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.
Subdomain for ticketing of a client website (how to solve SEO problems caused by the subdomain/domain relationship)
-
We have a client in need of a ticketing solution for their domain (let's call it www.domain.com) which is on Wordpress - as is our custom ticket solution. However, we want to have full control of the ticketing, since we manage it for them - so we do not want to build it inside their original Wordpress install.
Our proposed solution is to build it on tickets.domain.com. This will exist only for selling and issuing the tickets.
The question is, is there a way to do this without damaging their bounce rate and SEO scores?
Since customers will come to www.domain.com, then click the ticketing tab and land on tickets.domain.com, Google will see this as a bounce. In reality, customers will not notice the difference as we will clone the look and feel of domain.comShould we perhaps have the canonical URL of tickets.domain.com point to www.domain.com? And also, can we install Webmaster Tools for tickets.domain.com and set the preferred domain as www.domain.com?
Are these possible solutions to the problem, or not - and if not, does anyone else have a viable solution?
Thank you so much for the help.
-
Hi Adam,
Are the ticket pages on the sub domain the same as the event pages on the main domain except with the ticketing system included? If yes it would make more sense to canonical each event ticketing page back to the same event page so: tickets.domain.com/event1 -> domain.com/event1.
If the ticketing pages are not meant to be indexed at all then I would put the robots no index tag on them also (or a robots file on the whole subdomain) and keep an eye on GWT to make sure none of them creep in. Canonical tags are a 'recommendation' not a rule so if your plans are for these pages to not be indexed at all best to ensure that as completely as possible.
-
Hey Leo!
Thanks for the taking the time to answer me. I am going to set this up exactly as you recommend.
1. I will install the same GA code from domain.com on tickets.domain.com
2. Do you think I need to set the canonical URL on the various ticketing pages all back to the main domain?
e.g. tickets.domain.com ---> canonical to domain.com
e.g. tickets.domain.com/event1 ---> canonical to domain.com
e.g. tickets.domain.com/event2 ---> canonical to domain.com
e.g. tickets.domain.com/event3 ---> canonical to domain.com
and so on?3. We did make all the header links of tickets.domain.com point straight back to their counterpart on domain.com.
Does this seem like I basically got it all correct?
Thanks again
Adam -
HI,
If technically that is the best solution for your needs then a couple of things to keep in mind:
1. If you are using Universal Analytics subdomain tracking is included by default so if you put the same analytics code on your subdomain pages then you should not be seeing any 'bounces' - google should be able to figure this out also.
2. You can install GWT for the subdomain also. I dont think you can set the preferred domain for a subdomain setup but you can use GWT to monitor issues and make sure that duplicate pages for the subdomain are not getting indexed.
3. To avoid indexing of the subdomain pages (which I assume you don't want) you could canonical them to their equivalent on the www domain. You could also meta robots no-index them all. If they creep in anyway you can use GWT to remove them.
If the subdomain is a complete clone and the experience is seamless then why not make all links on the subdomain go back to the www domain pages. That way the only pages available on the subdomain would be the ticketing pages and the rest would be on the www as normal.
Hope it helps.
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
-
International SEO - How do I show correct SERP results in the UK and US?
Hi, Moz community. I hope you’re all OK and keeping busy during this difficult period. I have a few questions about international SEO, specifically when it comes to ranking pages in the UK and the US simultaneously. We currently have 2 websites set-up which are aimed towards their respective countries. We have a ‘.com’ and a ‘.com/us’. If anybody could help with the issues below, I would be very grateful. Thank you all. Issues When looking in US Google search with a VPN, the title tag for our UK page appears in the SERP e.g. I will see: UK [Product Name] | [Brand] When checking the Google cache, the UK page version also appears This can cause a problem especially when I am creating title tags and meta descriptions that are unique from the UK versions However, when clicking through from the SERP link to the actual page, the US page appears as it should do. I find this very bizarre that it seems to show you the US page when you click through, but you see the UK version in the SERP when looking in the overall search results. Current Set-Up Our UK and US page content is often very similar across our “.com” and “.com/us” websites and our US pages are canonicalised to their UK page versions to remove potential penalisation We have also added herflang to our UK and US pages Query How do I show our US SERP as opposed to the UK version in US Google search? My Theories/ Answers US page versions have to be completely unique with content related to US search intent and be indexed separately - therefore no longer canonicalised to UK version Ensure hreflang is enabled to point Google to correct local page versions Ensure local backlinks point to localised pages If anyone can help, it will be much appreciated. Many thanks all.
Local Website Optimization | | Katarina-Borovska0 -
More pages on website better for SEO?
