Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Using a Reverse Proxy and 301 redirect to appear Sub Domain as Sub Directory - what are the SEO Risks?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Using a Reverse Proxy and 301 redirect to appear Sub Domain as Sub Directory - what are the SEO Risks?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    2
    4
    3301
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • joshibhargav_20
      joshibhargav_20 last edited by

      We’re in process to move WordPress blog URLs from subdomains to sub-directory. We aren’t moving blog physically, but using reverse proxy and 301 redirection to do this.

      • Blog subdomain URL is https://blog.example.com/ and
      • destination sub-directory URL is https://www.example.com/blog/

      Our main website is e-commerce marketplace which is YMYL site. This is on Windows server. Due to technical reasons, we can’t physically move our WordPress blog to the main website.

      Following is our Technical Setup

      1. Setup a reverse proxy at https://www.example.com/blog/ pointing to https://blog.example.com/
      2. Use a 301 redirection from https://blog.example.com/ to https://www.example.com/blog/ with an exception if a traffic is coming from main WWW domain then it won’t redirect. Thus, we can eliminate infinite loop.
      3. Change all absolute URLs to relative URLs on blog
      4. Change the sitemap URL from https://blog.example.com/sitemap.xml to https://www.example.com/blog/sitemap.xml and update all URLs mentioned within the sitemap.

      SEO Risk Evaluation

      We have individual GA Tracking ID and individual Google Search Console Properties for main website and blog. We will not merge them. Keep them separate as they are.

      Keeping this in mind, I am evaluating SEO Risks factors

      1. Right now when we receive traffic from main website to blog (or vice versa) then it is considered as referral traffic and new cookies are set for Google Analytics. What’s going to happen when its on the same domain?
      2. Which type of settings change should I do in Blog’s Google Search Console? (A). Do I need to request “Change of Address” in the Blog’s search console property? (B). Should I re-submit the sitemap?
      3. Do I need to re-submit the blog sitemap from the https://www.example.com/ Google Search Console Property?
      4. Main website is e-commerce marketplace which is YMYL website, and blog is all about content. So does that impact SEO?
      5. Will this dilute SEO link juice or impact on the main website ranking because following are the key SEO Metrices. (A). Main website’s Avg Session Duration is about 10 minutes and bounce rate is around 30% (B). Blog’s Avg Session Duration is 33 seconds and bounce rate is over 92%
      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • BlueprintMarketing
        BlueprintMarketing last edited by

        I wrote this on my phone and I will update this in 2-3 hours

        rewrite the URLs do not redirect

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • BlueprintMarketing
          BlueprintMarketing last edited by

          PS

          tools like CloudFlare & Fastly don’t care what you’re server is .

          https://blog.cloudflare.com/subdomains-vs-subdirectories-best-practices-workers-part-1/

          https://blog.cloudflare.com/subdomains-vs-subdirectories-improved-seo-part-2/

          https://moz.com/community/q/reverse-proxy-a-successful-blog-from-subdomain-to-subfolder

          frontend ssl_in
          bind :443 ssl crt /etc/haproxy/website.com.combined
          acl root path /
          acl blog path_beg /blog
          acl sitedomain path_beg /leasopedia
          acl glossary path_beg /glossary
          acl wpadmin path_beg /wp-
          acl blog_search query -m reg ^s=.
          $
          acl blog_preview query -m reg ^p=.*$

          use_backend wpengine if blog OR sitedomain OR glossary OR wpadmin OR root blog_search OR root blog_preview
          default_backend main-site

          backend wpengine
          server wpengine examplecompany.wpengine.com:443 ssl ca-file /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt

          backend main-site
          server main-site example.examplecompany.com.:443 ssl ca-file /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt

          https://blog.examplecompany.com or https://examplecompany.com/blog.

          It’s worth noting that WPEngine does not recommend this practice. 

          For those that want to host at https://site.com/blog and do it with a managed WordPress hosting provider like WPEngine, this article is for you.

          (Note, WPEngine will automatically block your reverse proxy, so you will need to contact customer support and ask them to whitelist its IP address in their firewall. I found this to be a painless process thanks to the friendly support staff at WPEngine.)

          How?

          The trick to getting the blog to look like it’s living on the main site (but actually living elsewhere) is to use a reverse proxy.

          HAProxy is a powerful reverse proxy, though its configuration has a bit of a learning curve compared to Nginx or Apache.

          We use HAProxy internally because it works well with AWS Elastic Load Balancers, which frequently change their IP address. Learn more

          HAProxy config

          | 1 | bind *:443ssl crt/etc/haproxy/website.com.combined |

          You’ll need to use SSL, as all WPEngine installs redirect to SSL.

          Of note is that HAProxy expects your certificate chain and your private key to be combined into one file

          | 1 | acl |

          These are the pattern matching lines that we’ll use to determine which traffic is forwarded to WPEngine

          | 1 |

          use_backend wpengine ifblog orsitename ORglossary ORwpadmin ORroot blog_search ORroot blog_preview

          |

          This directs /blog*, /sitename*, /glossary* and /wp-* to WPEngine.

