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.
Are subdomains a good seo strategy for a multistore e-commerce?
-
Hi there
I'm wondering what is the best strategy to work with multi-stores on magento: to use or not to use subdomains?
Suppose we have the www.website.com and we configure it to use multistore. The url base will not have the store id on it so it will not be like www.website.com/store1 and www.website.com/store2.
It will simply rely on the user session so if we have two categories for each store it will acces using:
www.website.com/category1 (for store 1)
www.website.com/category2 (for store 2)
The homepage will allways be set on www.website.com so we should have a single page for several "home pages" (depending on the user session / store he is accessing).
I guess this is not a good option if we want to rank for different keywords (for each store).
So I was wondering if it is a good solution to set:
This way we have 2 "home pages" each one able to rank.
Does it make sense? Is it good or bad for seo?
Another option I was considering was:
www.website.com (for store 1)
store2.website.com (for store 2)
store3.website.com (for store 3)
www.website.com/blog (for blog)
Can this work? Good or bad for seo?
best regards
-
I'd go with
www.mybrand.com/store/category1/subcateory
www.mybrand.com/store/category2/subcateory
www.mybrand.com/store/category3/subcateory...this keeps everything neatly organized for both SEO and the UX (not to mention your content management).
I've been building professional ecommerce websites for 12 years.
Fred
-
It seems to me that everything is going to be relevant to the sport of paintball correct?
here is a great example of how I would set up your site changing the subdomains name to the subfolder name.
if you want to target outside the United States you have more work. But this is where I would do for right now instead of creating a separate store your brand can become a hub for paintball knowledge and paintball guns, accessories etc. that is the way to build a brand. With people being such a fun sport you could probably attract clients by posting videos and use the sport to create a form. For people in your area.
"using the keywords that you are going to use for your sub domains for your subfolders
www.mybrand.com = remains with airsoft products (only airsoft content, categories, products)
www.mybrand.com/paintball = paintball related products (only paintball content, categories, products)
www.mybrand.com/airguns/ = if i decide to sell airguns"
Kinda off-topic but hopefully helpful.
Magento Is kind of slow when not set up properly but very configurable I thought I would give a HHVM configuration you might want to try. https://gist.github.com/blueprintmrk/1e95e2946cabcbb8502d
Sincerely,
Thomas
-
Thank you all for the replies. So it seems the best option is to go with:
www.mybrand.com as main website for Airsoft and
.../store3 .../store4
thanks
-
Patricks suggestions I think answer your query.
I googled airsoft and it seems strongly related to paintball & airguns. I would not recommend subdomains but keeping it on your main domain. Our experience in fashion is that the more products you have that volume exponentially increases sales. ie go with www.brandname.com/paintball
That said you appear to be leaning towards a sub-domain. As it has completely separate customer bases.
I would try and re-think that strategy and see if there is any way you can live with one URL. You will be dedicated to one purpose not focusing on 2 or 3. Become the expert in airgun sports...
Let me know if have any queries.
-
Hi guys
Thanks for the replys. Let's me put more details. My website so far is specialized in airsoft. My brand is airsoft related and we have hundreds of categories airsoft related and I have a good rank for airsoft related keywords.
So my website is something like www.mybrand.com.
Now I'm planning to work with paintball. Despite they are both "action/shooting sports", they are different, with different customers, different products, hundreds of different categories, and of course, different keywords
I'm using magento and so far the homepage for my website is allways www.mybrand.com ... The page content (categories, products, etc.) are shown depending the store the customer has chosen. (default is airsoft page, but he can change for paintball).
So the idea was:
www.mybrand.com = remains with airsoft products (only airsoft content, categories, products)
paintball.mybrand.com = paintball related products (only paintball content, categories, products)
airguns.mybrand.com = if i decide to sell airguns
tks again
-
Patrick you are fast my friend & just gave him some great resources!
-
I don't know why you would want to create two stores on one website?
If you have a store that is selling vacuum cleaners hypothetically and another that is selling weed wacker's and you do not have any relevance between the two stores e.g. they are for a separate audience.
are you trying to reach the same audience use one website.
To websites even to subdomains
e.g. subdomain1.example.com & subdomain2.example.com will be treated as separate domains by Google.
There are some things you can do to tell Google this is one site and my opinion is if you are going to simply create a headache for yourself by using subdomains un less you have a very good reason?
I would suggest either combining these stores into one business if you are trying to get everything on one domain. Without knowing much more about the project I can tell you that subfolders "example.com/subfolder" tend to work much better then subdomains for passing on domain authority.
You want to create separate businesses create separate websites.
If you want to create one website that sells everything use subfolders unless you are doing geo-targeting and or other reasons that make sense for The end-user who if you are trying to target different stores on the same domain they will get confused.
I hope that helps,
Tom
-
Hi there
Rand had a great Whiteboard Friday on this a few months back called Subdomains vs. Subfolders, Rel Canonical vs. 301, and How to Structure Links for SEO. You should also check out Should I Rebrand and Redirect My Site? Should I Consolidate Multiple Sites/Brands?
