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.
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
-
Unsolved Need Moz SEO Wordpress Plugin With API
Re: Moz WordPress Plugin? Hi guys,
Moz Pro | | mrezair
I need some Moz SEO Wordpress Plugins For my website working with Moz API. I've already found Moz DA-PA Checker plugin Moz DA-PA Checker But Need SEO Plugins too. Any Suggestion will be appreciated.0 -
Unsolved Using Weglot on wordpress (errors)
Good day to you all, Does anyone have experience of the errors being pulled up by Moz about the utility of the weglot plugin on Wordpress? Moz is pulling up URLs such as: https://www.ibizacc.com/es/chapparal-2/?wg-choose-original=false These are classified under "redirect issues" and 99% of the pages are with the ?wg-choose parameter in the URL. Is this having an actual negative impact on my search or is it something more Moz related being highlighted. Any advice be appreciated and a resolution .. Im thinking I could exclude this parameter.
Moz Pro | | alwaysbeseen0 -
Gallery maintenance and the effect on SEO
Basically we get a lot of users uploading photos as part of their review, but many photos aren't moderated into our pages and therefore are never displayed. Things like selfies rather than photos of the product or just random google images that are completely unrelated to our products or services. Is there any benefit in cleaning up the gallery since some images we don't use are just sat there in admin?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Fubra
when a page loads, would it be quicker if we had less content in the gallery? With our SEO hat on.
or does it not matter since it's not loading that content (photos) anyway?0 -
Onsite SEO vs Offsite SEO
Hey I know the importance of both onsite & offsite, primarily with regard to outreach/content/social. One thing I am trying to determine at the moment, is how much do I invest in offsite. My current focus is to improve our onpage content on product pages, which is taking some time as we have a small team. But I also know our backlinks need to improve. I'm just struggling on where to spend my time. Finish the onsite stuff by section first, or try to do a bit of both onsite/offsite at the same time?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey1 -
Yoast seo title question
I was referred to this plugin and have found it to be the most irritating and poorly designed plugin in the world. I want to be able to set my titles without it changing my page headers as well. For instance - If I set my title to be "This is my article name | site name" it will make my H1 tag read the same. I do not want or desire this nonsense. Why would they think this is something wise? Why would I want my site name on every single H1 tag on my site? How can I fix this? I only want my title to be my title. I want my H1 tag to remain the post/page name that I define in wordpress.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Atomicx0 -
Domain Alias SEO
We have 5 domain alias of our existing sites
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | unibiz
All 5 domain alias are domain alias of our main site. It means, all domain alias will have exactly same site and contents
Like Main domain: www.mywebsite.com
DomainAlias: www.myproduct.com, www.myproduct2.com, www.myproduc3.com
And if anybody will open our site www.myproduct.com, it will open same website which I have in primary site what can i do to rank all website without any penalty....i s there any way? This is domain alias of in hosting industry Thanks0 -
SEOmoz recommended Directories
SEOmoz recommends a bunch of directories and some cost money. How much influence do these directories have? Is it worth investing in some where the category makes sense or all where the category makes sense?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur0