WordPress Sub-directory for SEO
-
Hi There,
I'm working on a WordPress site that includes a premium content blog with approx 900 posts.
As part of the project, those 900 posts and other membership functionality will be moved from the main site to another site built specifically for content/membership.
Ideally, we want the existing posts to remain on the root domain to avoid a loss in link juice/domain authority.
We initially began setting up a WordPress Multisite using the sub-directory option. This allows for the main site to be at www.website.com and the secondary site to be at www.website.com/secondary.
Unfortunately, the themes and plugins we need for the platform do not play nicely with WordPress Multisite, so we started seeking a new solution, and, discovered that a second instance of WordPress can be installed in a subdirectory on the server. This would give us the same subdirectory structure while bypassing WordPress Multisite and instead, having two separate single-site installs.
Do you foresee any issues with this WordPress subdirectory install? Does Google care/know these are two separate WordPress installs and do we risk losing any link juice/domain authority?
-
@himalayaninstitute said in WordPress Sub-directory for SEO:
WordPress can be installed in a subdirectory
I have done this a lot and I mean a lot what you want to do is set up a reverse proxy on your subdomain and this will allow you to not only bypass having to use multisite for subfolder but if you want to power it separately you can you do not have to it all. You should probably use your same server and power through Fastly our CloudFlare
once you set this up it is super easy to keep it running in your entire site will be much faster as a result as well
my response to someone else that needed a subfolder
https://moz.com/community/q/topic/69528/using-a-reverse-proxy-and-301-redirect-to-appear-sub-domain-as-sub-directory-what-are-the-seo-risksplease also look at it explained by these hosting companies is unbelievable easy to implement compared to how it looks and you can do so with Fastly or cloudflare in a matter of minutes
-
https://servebolt.com/help/article/cloudflare-workers-reverse-proxy/
-
https://support.pagely.com/hc/en-us/articles/213148558-Reverse-Proxy-Setup
-
https://wpengine.com/support/using-a-reverse-proxy-with-wp-engine/
-
https://thoughtbot.com/blog/host-your-blog-under-blog-on-your-www-domain
-
https://crate.io/blog/fastly_traffic_spike
*https://support.fastly.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/4407427792397-Set-a-request-condition-to-redirect-URL -
https://coda.io/@matt-varughese/guide-how-to-reverse-proxy-with-cloudflare-workers
-
https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/cdn/glossary/reverse-proxy/
-
https://gist.github.com/LimeCuda/18b88f7ad9cdf1dccb01b4a6bbe398a6
I hope this was of help
tom
-
-
@nmiletic The content section of the site requires a unique UI Design and other robust functionality, so having a separate theme/plugins in its own directory is going to be the way we go here. Thanks for your assistance!
-
@himalayaninstitute Have you thought about adding a page and making all of this new content a subpage? Or changing your permalink structure to include a category in the URL? You can then add all of these posts under that category and have the URL show up as www.example.com/category/page-or-post-name
-
The website at the subdirectory will be an online learning platform with a blog, online courses, memberships, gated content, etc. The content currently lives on the main site, so, it's great that we can move it into the subdirectory without taking a hit from Google.
Since these are fundamentally two separate websites, we're not concerned about needing to manage them independently.
Thanks again for your input and advice, we greatly appreciate it!
-
@amitydigital said in WordPress Sub-directory for SEO:
Google will view it as one site so you shouldn't have any issues from that perspective. The Google bot is just looking at pages and won't know/care that the underlying CMS that is running some pages is a different install than other pages. The downside is you now have two websites to maintain, two themes, two sets of files, etc... That may result in a bit of a headache in the future.
As @amitydigital put it, the issue with your approach would be repetitive tasks. You will not loose any DA nor PA (being that you implement a correct 301 redirection). What is going to be on the subdirectory?
-
Google will view it as one site so you shouldn't have any issues from that perspective. The Google bot is just looking at pages and won't know/care that the underlying CMS that is running some pages is a different install than other pages. The downside is you now have two websites to maintain, two themes, two sets of files, etc... That may result in a bit of a headache in the future.
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
-
Rel canonical tag from shopify page to wordpress site page
We have pages on our shopify site example - https://shop.example.com/collections/cast-aluminum-plaques/products/cast-aluminum-address-plaque That we want to put a rel canonical tag on to direct to our wordpress site page - https://www.example.com/aluminum-plaques/ We have links form the wordpress page to the shop page, and over time ahve found that google has ranked the shop pages over the wp pages, which we do not want. So we want to put rel canonical tags on the shop pages to say the wp page is the authority. I hope that makes sense, and I would appreciate your feeback and best solution. Thanks! Is that possible?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shabbirmoosa0 -
Duplicate Content and Subdirectories
Hi there and thank you in advance for your help! I'm seeking guidance on how to structure a resources directory (white papers, webinars, etc.) while avoiding duplicate content penalties. If you go to /resources on our site, there is filter function. If you filter for webinars, the URL becomes /resources/?type=webinar We didn't want that dynamic URL to be the primary URL for webinars, so we created a new page with the URL /resources/webinar that lists all of our webinars and includes a featured webinar up top. However, the same webinar titles now appear on the /resources page and the /resources/webinar page. Will that cause duplicate content issues? P.S. Not sure if it matters, but we also changed the URLs for the individual resource pages to include the resource type. For example, one of our webinar URLs is /resources/webinar/forecasting-your-revenue Thank you!
Technical SEO | | SAIM_Marketing0 -
I am looking for an SEO strategy
I am looking for an SEO strategy, a step by step procedure to follow to rank my website https://infinitelabz.com . Can somebody help?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KHsdhkfn0 -
What recommendations do you have for the SEO of this site?
Hello, Could you glance at this site and let me know if you see anything we could improve upon? www.nlpca.com A couple of notes: We're over-optimized for the term "NLP" on the home page. We're removing the footer links soon. We have 2 locations: San Francisco, CA and Salt Lake City, UT. Our main keyword is "NLP Training" but we would like to rank higher for the keyword "NLP". Also note that we're completely white hat, but we have international site-wide backlinks, and a couple of site-wide backlinks in site's footers - all friends and colleagues of ours.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
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 -
How to optimise a local business directory?
Hey All, I've a new client who is a local business directory designed to promote local businesses across the UK but starting in it's home town of Brighton in the UK. I'm a little stumped to know how I can start to optimise this site as most of the pages being created are from very different businesses and focus on different subjects. I realise this is going to be a long haul but wondered if there are any tips you guys know of. My client domain is: call-us-first.co.uk Thanks Steve
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stevecounsell0