What are the downsides and/or challenges to putting page paths (www.example.com/pagepath) on a different server?
-
Hi,
Our company is organized into three different segments and our development team recently needed to switch a portion of the business to subdomain because they wanted to move to a different server platform. We are now seeing the impact of moving this segment of the business to a subdomain on the main domain. SEO is hurting and our MOZ score has dropped significantly.
One fix they are debating is moving everything back to one domain, but place segments of the business on different page paths and hosting specific paths on different servers. I.e. the main domain could be www.example.com hosted in one location and then www.example.com/segment1 would be hosted on a different server. They are hoping to accomplish this using some sort of proxy/caching redirection solution.
The goal of this change would be to recapture our domain strength.
Is this something that is a good option or no? If not, what are the challenges and issues you see arising from doing something like that as I don't know of any other site set up like this.
Thanks in advance.
-
This is actually more common than you might think, though you probably don't even realize it sometimes. I've only seen this with forums, blogs, multi-language/geo sites, etc.. that are hosted with different technologies on different servers (Cart on IIS, Blog on LAMP, etc..) and the SEO/Dev team has agreed this is better than a subdomain path.
The biggest challenge will likely be in ensuring the load times aren't affected, but this can generally be easily overcome by hosting the different servers in the same datacenter, caching elements on the master server, etc..
Cheers,
Jake
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
-
Are slides how's etc the new Splash Pages?
[How did Moz know that my question was about this?!] I've just completed an audit of nearly 50 websites in the tourism industry and 90% had a slideshow, large image or video taking up more than the initial screen on the fairly large screened Chromebook that I'm using. I'm advising them all to ditch this and am often getting resistance from the site owners and their web developers. I know that these can be better optimized for page load speed, which is poor for most of these sites, especially on mobile devices; but from a usability standpoint, are these affective at drawing in users? Do users take the time to view these? Are they annoyed at always having to scroll down to see if there is anything else useful on the homepage? I think they are like the splash pages of the past: poor for usability and SEO. I've advised to at least make sure that the images are sized so the top of the page fits any screen (some of them do resize well for mobile devices, but maybe not laptops/desktops), include text with calls to action and click through to relevant content. I've been noting that they aren't media businesses selling images or videos, so they need to get their offerings to the top of the page so that users can see and engage more quickly. Anyone have any stats or experience on this? Thanks, Ann
Web Design | | anndonnelly0 -
Will HTTPS Effect SERPS Depending on Different Page Content?
I know that HTTPS can have a positive influence on SERPS. Does anyone have any thoughts or evidence of this effect being different depending on the page content? For example, I would think that for e-commerce sites HTPS is a must, and I guess the change in rankings would be more significant. But what about other situations, AMP pages for example? Of if you run Adsense, or Affiliate links? Or if your page contains a form?
Web Design | | GrouchyKids1 -
Relationship page to target
Hi guys and girls, looking for some help on the topic of links and the options I have before me in the content editor JCE for Joomla. Is this worth setting? Will it help? Please see the screen shot for the options I have and let me know if I should be creating links that are nofollow, help, or any of the other option I have? This is one of the pages I'm looking at for example.. http://www.a1gt.com.au/training-courses/certificate-iii-in-automotive-mechanical-technology In this case the site is linking to a gov training site and I feel the relationship is beneficial and started to wondering if the advanced options have any advantages today? Thank you for your help in advance 🙂 Ben. [](<a href=)" target="_blank">a>
Web Design | | yoonet0 -
Infinite Scrolling & "Long Scrolling" same or different??
Can anyone please confirm for me the difference if any, between site design that incorporates Long Scrolling and Infinite Scroll? I was told (by an unnamed source) these were different designs and that "long scrolling" is better for SEO . However, in all my research I am unable to prove there is any difference between the two. I understand Infinite scroll may include Ajax, but does that mean Long Scrolling does not? If anyone has any references or can supply any further education here, I'd appreciate it! Thanks!
Web Design | | ACNINTERACTIVE0 -
Question #1: Does Google index https:// pages? I thought they didn't because....
generally the difference between https:// and http:// is that the s (stands for secure I think) is usually reserved for payment pages, and other similar types of pages that search engines aren't supposed to index. (like any page where private data is stored) My site that all of my questions are revolving around is built with Volusion (i'm used to wordpress) and I keep finding problems like this one. The site was hardcoded to have all MENU internal links (which was 90% of our internal links) lead to **https://**www.example.com/example-page/ instead of **http://**www.example.com/example-page/ To double check that this was causing a loss in Link Juice. I jumped over to OSE. Sure enough, the internal links were not being indexed, only the links that were manually created and set to NOT include the httpS:// were being indexed. So if OSE wasn't counting the links, and based on the general ideology behind secure http access, that would infer that no link juice is being passed... Right?? Thanks for your time. Screens are available if necessary, but the OSE has already been updated since then and the new internal links ARE STILL NOT being indexed. The problem is.. is this a volusion problem? Should I switch to Wordpress? here's the site URL (please excuse the design, it's pretty ugly considering how basic volusion is compared to wordpress) http://www.uncommonthread.com/
Web Design | | TylerAbernethy0 -
SEO and Server Connectivity....
Good Morning/Evening Mozzers, I arrive at work this morning with 5 emails from GWT for my separate domains reading, **"Googlebot can't access your site - **Over the last 24 hours, Googlebot encountered 39 errors while attempting to connect to your site. Your site's overall connection failure rate is 15.1%." I have passed this on to the Web Dev team to resolve ASAP. My Question, will server connectivity issues harm my rankings? Is there a danger if this continues that URL's could be de-indexed? Input would be greatly appreciated.
Web Design | | RobertChapman0 -
Website Blog causes duplicate pages
Hello, I added a blog to my website, which is hosted at weebly. I was told this would drive traffic but I have actually fallen way, way down in Alexa rankings. When I ran a campaign here, the results show over a 100 errors, all to do with the website blog. It states they are duplicate pages and titles. I dont see a way to rename the pages. Am I better off getting rid of the blog? Thanks
Web Design | | Gardengirl0 -
Platform Migration Challenge
Our website is running on a 2004 Microsoft Access DB and it’s time to ditch it… We have a new site created using .php with a sql DB. How can we maintain the back links and general goodwill created over time? Example… how do we redirect something like http://www.simplastics.com/details.asp?subcat=35917617&itm=2916 to http://www.simplastics.com/30240 <--- (new address will look like this) thanks
Web Design | | Prime850