How do we build rank on a domain with an offsite blog?
-
We have a site (domain y) that we'd like to integrate a blog into but our team doesn't have the bandwidth to do this. So, we've been exploring the option of building the blog in WP and hosting on a separate domain (domain x) and redirecting from domain y to it. My concern is how this affects or undermines rank value on domain y (effectively all the value from the blog resides on the blog domain x).
How might we go about integrating an offsite blog into the core domain while maintaining search value? Is there a way? Thanks!
-
Hi Jamie,
For the reverse proxy method, the search engine will perceive that the blog is on the main domain (domain y). As far as any user or Googlebot is concerned, the blog is on domain y in a subfolder – they never see domain x. If you do this, your main challenges will be:
- Making sure that domain x can't be accessed directly (otherwise, your entire blog will exist in two places). They should only be able to access the blog by visiting the correct subfolder on domain y. Domain x can be configured to only accept connections directly from domain y.
- Making sure to configure the proxy correctly. They can be tricky, and may take up some of your team's time.
- Making sure everything remains fast. Although Googlebot has nothing against proxies, if the inclusion of the proxy introduces a big delay to the page load time, that's going to have a negative impact.
-
If you configure the reverse proxy (and redirect traffic going direct to the true hosting [x domain] to the sub-folder on the [y domain]) then it will absolutely be counted as part of the main domain as if it was really just in the sub-folder.
-
Thank you. And what is the impact for SEO and rank building? Does Search Engines recognize the external blog as part of the core domain?
-
Jamie -
Best practice would be to create a sub-directory (yoursite.com/blog/) if you can. Otherwise, create a sub-domain (blog.yourdomain.com).
You could use a reverse proxy to add the WordPress blog to a sub-directory. Here are some step-by-step instructions. This method may not solve your issue of team bandwidth.
You could create a sub-domain on domain y and then add an A record in the domain x DNS settings which points the IP address of domain y. Example instructions from GoDaddy
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
-
Is there a tool out there to check any domain that might be pointing to my existing domain?
Is there a tool out there to check any domain that might be pointing to my existing domain?
Technical SEO | | adlev0 -
Sudden Drop in Rankings
I manage a site and this past month have noticed some pretty significant drops in rankings for some of our main keywords. I'm trying to understand why and what I can do to correct it. We did do some 301 redirects a little over a month ago so I've been wondering if that has anything to do with it as Google indexes the new URLs. One thing I did notice in Moz is that it is showing that Google is indexing the new URLs but associating them with the wrong keywords in the wrong location. The company services three locations and each location has a service page on the site. But Moz is showing that in Atlanta, the indexed URL is the Nashville one, etc. Is there any way to affect that? Another thing to note is that organic search traffic is actually up so it doesn't appear to be affecting them which I find a bit strange. Just looking for any insight as to things I should be looking into to explain the sudden drops. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | maghanlinchpinsales0 -
Correct linking to the /index of a site and subfolders: what's the best practice? link to: domain.com/ or domain.com/index.html ?
Dear all, starting with my .htaccess file: RewriteEngine On
Technical SEO | | inlinear
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.inlinear.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://inlinear.com/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.html
RewriteRule ^(.)index.html$ http://inlinear.com/ [R=301,L] 1. I redirect all URL-requests with www. to the non www-version...
2. all requests with "index.html" will be redirected to "domain.com/" My questions are: A) When linking from a page to my frontpage (home) the best practice is?: "http://domain.com/" the best and NOT: "http://domain.com/index.php" B) When linking to the index of a subfolder "http://domain.com/products/index.php" I should link also to: "http://domain.com/products/" and not put also the index.php..., right? C) When I define the canonical ULR, should I also define it just: "http://domain.com/products/" or in this case I should link to the definite file: "http://domain.com/products**/index.php**" Is A) B) the best practice? and C) ? Thanks for all replies! 🙂
Holger0 -
Page for Link Building
Hello Guys, My question is about a link building process. We all know that some directories/sites do require a reciprocal link. Does it make any sense to creat a page in website exclusively to reciprocal links? And what we do with this webpage in terms of indexing, do folow, crawling...etc. Any sugestions are more then welcome 🙂 Tks in advance! PP
Technical SEO | | PedroM0 -
Keyword ranking not moving
Hello, We have a very important keyword for our website (www.decorplanet.com) that hasn't moved in any direction in over a year. The keyword is "bathroom vanities". Our current SEO company has told us that the previous company has "over- optimized/linked" for this particular keyword and now Google is penalizing us for this. They told us that we need to leave it alone for a while and concentrate on other keywords and this one should naturally come back up (I should mention that at some point, we were much higher than where we are right now for that particular keyword). Many of our other high-profile keywords have been moving nicely to the first page. Keywords like "modern bathroom vanities", "antique bathroom vanities", "contemporary bathroom vanities", but the one that we really want ("bathroom vanities") hasn't budged at all. Does anyone have any thoughts on this. Is it possible that Google put us in some sort of a "sand-box" - I mean we are on page 2 so it doesn't sound like that's the case. It's just very bizarre that we can't seem to do anything with this keyword. Really appreciate any thoughts or input on this.
Technical SEO | | steven11330 -
Blog question
If i set up a blog like this - http://www.abccompany.com/blog ? ( in a folder ), will each link to http://www.abccompany.com/blog carry more value to the main site than if the blog were set up like this- http://www.blog.abccompany.com
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050 -
Rankings Dropped Dramatically
Hi All, I need some advice on this one, one of our websites is performing very badly and I am lost to know why. We migrated from an old website www.myclient.co.uk and re-directed to www.myclient.com. The issue we had was that the old site relied on search results i.e. www.myclient.co.uk/search+villas+in+marbella However most ranked url's were not as tidy as the example above and had lots of characters. Because of this and the fact that all incoming links were to the homepage we do not carry out any 301 re-directs. In some keywords we have increased our rankings but for others we have dropped dramatically. keyword 1 4th Jan position 22 9th Jan position 90 keyword 2 4th jan position 34 9th jan position 89 keyword 3 4th jan position 12 9th jan position 16 (a smaller drop than the others) We do have some top 10s for this domain so I don't think we have been penalised for anything but I am shocked to see such drops in rankings. I have setup the website so that each page targets different keywords and I have checked and they get A grades within SEOmoz. Any advice would be really appreciated, as the client is not too happy at the moment. Many thanks Andy
Technical SEO | | iprosoftware0 -
New domain
Hi, I have a domain with no keywords on it, and I´ve been using it for years. Now I bought another domain with the keyword on it. I whant to work on seo for the second domain, with the keyword. What is the better way to work this out? 301? Duplicate de site? redirect in another way?
Technical SEO | | mgfarte0