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
-
Good to use disallow or noindex for these?
Hello everyone, I am reaching out to seek your expert advice on a few technical SEO aspects related to my website. I highly value your expertise in this field and would greatly appreciate your insights.
Technical SEO | | williamhuynh
Below are the specific areas I would like to discuss: a. Double and Triple filter pages: I have identified certain URLs on my website that have a canonical tag pointing to the main /quick-ship page. These URLs are as follows: https://www.interiorsecrets.com.au/collections/lounge-chairs/quick-ship+black
https://www.interiorsecrets.com.au/collections/lounge-chairs/quick-ship+black+fabric Considering the need to optimize my crawl budget, I would like to seek your advice on whether it would be advisable to disallow or noindex these pages. My understanding is that by disallowing or noindexing these URLs, search engines can avoid wasting resources on crawling and indexing duplicate or filtered content. I would greatly appreciate your guidance on this matter. b. Page URLs with parameters: I have noticed that some of my page URLs include parameters such as ?variant and ?limit. Although these URLs already have canonical tags in place, I would like to understand whether it is still recommended to disallow or noindex them to further conserve crawl budget. My understanding is that by doing so, search engines can prevent the unnecessary expenditure of resources on indexing redundant variations of the same content. I would be grateful for your expert opinion on this matter. Additionally, I would be delighted if you could provide any suggestions regarding internal linking strategies tailored to my website's structure and content. Any insights or recommendations you can offer would be highly valuable to me. Thank you in advance for your time and expertise in addressing these concerns. I genuinely appreciate your assistance. If you require any further information or clarification, please let me know. I look forward to hearing from you. Cheers!0 -
Site Launching, not SEO Ready
Hi, So, we have a site going up on Monday, that in many ways hasn't been gotten ready for search. The focus has been on functionality and UX rather than search, which is fair enough. As a result, I have a big list of things for the developer to complete after launch (like sorting out duplicate pages and adding titles that aren't "undefined" etc.). So, my question is whether it would be better to noindex the site until all the main things are sorted before essentially presenting search engines with the best version we can, or to have the site be indexed (duplicate pages and all) and sort these issues "live", as it were? Would either method be advisable over the other, or are there any other solutions? I just want to ensure we start ranking as well as possible as quickly as possible and don't know which way to go. Thanks so much!
Technical SEO | | LeahHutcheon0 -
Am I doing SEO test properly?
Hello, I just created a page for researching the impact of social signals on Google ranking (in Italy). Page was not optimized (one internal backlink, no other external/internal links, keyword repeated 4 or 5 + h1 h2, no alt tags), and only social signals are being stimulated (through votes). The domain is 2 months old and is already positioned for few relevant keywords, but from 2 page down. My question is: am I doing right? Is this a good way to proceed? And if not, what I should do instead? Thank you for an advice. Eugenio
Technical SEO | | socialengaged0 -
Types of SEO Help
I have a web site that is going well but I think it could be better as far as usability and design. Also, I am sure an SEO professional would have some things to do to optimize. It seems though, that all the SEO companies either want to have along term contract or they don't work with my technology. Does anyone know of a company that would take my Visual Studio/C# project and tweak it for usability, design and SEO features for an hourly or set price?
Technical SEO | | Banknotes0 -
Product landing page URL's for e-commerce sites - best practices?
Hi all I have built many e-commerce websites over the years and with each one, I learn something new and apply to the next site and so on. Lets call it continuous review and improvement! I have always structured my URL's to the product landing pages as such: mydomain.com/top-category => mydomain.com/top-category/sub-category => mydomain.com/top-category/sub-category/product-name Now this has always worked fine for me but I see more an more of the following happening: mydomain.com/top-category => mydomain.com/top-category/sub-category => mydomain.com/product-name Now I have read many believe that the longer the URL, the less SEO impact it may have and other comments saying it is better to have the just the product URL on the final page and leave out the categories for one reason or another. I could probably spend days looking around the internet for peoples opinions so I thought I would ask on SEOmoz and see what other people tend to use and maybe establish the reasons for your choices? One of the main reasons I include the categories within my final URL to the product is simply to detect if a product name exists in multiple categories on the site - I need to show the correct product to the user. I have built sites which actually have the same product name (created by the author) in multiple areas of the site but they are actually different products, not duplicate content. I therefore cannot see a way around not having the categories in the URL to help detect which product we want to show to the user. Any thoughts?
Technical SEO | | yousayjump0 -
E-commerce site multi language product urls
Hi, On my E-commerce site I use optimized Url's (product names) with my native language (Hebrew) I am going to translate some of the product pages to English with differnat descriptions, correct layout, etc... But I was wandering about the product Url's. Should I stay with the original product URL and add a language parameter to the url? Should I add a completely new URL using the English product name? Of course what I'm worrying the most of is duplicate content. Thanks, Asaf
Technical SEO | | AsafY0 -
Feedback for the onpage seo for this site
Hi, Can the seo gurus here, suggest me if any on page factors affect my site? http://www.ridpiles.com/ Recently i have added, the following post to the main home page, http://www.ridpiles.com/2012/02/different-types-of-cures-for-piles/ This page is somewhat different than the title keyword. As the main page titile is "hemorrhoids treatment". The newly created blog post is on "cure for piles" Does this blog post has any affect on the on page factors due to different title? And do i require any changes regarding the on page seo? Will be waiting for your replies.
Technical SEO | | Indexxess0 -
Best geotargeting strategy: Subdomains or subfolders or country specific domain
How have the relatively recent changes in how G perceives subdomains changed the best route to onsite geotargeting i.e. not building out new country specific sites on country specific and hosted domains and instead developing sub-domains or sub-folders and geo-targeting those via webmaster tools ? In other words, given the recent change in G perception, are sub-domains now a better option than a sub-folder or is there not much in it ? Also if client has a .co.uk and they want to geo-target say France, is the sub-domain/sub-folder route still an option or is the .co.uk still too UK specific, and these options would only work using a .com ? In other words can sites on country specific domains (.co.uk , .fr, .de etc etc) use sub-folders or domains to geo-target other countries or do they have no option other than to develop new country specific (domains/hosting/language) websites ? Any thoughts regarding current best practice in this regard much appreciated. I have seen last Febs WBF which covers geotargeting in depth but the way google perceives subdomains has changed since then Many Thanks Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0