Getting mixed signals regarding how Google treats subdomains
-
All the posts I've read here and elsewhere regarding subdomains come to a similar conclusion, avoid using them because they are treated as a separate site -- and everything that goes along with that.
But on my site we have a subdomain on a separate server and it's treated as internal. Also this from Hubspot -
"**Use a subdomain of your website like Blog.HubSpot.com. **This is a great idea and this is what we do currently at HubSpot. Many companies have their blog on a subdomain, and it seems to be starting to be somewhat of a standard. The search engines are treating subdomains more and more as just portions of the main website, so the SEO value for your blog is going to add to your main website domain."
Any help clarifying this would be greatly appreciated!
-
I don't know. I have been making websites for a long time. I've seen google treat subdomains like gold and stack them in the SERPs so that subdomains on a single domain will fill the top ten and push all competitors down. Then I've seen google treat subdomains like crap, then like gold again.
So, don't bet on today's flavor. Keep in mind that lots of domains have subdomains managed by other people. Do you think that the actions of those "other people" should make the rest of the domain stink if they are crappy? If you think that your subdomain should not stink if the rest of the domain is populated by idiots then go ahead and place your big bet on subdomains being treated equally. I'm not going to do it. Do you think that blogspot blogs are treated like a single site? I vote NO on that. Do you agree?
If you want your collection of content to be guaranteed support for your main site then you better put it in a folder. I am putting my good content in a folder and staying away from hosts, shopping carts, software, platforms and any service that can't handle putting my content in a folder.
Google changes their mind on this type of stuff all of the time. So bet on what you think is long-term certain and not on what you hear people sayin' even if Matt Cutts is the one who is sayin'. I remember him posting right here on moz (SEOmoz then) that you could sculpt pagerank with nofollow. Then Google changed their mind on that and didn't tell anybody.
Do what makes long term sense, not what people are sayin'. I think that smart people are still saying put your content in a folder.
-
Here's a video from Matt Cutts on the topic. He says that subdomains and subdirectories are "roughly equivalent".
SEE: Should I structure my site using subdomains or subdirectories? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MswMYk05tk
"Roughly equivalent" is a big woolly, but what matters more is how you use these subdomains (or subdirectories)
If you're talking about a blog, then what really matters is the value of the content that you create on your blog and how you interlink your blog content with the rest of your site - both in your main navigation and and relevant on-page links.
If your blog articles earn links and social shares then you want to make sure that your linking on to your relevant "money pages" on your site to pass authority and relevance to the target pages.
The main thing you want to do is give your readers, the ones that are interested and engaged, somewhere to go to find out more about your products and services. A nice juicy compelling call to action or a useful next step...
Where subdomains can be useful is where you want part of your site to be hosted on a particular third-party tool. Sub directories are a lot easier to set up and maintain.
-
This is correct. There is more and more use of subdomains and I make great use of these myself. I use just a single page design for my site, so have 8 other subdomains, each with a unique site and content on them. I find that I am able to get the sites ranked well within about a week to 10 days.
Look at www.inetseo.co.uk and then at linkbuilding.inetseo.co.uk.
Google certainly don't treat a subdomain like a new site any more.
-Andy
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
-
Why wont google Index this page?
A week ago i accidentally changed this page settings in my CMS to "disable & dont index" as i was going to replace this page with another, but this didnt happen, but i forgot to switch the settings back! http://www.over50choices.co.uk/funeral-planning/funeral-plans Anyhow in an effort to get it back up quickly i submitted in GWTs but its still not indexed. When i use several SEO on page checking tools it has the Meta Title data as "Form" and not the correct title. Any ideas please? Yours frustrated Ash
Technical SEO | | AshShep10 -
Why my site is not indexing in google
In google webmaster i have updated my sitemap in Mar 6th..There is around 22000 links..But google fetched only 5300 links for long time...
Technical SEO | | Rajesh.Chandran
I waited for 1 month till no improvement in google index..So apr6th we have uploaded new sitemap (1200 links totally)..,But only 4 links indexed in google ..
why google not indexing my urls? Is this affect our ranking in SERP? How many links are advisable to submit in sitemap for a website?0 -
Google Places Question......
Hi Guys. I am working with a photographer they do not have a studio they shoot on location. However I noticed many photographers within their industry have their home address listed in their google places, and they too shoot on location. My client doesn't want their home address listed so I wondered what options there would be? Do you think renting mail forwarding address would suffice?
Technical SEO | | RankStealer0 -
Help with google adsense
Hi i wonder if anyone can help me with google adsense. I am having trouble making money with google adsense. I have been altering my pages to try and get better results with google adsense but nothing works. my traffic at the moment is about 3000 visitors a day but this should be doubled to around 6000 a day within the next two months. here is the layout of a typical page and i would be grateful for any advice on how to alter it to make money with google adsense http://www.in2town.co.uk/showbiz-gossip/rihanna-news/rihanna-shocks-fans-over-her-sexy-body-claims
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Remove Site from Google
How can I get my website out of google? I want all pages completely gone. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | tylerfraser0 -
Unexplained spikes in Google Analytics
My site has modest traffic (50 unique visitors per day). In the past week, I've seen two unexplained spikes in my Google Analytics. Yesterday, there were 140 unique visitors, and these unique visitors each visited one unique page. This appears to be a bot of some sort. If this is a bot, why does Google Analytics think these are unique visitors? Is there a was for small sites to deal with this? Best,
Technical SEO | | ChristopherGlaeser
Christopher0 -
Get iTunes SERP
Hi, I would really like to understnad how iTunes (apple) get those great serp in google (see attached image). In addition to the image (which is the main thing I would love to get) they have price, rating and votes numbers. Currently I know about the schema.org tags that can help implement that but I couldn't find this in the source code of the page. Thanx itunes-serp 20120102-gmpk3ih8492w52tbsrrpy573w4.jpg
Technical SEO | | WixSeoTeam0 -
Internal linking to subdomains
Hi *, I have a main site called example.org, and a lot of user generated pages to foo.example.org / bar.example.org and so on. Most of those pages link back to example.org. In example.org I have a page that links to all subdomains. How can I optimize the pagerank of the list page? Should I add nofollow to subdomain sites to avoid passing link juice to those sites and keep normal linking from subdomain sites?
Technical SEO | | ngw0