My first question would be if all the stores fall under the same brand? Or, are they all able to live on their own separate sites with their own branding? Reason being, if you have everything under one domain as subdirectories, everyone can benefit from the domain's authority.
I would review the resources above and see if those can help - there is a ton of great information. Let me know if it doesn't! Good luck!
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
-
How to index e-commerce marketplace product pages
Hello! We are an online marketplace that submitted our sitemap through Google Search Console 2 weeks ago. Although the sitemap has been submitted successfully, out of ~10000 links (we have ~10000 product pages), we only have 25 that have been indexed. I've attached images of the reasons given for not indexing the platform. gsc-dashboard-1 gsc-dashboard-2 How would we go about fixing this?
Technical SEO | | fbcosta0 -
SEO - New URL structure
Hi, Currently we have the following url structure for all pages, regardless of the hierarchy: domain.co.uk/page, such as domain/blog name. Can you, please confirm the following: 1. What is the benefit of organising the pages as a hierarchy, i.e. domain/features/feature-name or domain/industries/industry-name or domain/blog/blog name etc. 2. This will create too many 301s - what is Google's tolerance of redirects? Is it worth for us changing the url structure or would you only recommend to add breadcrumbs? Many thanks Katarina
Technical SEO | | Katarina-Borovska1 -
Express js and SEO?
Hi fellow Mozzers, I have been tasked with providing some SEO recommendations for a website that is to be built using express.js and Angular. I wondered whether anyone has had any experience in such a framework? On checking a website built in this and viewing as a GoogleBot etc using the following tools it appears as though most of the content is invisible: http://www.webconfs.com/search-engine-spider-simulator.php http://www.browseo.net/ Obviously this is a huge issue and wonder if there are any workarounds, or reccomendations to assist (even if means moving away from this - would love to hear about it)
Technical SEO | | musthavemarketing2 -
No index on subdomains
Hi, We have a subdomain that is appearing in the search results - I want to hide this as it looks really bad. If I were to add the no index tag to the sub domain would URL would this affect the whole domain or just that sub domain? The main domain is vitally important - it is just that sub domain I need to hide. Many thanks
Technical SEO | | Creditsafe0 -
Does an subdomain hosted offsite provide SEO value
We have a job board hosted through an applicant processing system which we've setup as a subdomain (jobs.ourcompany.com), most of the assets are hosted on our primary domain (ourcompany.com). My question is does having it hosted offsite provide any value? Do we get credit for that content being shared and distributed on the web or does the applicant processing system? As I see it the options are (correct me if I'm wrong): Host the job listings on our primary domain (ourcompany.com/jobs) and have it point to the application on the subdomain. Advertise the job listings pointing to the primary domain on the paid sites. The free job listing sites will automatically point to the sub-domain because the applicant processing system automatically submits them. Host the job listings entirely on the sub-domain applicant tracking system and link to it from our primary site navigation. Advertise the job listings to the sub-domain so that both free and paid point to the same place. Obviously the second one would be much easier just not sure on the technical side of our website getting credit by search engines as the one who has produced the content.
Technical SEO | | r1200gsa0 -
Do knowledge base plugins on a subdomain have seo benefit?
Hi SEO Moz, We want to use a knowledge base plugin (cheaper & faster than building it ourselves) where we can have Q&As for our website. We want this to help with our SEO by adding in our keyterms that we want to rank for. We've looked into TenderApp & Get Satisfaction which look like good solutions - however, as they're both on a sub-domain do we get any seo benefit from this? When people link to our knowledge base, will this help our website at all - or is the benefit going to go to TenderApp/Get Satisfaction? For instance - Our website URL is http://widget.products.com The KB URL is http://widgetsupport.products.com If the above plugin is not a good solution, is there anything else that is better? Any help will be greatly appreciated!! Thanks.
Technical SEO | | qdigi0 -
What is the best website structure for SEO?
I've been on SEOmoz for about 1 month now and everyone says that depending on the type of business you should build up your website structure for SEO as 1st step. I have a new client click here ( www version doesn't work)... some bugs we are fixing it now. We are almost finished with the design & layout. 2nd question have been running though my head. 1. What would the best url category for the shop be /products/ - current url cat ex: /products/door-handles.html 2. What would you use for the main menu as section for getting the most out of SEO. Personally i am thinking of making 2-3 main categories on the left a section where i can add content to it (3-4 paragraphs... images maybe a video).So the main page focuses on the domain name more and the rest of the sections would focus on specific keywords, this why I avoid cannibalization. Main keyword target is "door handles" Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | mosaicpro0 -
How to move my blog from subdomain to subfolder?
Not an unusual situation, I have a blog on blog.domain.com it has quite a few blog postings. The platform is old and will be scrapped, but the blog content itself is going to be moved to domain.com/blog. The current process is we are manually listing all linked to/content pages and we are going to 301 redirect them to their counterparts on the new blog. This is going to be a tedious process. A) Is there any way to automate the moving of the blog? B) What is the best way to do the massive 301 redirect, php headers, .htaccess? Should we move the individual pages with redirects, or redirect the domain in the .htaccess (this will be very difficult to match all the titles and file structure)?
Technical SEO | | MarloSchneider0