEO for a webshop, which has a lot of linking and related websites on the same root domain. So the structure is for example: Root domain: example.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mat_C
Shop: shop.example.com
Linking websites to shop: courses.example.com, software.example.com,... Do I have to check which keywords these linking websites are already ranking for and choose other keywords for my category and product pages on the webshop? The problem with this could be that the main keywords for the category pages on the webshop are mainly the same as for the other subdomains. The intention is that some people immediately come to the webshop instead of going first to the linking websites and then to the webshop. Thanks.0 -
Can subdomains avoid spam penalizations?
Hello everyone, I have a basic question for which I couldn't find a definitive answer for. Let's say I have my main website with URL: www.mywebsite.com And I have a related affiliates website with URL: affiliates.mywebsite.com Which includes completely different content from the main website. Also, both domains have two different IP addresses. Are those considered two completely separate domains by Google? Can bad links pointing to affiliates.mywebsite.com affect www.mywebsite.com in any way? Thanks in advance for any answer to my inquiry!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
Franchise sites: Should each franchise have a subdomain or subdirectory?
One of my clients has about 40 franchisees who are going to have their own sites on a WordPress multisite installation. The question they're wondering: should these be on subdirectories (thesite.com/this-franchise) or on subdomains (this-franchise.thesite.com)? Which is best for SEO? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ideasandpixels0 -
Block in robots.txt instead of using canonical?
When I use a canonical tag for pages that are variations of the same page, it basically means that I don't want Google to index this page. But at the same time, spiders will go ahead and crawl the page. Isn't this a waste of my crawl budget? Wouldn't it be better to just disallow the page in robots.txt and let Google focus on crawling the pages that I do want indexed? In other words, why should I ever use rel=canonical as opposed to simply disallowing in robots.txt?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | YairSpolter0 -
Using Folkd for Video Backlink
Hi Mozzers, What are your thoughts on using www.folkd.com for video SEO? We have a few company videos and would like to possibly get a backlink by either embedding one of our youtube videos on our site or self hosting the video. Are bookmarking sites like this spammy?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W0 -
How do I list the subdomains of a domain?
Hi Mozers, I am trying to find what subdomains are currently active on a particular domain. Is there a way to get a list of this information? The only way I could think of doing it is to run a google search on; site:example.com -site:www.example.com The only issues with this approach is that a majority of the indexed pages exist on the non-www domain and I still have thousands of pages in the results (mainly from the non-www). Is there another way to do it in Google? OR is there a server admin online tool that will tell me this information? Cheers, Dan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | djlaidler0 -
Subdomain for every us state?
Hi, one of our clients has an idea of making subdomains from his main website to sell his online advertisements in all states in USA. f.e: texas.web.com atlanta.web.com He wants to have a subdomain for every state and there to be information related only or mainly to this state? I am not sure about is this a good idea? What is your opinion about it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vladokan0 -
Create new subdomain or new site for new Niche Product?
We have an existing large site with strong, relevant traffic, including excellent SEO traffic. The company wants to launch a new business offering, specifically targeted at the "small business" segment. Because the "small business" customer is substantially different from the traditional "large corporation" customer, the company has decided to create a completely independent microsite for the "small business" market. Purely from a Marketing and Communications standpoint, this makes sense. From an SEO perspective, we have 2 options: Create the new "small business" microsite on a subdomain of the existing site, and benefit from the strong domain authority and trust of the existing site. Build the microsite on a separate domain with exact primary keyword match in the domain name. My sense is that option #1 is by far the better option in the short and long run. Am I correct? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | axelk0