How much SEO damage would it do having a subdomain site rather directory site?
-
Hi all!
With a coleague we were arguing about what is better: Having a subdomain or a directory.
Let me explain some more, this is about the cases:- Having a multi-language site: Where en.domain.com or es.domain.com rather than domain.com/en/ or domain.com/es/
- Having a Mobile and desktop version: m.domain.com or domain.com rather than domain.com/m or just domain.com.
- Having multiple location websites, you might figure.
The dicussion started with me saying: Its better to have a directory site.
And my coleague said: Its better to have a subdomain site.Some of the reasons that he said is that big companies (such as wordpress) are doing that. And that's better for the business.
My reasons are fully based on this post from Rand Fishkin: Subdomains vs. Subfolders, Rel Canonical vs. 301, and How to Structure Links for SEO - Whiteboard FridaySo, what does the community have to say about this?
Who should win this argue?GR.
-
There are a few good use-cases for subdomains; higher education sites use them frequently, and often have organizational need for it. Another instance I can think of is international websites that want to have different sites for each country in which they operate. This can help each division operate a site without having to go through HQ every time they need an update.
That being said, given the typical website, with SEO considerations, I always favor subdirectories for the simple reason of keep all domain metrics (links, authority, etc.) together, rather than splitting the metrics across subdomains.
-
Hi!
That's a great article and the comments are highly valuable. The statement they say is that it depends on the content.
They push you to increase the efforts on content rather than in a small change like this.
Do you agree?Personally it feels for me that both should be important, the content and this SEO thing.
-
Hi Gaston,
Check this debate including Rand Fishkin @ https://inbound.org/blog/the-sub-domain-vs-sub-directory-seo-debate-explained-in-one-flow-chart
Thanks
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
-
Can Image Quality In Online Store Effect Main Site SEO?
My client is building a new shopping cart that will be mobile friendly BUT will have terrible image quality - tiny images, with text on them. How will these tiny images impact the SEO on the main site? Should they put the store on the mainsite.com or on a subdomain (store.mainsite.com)? Does google see subdomains as part of the main site? I would think that having thousands of shopping product pages could be beneficial to the main site SEO, as long as the images don't negate the content. Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jerrico10 -
Site structure / IA out of balance? What does that mean to SEO?
I often see commentators mentioning out of balance site structures/IA but what does this actually mean in SEO terms? For example, Yoast advises: "If one category grows much larger than others, your site’s pyramid could be thrown off balance." Neil Patel advises "Try to balance the amount of subcategories within each category. Basically, try to keep it approximately even. If one main category has fourteen subcategories, while another main category has only three subcategories, this could become a little unbalanced." Does this have any direct influence on SEO (crawlability, etc.) or is this more a UX issue? I look forward to receiving your feedback.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
SEO on dynamic website
Hi. I am hoping you can advise. I have a client in one of my training groups and their site is a golf booking engine where all pages are dynamically created based on parameters used in their website search. They want to know what is the best thing to do for SEO. They have some landing pages that Google can see but there is only a small bit of text at the top and the rest of the page is dynamically created. I have advised that they should create landing pages for each of their locations and clubs and use canonicals to handle what Google indexes.Is this the right advice or should they noindex? Thanks S
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bedynamic0 -
Why does old "Free" site ranks better than new "Optimized" site?
My client has a "free" site he set-up years ago - www.montclairbariatricsurgery.com (We'll call this the old site) that consistently outranks his current "optimized" (new) website - http://www.njbariatricsurgery.com/ The client doesn't want to get rid of his old site, which is now a competitor, because it ranks so much better. But he's invested so much in the new site with no results. A bit of background: We recently discovered the content on the new site was a direct copy of content on the old site. We had all copy on new site rewritten. This was back in April. The domain of the new site was changed on July 8th from www.Bariatrx.com to what you see now - www.njbariatricsurgery.com. Any insight you can provide would be greatly appreciated!!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WhatUpHud0 -
SEO Recommendations
For about 3 years our website was number one in Google.co.uk for our trades main keyphrase which resulted in excellent sales. About 12 months ago that position started to slide downwards and for that keyphrase we are now number 10. We are still at number's 1,2 and 3 for several other keyphrases but ones that result in fewer daily Google searches and resultant sales. I have always added unique content to the site but admit that my blog posts became less than daily over the past 12 months. However I am adding posts as often as I can now, of good length and of unique content. As well as tweaking all our online seo factors I'm trying to add good backlinks as often as possible. I wonder if anyone has been in a similar position and what they did to try and regain their previous position? Colin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NileCruises0 -
Subdomains and SEO - Should we redirect to subfolder?
A new client has mainsite.com and a large numer of city specific sub domains i.e. albany.mainsite.com. I think that these subdomains would actually work better as subfolders i.e mainsite.com/albany rather than albany.mainsite.com. The majority of links on the subdomains link to the main site anyway i.e. mainsite.com/contactus rather than albany.mainsite.com/contactus. Having mostly main domain links on a subdomain doesnt seem like clever link architecture to me and maybe even spammy. Im not overly familiar with redirecting subdomains to subfolders. If we go the route of 301'ing subdomains to subfolders any advice/warnings?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndyMacLean0 -
Directories...
So, I have a website, and I have a few pages in directories, and the rest are normal with extensions (i.e. example.com/blah.html instead of example.com/blah/) Now, the directory page isnt ranking yet for a targeting keyword (although I am still in the process of link building to the page w/ anchor text), however, could it be because it is the odd man out being one of the only pages within a directory? Also, I would really like to move all my pages into directories, however some of the internal pages are ranking really well and I do not want to lose that once switching. Has anyone has experiences with using 301s to redirect so sub directories without loosing rankings?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Aftermath_SEO0 -
SEO Consultant for site audit
Can someone recommend an excellent SEO who can perform a full site audit of my fairly large Wordpress site? The site receives about 14,000 visits per month but traffic is waining one month after a recent change. Need analysis of some funky stuff in my Webmaster tools and overall site review.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JSOC0