Subdomains vs. Subfolders for unique categories & topics
-
Hello,
We are in the process of redesigning and migrating 5 previously separate websites (all different niche topics, including dining, entertainment, retail, real estate, etc.) under one umbrella site for the property in which they exist. From the property homepage, you will now be able to access all of the individual category sites within.
As each niche microsite will be focused on a different topic, I am wondering whether it is best for SEO that we use subdomains such as category.mainsite.com or subfolders mainsite.com/category.
I have seen it done both ways on large corporate sites (ie: Ikea uses subdomains for different country sites, and Apple uses subfolders), so I am wondering what makes the most sense for this particular umbrella site.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks, Melissa
-
Its a no questions asked answer- SUBFOLDERS- by creating subdomains it's like saying your a separate entity and by doing that you will not be sharing all the value from the main domain and all the domains combined ie. pagerank, pages indexed, links, etc.
-
Yeah, I'm a subfolders kind of guy too, but here's SEOmoz weighing in on the subject of microsites and talking about the same sort of question you are - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites
-
Definitely use subfolders!
By using your subfolders you pass all link juice and PR to the main domain which is mainsite.com. If you have say 10 subdomains, you are splitting the authority/link-juice/PR.
I know there are others who say Google passes the juice between a domain and subdomain, and it does pass some, but not all.
You cannot go wrong using subfolders. You build up one main domain, it's clean, user-friendly, etc...
SUBFOLDERS!
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 optimization - advices
Hi, I need some specific advices on which is the best way to optimize the subdomain of a main domain. Besides meta title, description, etc. Br.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tormar0 -
Display:None CSS & SEO
Hi A while back I was told that using the display:none tag to hide content you want minimised is bad for onpage SEO - is this the case? It's not that we want to hide it from Google, we just don't want it taking up a huge amount of space on product pages. I have found some of these on our site, and want to know how bad they are. Is the content under the tag going to be ignored? Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Website, webshop and blog. Subfolders or subdomains?
Hello fellow mozzers, I've seen a lot of discussion and confusion about whether you should use subfolders or subdomains when you have a website, a blog and a webshop.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WesleySmits
Of course with subfolders the PageRank will be more effective since it's all in one domain. On the other hand subdomains will be a better user experience since you can focus on just the webshop or just the blog. Was wondering how you guys/girls think what would be the best way to handle this.0 -
Pagination Question: Google's 'rel=prev & rel=next' vs Javascript Re-fresh
We currently have all content on one URL and use # and Javascript refresh to paginate pages, and we are wondering if we transition to the Google's recommended pagination if we will see an improvement in traffic. Has anyone gone though a similar transition? What was the result? Did you see an improvement in traffic?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
3 Sites Covering Similar Topics & Panda
My question will take a bit of explaining, so here goes: I have 3 blogs on the same server: 1. personal finance blog; 2. credit card blog; 3. prepaid credit card blog. The personal finance blog is my flagship site started in 2007, which feeds my family and pays the mortgage. By contrast, the other two sites (started in 2008 and 2010) I would gladly kill if the result would help my personal finance blog. In the fall of 2010 (before Panda) the prepaid card blog was penalized by Google. This has been confirmed by Google in response to a reconsideration request. Of course, they don't say why. I've tried a number of things and resubmitted the site, but with no luck. Both the personal finance blog and credit card blog were hit by Panda 2 (April 11, 2011) and have not recovered. While the personal finance site covers many topics (e.g., investing, credit, debt, money management), its income comes largely from credit cards. We review individual credit cards and have pages that list cards by category (e.g., balance transfer, cash back, travel). The credit card blog does the same thing, but of course covers credit cards in more depth. There is a similar overlap between the prepaid card blog on the one hand, and the credit card blog and personal finance blog on the other. However, all content is unique. I do not currently link between the sites, although until a few months ago I had blogroll links between the sites and a few (less than 10) content links. If you've made it this far (and I hope you have), here are my questions: 1. Could the existence of the credit card and prepaid credit card sites be hurting my personal finance blog's rankings in Google, whether via Panda or otherwise? 2. If there is a reasonable chance that the answer to question 1 is yes, what would you suggest I do? Of course, I could just take down the sites, but I wonder if there are other options. One thought I had was to deindex the two card sites (I assume I can do this by disallowing googlebot via robots.txt) and give it time. Would Google treat this as if the sites did not exist? Both sites get a fair amount of traffic from bing and yahoo, so this option appeals to me. Of course, for all I know the existence of the two card sites are hurting my personal finance blog's rankings in bing and yahoo, too. I thought about selling the sites, but if they are hurting my personal finance site, I grow concerned about how google distinguishes between a site being sold and a webmaster just trying to make the sites look like they are owned by different people. In this regard, I've never tried to hide the common ownership of the sites and have no intention of doing that now. If I kill the sites, should I redirect them to my personal finance site? For the penalized prepaid card site, this seems both risky and unhelpful. But perhaps redirecting the credit card site is an option. Given that the personal finance site is my livelihood, I greatly appreciate your thoughts on my dilemma.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bergerlaw0 -
Canonical Tags & Search Bots
Does anyone know for sure if search engine bots still crawl links on a page whose canonical tags are set to a different page? So in short, would it be similar to a no-index follow? Thanks! -Margarita
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MargaritaS0 -
How to auto generate a unique meta description?
The site I am working on is a code nightmare for starters. I'm editing a file called layout that controls the section of each page. The programmer from a while back got unique titles by putting this piece of code in: <title><?= $this->metaTag ?></title> In all the different controllers and stuff I can see where the title is the name of the product plus review or something to that effect. How do I do this for the meta description? Right now the meta description is static in the layout file, and so every page has an identical one. I was hoping there was a way to make the meta description automatically use the first 140 characters on the page or something. Something like this:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DanDeceuster0 -
Google Listing & Description Categories Question
How do you set up a website or home page to get the individual listing below the description text. For example with the SEO moz listing there are many of the categories listed below the description. Such as SEO Blog, SEO tools ... Is there a way to add this to a home page so good will pick it up this way? I attached a screen shot of what I am talking about because I think I am likely using the wrong terminology. Npcpu.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fertilityhealth0