Hi all, Is creating more pages better for SEO? Of course the pages being valuable content. Is this because you want the user to spend as much time as possible on your site. A lot of my competitors websites seem to have more pages than mine and their domain authorities are higher, for example the services we provide are all on one page and for my competitors each services as its own page. Kind Regards, Aqib
Local Website Optimization | | SMCCoachHire0 -
Dual website strategy
We have two websites (different businesses) in the technology sector that sell the same products on the same platform (OSC) but have different branding. We have tried to make the static content different and the user generated content is different. SEO as largely different. But the one site has much better rankings than the other. Whilst the under performing site is not responsive yet, I need to decide whether to merge the two businesses into one or continue on the two separate websites approach. I would only pursue the latter approach and invest further time and effort into this under performing website if I knew I was "on the right" track. My SEO knowledge is not extensive and so I would be interested in any views the community has? I note that kogan.com.au and dicksmith.com.au have a similar dual website approach (same company) and they are both major brands in Australia. I thank you in advance for any thoughts you may have.
Local Website Optimization | | Alpine91 -
How many SEO clients do you handle?
I work in a small web & design agency who started offering SEO 2 yrs ago as it made sense due to them building websites. There have been 2 previous people to me and I now work there 3 days a week and they also have a junior who knew nothing before she started working for us. She mainly works for me. My question is, how many clients do you think would be reasonable to work on? We currently have around 55 and I have been working there for nearly 5 months now and haven't even got to half of the sites to do some work on. I've told them the client list is way too big and we should only have around 15 clients max. However they don't want to lose the money from the already paying clients so won't get rid of any and keep adding new ones Their systems were a mess and had no reporting or useful software so I had to investiagte and deploy that, along with project management software. Their analytics is also a mess and have employed a contractor to help sort that out too. It's like they were offering SEO services but had no idea or structure to what they did. Meta descriptions were cherry picked which ones to be done, so say 50/60 on a site not filled in. So it's not like I have 45 or so well maintained accounts. They're all a mess. Then the latest 10 new ones are all new sites so All need a lot of work. I'm starting to feel incredibly overwhelmed and oppressed by it all and wanted to see what other SEO professionals thought about it. Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Local Website Optimization | | hanamck0 -
I have a client in Australia that is going to set up a website that is in Chinese to service their Asian customer base (Indonesia, Singapore, HK, China). What domain should they use?
They're website is hosted on a .com.au domain. Should they host their Chinese language pages under their current domain (.com.au) using a subdirectory (i.e. /asia) or should they use another separate domain that they own that is a regular .com? Or does it really not matter?
Local Website Optimization | | 100yards1 -
SEO and Main Navigation Best Practices
I've read a number of articles on SEO and main navigation for websites. I'd like to get a solid answer/recommendation to help solve this one. This is the situation. We're helping a local business that offers pest control and property maintenance services. Under each of these, there area a number of services available, eg, cockroach control, termite inspections or lawn mowing services, rubbish removal and so on. Is it best to have a main nav containing the top keywords for the services - Pest Control | Property Maintenance, with a drop down to the services under each. Or, a simple approach - Our Services > drop down to each - Pest Control > Termite Inspections, etc. My concern here is that they have quite a lot of services, so the nav could be way too long. Really appreciate any assistance here. Many thanks.
Local Website Optimization | | RichardRColeman0 -
Which is the best, ".xx" or ".com.xx" in general and for SEO?
Hi, I'm working for a digital marketing agency and have traffic from different countries. We are planning to make different websites for each country. What is the best SEO practice to choose the domain between ".xx" or ".com.xx" from Spain, Mexico, Chile, Colombia and Peru?
Local Website Optimization | | NachoRetta
I think that the ccTLD is better always, for example ".es" better than ".com.es"0 -
How Google's Doorway Pages Update Affects Local SEO
Hey Awesome Local Folks! I thought I'd take a proactive stance and start a thread on the new doorway pages update from Google, as I feel there will be questions coming up about this here in the forum: Here's the update announcement: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/03/an-update-on-doorway-pages.html And here's the part that will make local business owners and Local SEOs take a second glance at this: Here are questions to ask of pages that could be seen as doorway pages: Do the pages duplicate useful aggregations of items (locations, products, etc.) that already exist on the site for the purpose of capturing more search traffic? I think this will naturally lead to questions about the practice of creating local/city landing pages. At this point, my prediction is that this will come down to high quality vs. crummy quality pages of this type. In fact, after chatting briefly with Andrew Shotland, I'm leaning a bit toward seeing the above language as being strongly geared toward directory type sites and large franchises. I recommend reading Andrew's post about his take on this, as I think he's on the right track: http://www.localseoguide.com/googles-about-to-close-your-local-doorway-pages/ So, I'm feeling at this point that if you've made the right efforts to develop unique, high quality local landing pages, you should be good unless you are an accidental casualty of an over-zealous update. We'll see! If anyone has thoughts to contribute on this thread, I hope they will, and if lots of questions start coming up about this here in the community, feel free to link back to this thread in helping your fellow community members 🙂 Thanks, all!
Local Website Optimization | | MiriamEllis9