If parent domain is www, does it matter if subdomain on a different server is non-www?
-
If you have a main website (www.example.com) with a subdomain of the website (service.example.com) that lives on a separate server with a separate IP address, is there an SEO benefit/advantage to have having the www included in the url since the parent url includes the www?
Assume:
1. Applicable 301 redirects are in place on both sites
2. No duplicate content issues
Additionally, would your answer be different if the site is a .gov or .edu site vs. a .com?
-
Basically, www domains are a subdomain of example.com. You don't need to have your subdomains like www.service.example.com, if that was what you were asking. That's just poorly structured URLs IMHO.
There shouldn't be any different for edu or gov domains.
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
-
Subdomain cannibalization
Hi, I am doing the SEO for a webshop, which has a lot of linking and related websites on the same root domain. So the structure is for example: Root domain: example.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mat_C
Shop: shop.example.com
Linking websites to shop: courses.example.com, software.example.com,... Do I have to check which keywords these linking websites are already ranking for and choose other keywords for my category and product pages on the webshop? The problem with this could be that the main keywords for the category pages on the webshop are mainly the same as for the other subdomains. The intention is that some people immediately come to the webshop instead of going first to the linking websites and then to the webshop. Thanks.0 -
Why did Google cache & index a different domain than my own?
We own www.homemenorca.com, a real estate website based in Spain. Pages from this domain are not being indexed: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awww.homemenorca.com&oq=site%3Awww.homemenorca.com&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58j69i59l2.3504j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8Please notice that the URLs are Home Menorca, but the titles are not Home Menorca, they are Fincas Mantolan, a completely different domain and company: http://www.fincasmantolan.com/. Furthermore, when we look at Google's cache of Home Menorca, we see a different website: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.homemenorca.com%2Fen&oq=cache%3Awww.homemenorca.com%2Fen&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58j69i59.1311j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8We reviewed Google Search Console, Google Fetch, the canonical tags, the XML sitemap, and many more items. Google Search Console accepted our XML sitemap, but is only indexing 5-10% of the pages. Google is fetching and rendering the pages properly. However, we are not seeing the correct content being indexed in Google. We have seen issues with page loading times, loading content longer than 4 seconds, but are unsure why Google would be indexing a different domain.If you have suggestions or thoughts, we would very much appreciate it.Additional Language Issue:When a user searches "Home Menorca" from America or the UK with "English" selected in their browser as their default language, they are given a Spanish result. It seems to have accurate hreflang annotations within the head section on the HTML pages, but it is not working properly. Furthermore, Fincas Mantolan's search result is listed immediately below Home Menorca's Spanish result. We believe that if we fix the issue above, we will also fix the language issue. Please let us know any thoughts or recommendations that can help us. Thank you very much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CassG12340 -
Legal Client Wants to Change Domain Name... What's the best way to pass authority from old domain?
Hey Mozzers,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WhiteboardCreations
I received a call on Friday from a 6 attorney law office who have been my client for a long time. They have an established brand/domain in their market which isn't very big, but has a lot of competition. 2 of the attorneys are leaving to start their own firm and they want to remove a letter from their name abbreviation, thus their domain name as well. So, the other partners want to change the domain to reflect this. They want to buy a EMD [city]lawyers.com for about $1,600 along with some others to protect their new brand and name. I have a good idea as to what I need to do, BUT would love to hear advice from the community for this type of drastic change. 301 redirects? New Google Analytics code or same just different profile? Webmasters verifications? Content from old site? Old domain forwarding or keep active for a little bit? Is not the time to get them an SSL? Also, what should I prepare them for in terms of website traffic expectations and Google authority drops or remains the same? I know their Moz DA/PA will drop to 1/1, but anything else to look out for? Thank you in advance!
Fellow Pro Member - Patrick1 -
Profit from domain authority, while shop hosted on other server
Hi, What if you have a blog and you want to add a shop to your site (like http://blog.com/shop) to profit from the domain autority, but... the shop uses a specific technique that needs to be hosted on an other server? I know a solution when I locate the shop at http://shop.blog.com by changing the DNS settings, but in this case the shop will not profit from the domain autoriry. So,.. is there a technique (maybe also with DNS?) to host the shop on a different location, but for search engines and visitors it looks like it is on the same server? I hope somebody knows a solution...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Seeders0 -
Large Scale Domain Forwarding
I recently purchased a domain from a domainer who owns and parks many, many exact match domains in my niche. He gets a lot of type in traffic via these domains and is willing to forward them to my domain to help get my site started with traffic. We were planning on forwarding a few dozen domains at the most. I'd like to make sure I'm not raising any red flags with google for forwarding so many domains to a new site. I found this article, which says Panda made some changes with regards to what I'm trying to do here. Not sure if they guy is right though. http://domainate.wordpress.com/2011/10/20/how-google-panda-affected-domain-forwarding-and-what-to-do-about-it/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | terran0 -
DNS(Name servers), IP and domain.. All Showing Same Site...
Hello, My site is hosted on VPS with dedicate IP. The problem I am facing is my site is indexed and cached by domain, IP address and name server. I am able to open all the pages via www.xyz.com and and IP 1.1.1.1 and the name sever like ns1. hosted.com And if I USE site operator in google for 1.1.1.1 and ns1.hosted.com there are so many pages which is cache and in sites. Is it any server issue my hosting company give me a reply as given below "This is because that site is on the same ip as the nameserver. This is completely correct and normal. This is not an error." Is it true ? can you help me in this issue? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | semshah1430 -
Exact domain or subfolder?
If I am targeting a specific keyword, from an SEO perspective is it better to create a subfolder on a url that has some authority or is it better use the exact domain with no authority? For example, if I want to target the word 'widgets' which is the better choice and why? **Choice 1: ** www.domainwithauthority.com/widgets Note: this domain has 1000 links to it **Choice 2: ** www.widgets.com Note: this is a brand new domain with 0 links
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mnipko0 -
Domain certificate
Hello, I would like to know if there is any certificate we can buy to increase the Seo of my website. Thanks very much for your time
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cartageno0