          You can replace these with your own blog and page paths configured in wordpress.

          This line also directs /?s= and /?p= to wordpress using the combined root and blog_search and blog_preview lines.

          These are necessary to making searching and page previews work in WordPress.

          | 1 | default_backend main-site |

          Everything that doesn’t match one of the above patterns will go to the main site.

          | 1 | backend wpengine |

          Directives in the frontend that resolve to this backed will route to the blog.

          | 1 | backend main-site |

          Directives in the frontend that resolve to this backed will route to your main site.

          I would use Fastly

          https://thoughtbot.com/blog/host-your-blog-under-blog-on-your-www-domain

          https://blog.cloudflare.com/subdomains-vs-subdirectories-best-practices-workers-part-1/

          https://link.medium.com/g1ReAhcnZ4

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • BlueprintMarketing
            BlueprintMarketing last edited by

            Hi I have done this for 20+ websites.

            Following is our Technical Setup

            1. Setup a reverse proxy at https://www.example.com/blog/ pointing to https://blog.example.com/

            please remember that the hosting or reverse proxy on the server is so important. Some managed WordPress hosts do this better then others.

            https://pressidium.com/ now offers reverse proxy's on all plans for free

            https://pressidium.com/blog/2019/wordpress-reverse-proxy-how-universities-corporations-are-benefitting-from-reverse-proxy-setups/

            if you want to do this with out having to worry about it any problem I cannot stress how easy it is done by hosting the blog on Pagely.com it’s now free!

            (don’t worry about the $200 they don’t change it)

            https://support.pagely.com/hc/en-us/articles/213148558-Reverse-Proxy-Setup

            or kinsta for $50 more a month

            https://kinsta.com/knowledgebase/reverse-proxy/

            Pantheo.io (my go to host) now offers the “Advanced Global CDN” it lets you run a reverse proxy & much more via Fastly (my favorite CDN) the cost is very reasonable.

            https://pantheon.io/product/advanced-global-cdn

            Servebolt.com offers reverse proxy & hosts all PHP sites Wordpress too. They use CloudFlare & they will setup everything for you for free. They are also a full enterprise partner

            https://servebolt.com/help/article/cloudflare-workers-reverse-proxy/

            You  can also use Fastly, CloudFlare business, Incapsula, Cloudfront

            2.    Use a 301 redirection from https://blog.example.com/ to https://www.example.com/blog/ with an exception if a traffic is coming from main WWW domain then it won’t redirect. Thus, we can eliminate infinite loop.

            This is something that is very easy I would use Fastly

            • Change all absolute URLs to relative URLs on blog

            NO don’t do that it will hurt your site & will not help you change the URLs they need to be rewritten not made relative it’s a very bad way of trying to do this and will not help your site.

            • Change the sitemap URL from https://blog.example.com/sitemap.xml to https://www.example.com/blog/sitemap.xml and update all URLs mentioned within the sitemap

            Our main website is e-commerce marketplace which is YMYL site. This is on Windows server. Due to technical reasons, we can’t physically move our WordPress blog to the main website.

            If  you’re website site is YMYL I would use Pagely but Linode , AWS can do this to  with Fastly or  Nginx

            https://thoughtbot.com/blog/host-your-blog-under-blog-on-your-www-domain

            <code>location /blog/ {
                proxy_pass https://blog.example.com;
                proxy_set_header Host $host;
                proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
                proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
                proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
            }</code> 
            

            <code>please let me know if you need help
            Tom</code>

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • 1 / 1
            • First post
              Last post

            Got a burning SEO question?

            Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


            Start my free trial


            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.

            • See all categories

            Related Questions

            • MAdeit

              Is there any benefit to changing 303 redirects to 301?

              A year ago I moved my marketplace website from http to https. I implemented some design changes at the same time, and saw a huge drop in traffic that we have not recovered from. I've been searching for reasons for the organic traffic decline and have noticed that the redirects from http to https URLs are 303 redirects. There's little information available about 303 redirects but most articles say they don't pass link juice. Is it worth changing them to 301 redirects now? Are there risks in making such a change a year later, and is it likely to have any benefits for rankings?

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MAdeit
              0
            • rich.owings

              Splitting and moving site to two domains - How to redirect

              I have a client who is going to split their retail and wholesale business and rebrand the retail biz. So let’s say they are going to move everything from currentdomain.com to either retaildomain.com or wholesaledomain.com. The most important business for them is the retail site, so they want to pass on as much ranking power as they can from currentdomain.com to retaildomain.com. I see two choices here: We can 301 redirect all of currentdomain.com to retaildomain.com, and then redirect any wholesale pages to wholesaledomain.com. The advantage is that we can use GSC’s change of address tool to report the change to Google. The downside is that there is a redirect chain (2 hops) to wholesaledomain.com. Would this confuse Google? Or we can 301 redirect page by page from currentdomain.com to the appropriate page on either new site. This means no redirect chains but it also means that we can’t use GSC’s change of address tool. Which would you do and why? And is there another option that I'm missing? I appreciate any insights you can share.

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rich.owings
              1
            • DA2013

              How do you 301 redirect URLs with a hashbang (#!) format? We just lost a ton of pagerank because we thought javascript redirect was the only way! But other sites have been able to do this – examples and details inside

              Hi Moz, Here's more info on our problem, and thanks for reading! We’re trying to Create 301 redirects for 44 pages on site.com. We’re having trouble 301 redirecting these pages, possibly because they are AJAX and have hashbangs in the URLs. These are locations pages. The old locations URLs are in the following format: www.site.com/locations/#!new-york and the new URLs that we want to redirect to are in this format: www.site.com/locations/new-york We have not been able to create these redirects using Yoast WordPress SEO plugin v.1.5.3.2. The CMS is WordPress version 3.9.1 The reason we want to 301 redirect these pages is because we have created new pages to replace them, and we want to pass pagerank from the old pages to the new. A 301 redirect is the ideal way to pass pagerank. Examples of pages that are able to 301 redirect hashbang URLs include http://www.sherrilltree.com/Saddles#!Saddles and https://twitter.com/#!RobOusbey.

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DA2013
              0
            • pnb567

              Is .ME domain is effective in SEO ?

              I am always listening about TLD. com. org .net but what about the .me domain. Can this will be effective in SEO. Can i able to beat down my competitors, if i choose .me . I also have a .com or other TLD option but if i am making my name than .me is for me but i need your suggestion for the seo purpose. Is there really domain affective in term of SEO.

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pnb567
              0
            • jasonwdexter

              Redirect ruined domain to new domain without passing link juice

              A new client has a domain which has been hammered by bad links, updates etc and it's basically on its arse because of previous SEO guys. They have various domains for their business (brand.com, brand.co.uk) and want to use a fresh domain and take it from there. Their current domain is brand.com (the ruined one). They're not bothered about the rankings for brand.com but they want to redirect brand.com to brand.co.uk so that previous clients can find them easily. Would a 302 redirect work for this? I don't want to set up a 301 redirect as I don't want any of the crappy links pointing across. Thanks!

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jasonwdexter
              0
            • Grenadi

              301 - should I redirect entire domain or page for page?

              Hi, We recently enabled a 301 on our domain from our old website to our new website. On the advice of fellow mozzer's we copied the old site exactly to the new domain, then did the 301 so that the sites are identical. Question is, should we be doing the 301 as a whole domain redirect, i.e. www.oldsite.com is now > www.newsite.com, or individually setting each page, i.e. www.oldsite.com/page1 is now www.newsite.com/page1 etc for each page in our site? Remembering that both old and new sites (for now) are identical copies. Also we set the 301 about 5 days ago and have verified its working but haven't seen a single change in rank either from the old site or new - is this because Google hasn't likely re-indexed yet? Thanks, Anthony

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Grenadi
              0
            • seointern

              301 redirect from .html to non .html?

              Previously our site was using this as our URL structure: www.site.com/page.html. A few months ago we updated our URL structure to this: www.site.com/page & we're not using the .html. I've read over this guide & don't see anywhere that discusses this: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection. I've currently got a programmer looking into, but am always a bit weary with their workarounds, as I'd previously had them cause more problems then fix it. Here is the solution he is looking to do: The way that I am doing the redirect is fine. The problem is of where to put the code. The issue is that the files are .html files that need to be redirected to the same url with out a .html on them. I can see if I can add that to the 404 redirect page if there is one inside of there and see if that does the trick. That way if there is no page that exists without the .html then it will still be a 404 page. However if it is there then it will work as normal. I will see what I can find and get back. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, BJ

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seointern
              0
            • FrontlineMobility

              How do I go about changing a 302 redirect to a 301.

              Hello Friends! Thanks for viewing my question. Ok,My question today is How do I go about redirecting a 302 link to a 301 link. I understand the benefits of doing this as far as link juice and how the Search Engines views the two Re-Directs. I am wanting to know where I would start to do this. Thank you in advance for any help or suggestions!

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FrontlineMobility
              0

            Get started with Moz Pro!

            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

            Start my free trial
            Products
            • Moz Pro
            • Moz Local
            • Moz API
            • Moz Data
            • STAT
            • Product Updates
            Moz Solutions
            • SMB Solutions
            • Agency Solutions
            • Enterprise Solutions
            • Digital Marketers
            Free SEO Tools
            • Domain Authority Checker
            • Link Explorer
            • Keyword Explorer
            • Competitive Research
            • Brand Authority Checker
            • Local Citation Checker
            • MozBar Extension
            • MozCast
            Resources
            • Blog
            • SEO Learning Center
            • Help Hub
            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
            • How-to Guides
            • Moz Academy
            • API Docs
            About Moz
            • About
            • Team
            • Careers
            • Contact
            Why Moz
            • Case Studies
            • Testimonials
            Get Involved
            • Become an Affiliate
            • MozCon
            • Webinars
            • Practical Marketer Series
            • MozPod
            Connect with us

            Contact the Help team

            Join our newsletter
            Moz logo
            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
            • Accessibility
            • Terms of Use
            • Privacy

            Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.