I have a blog on a sub domain, would you move it to the rood domain in a directory?
-
I have a blog that preforms fairly well on a sub domain, but after reading a post that Rand made to the Q & A I am thinking about moving it to the main domain in a sub directory. What are your thoughts on this? Here are some stats on it. The blog currently gets about 5 x the traffic of the main domain. The domain is older, 2008 creation date. They pretty much register for the same keywords.
-
Thanks guys, you have pretty much confirmed what I thought. It looks like I have a fun weekend ahead of me redirecting and testing things out. But it will be a good notch to add to see how the traffic goes.
One thing I wanted to ask about, this is not the case in my instance, but would the recommendation be the same if the subdomain had a higher PR than the naked domain?
-
I have always hosted blogs in a subfolder. The reason is I want all the traffic to stay in one place, along with all the link juice. True, a blog on a subdomain may get viewed as two separate entities, and therefore have multiple chances to show up in Google, but I like to have the look, and PR all attached to one specific place.
Personally, I have never seen the benefit of having a blog hosted on a subdomain. It always made more sense to have all your eggs in one basket and to keep feeding your TLD instead of spreading out your efforts.
Here is an article I generally refer to for advice: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/subdomains-or-subfolders-which-are-better-for-seo/6849/
Like EGOL said "If you want your blog to be treated as part of the domain then put it on the domain. If you want your blog to be treated like a separate domain then put it on a separate domain."
-
Thanks for elaborating. But what we're debating may prove something else entirely. It seems weird, but it's a very smart dumb machine.
-
Google repeatedly changes their mind about some things.
They have repeatedly changed their mind about subdomains.
At some times in the past they treated subdomains exactly like they were part of the root domain. At other times they treated them like a separate site and they have been in the middle some times too I am sure.
If you want your blog to be treated as part of the domain then put it on the domain. If you want your blog to be treated like a separate domain then put it on a separate domain. By doing this you will always be right.
But, if you place it on a subdomain then I am betting that you will be wrong about 1/2 of the time - if you are lucky.
-
Personally, I've never put a blog on a sub. More people are saying there isn't any difference, but more people may be saying that because a few more have said as such. Lovely how that works?
It was about four years ago we were told that EMDs were losing their potency. Upon hearing that, I jumped right on the bandwagon. Bad move, at least for a little bit. It would be years before a non-EMD, all things equal, could easily compete with an EMD.
What is said and what is are often at chronological odds.
Are you talking about this post?
Perhaps a new URL for the same pages could cause the Googles to 'reconsider' the content, for better or worse. Hopefully it would be for the better. I think you're going to do it anyway, so please take notes. It has the makings of a post I would love to read.
-
thinking about moving it to the main domain in a sub directory. What are your thoughts on this?
If this was my site I would move it to /blog/ (or a folder with another name) immediately and use 301 redirects.
All of my blogs are in a folder on the main domain.
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
-
SEO for sub domains
I've recently started to work on a website that has been previously targeting sub domain pages on its site for its SEO and has some ok rankings. To better explain, let me give an example...A site is called domainname.com. And has subdomains that they are targeted for seo (i.e. pageone.domainname.com, pagetwo.domainname.com, pagethree.domianname.com). The site is going through a site re-development and can reorganise its pages to another URL. What would be best way to approach this situation for SEO? Ideally, I'm tempted to recommend that new targeted pages be created - domainname.com/pageone, domainname.com/pagetwo, domainname.com/pagethree, etc - and to perform a 301 redirect from the old pages. Does a subdomain page structure (e.g. pageone.domainname.com) have any negative effects on SEO? Also, is there a good way to track rankings? I find that a lot of rank checkers don't pick up subdomains. Any tips on the best approach to take here would be appreciated. Hope I've made sense!
Technical SEO | | Gavo0 -
Should we move our documentation off subdomain?
Background: We have a popular open source e-commerce platform at http://spreecommerce.com. Right now the documentation is on http://guides.spreecommerce.com. We have "edge" documentation (for stuff that's not yet released) on http://edgeguides.spreecommerce.com but since it's largely duplicative we've told google not to index any of the edge stuff (via robots.txt). Question: Should we consider moving the guides under the main website under /docs or something like this? There's a ton of great content that people often read to learn more about the platform. Seems like we might be diluting our juice a bit to have it on a separate domain. WDYT?
Technical SEO | | schof0 -
Moving to Dynamic IP
Hi all, We are going to use CDN with geographically distributed IPs. However the website has strong positions in local search in UK and in regular search for geo kwds. Is it possible that with moving to from UK static IP to dynamic IPs can affect positions in Google? Thanks, Jane
Technical SEO | | Jane_Barry0 -
Referrals from widget domains
Let's say you are doing seo for a company that sells 5000 widgets. Let's call their site www.mainsite.com ... They have already set up ( purchased ) many domains such as www.widget1.com which is one of the widgets they have on their main site. so they might have several hundred of these domains. What is the best use of these domains? Would it be : Have those pages be landing pages with content and pictures and optimized with a link to their main site widget page? Or have that domain have a 301 redirect to go their main site, to the particular page showing that widget for sale off their main site? Miscellaneous sidebar question - Since both the main site widget page and the widget domain might be in competition and might have duplicate content, what are the ramifications of not using the canonical tag, and what other considerations might there be? How much must be duplicate content before considering using the canonical tag?
Technical SEO | | highersourcesites0 -
Block a sub-domain from being indexed
This is a pretty quick and simple (i'm hoping) question. What is the best way to completely block a sub domain from getting indexed from all search engines? One item i cannot use is the meta "no follow" tag. Thanks! - Kyle
Technical SEO | | kchandler0 -
Are sub domain names a good idea
Hi i have read some info that says that sub domain names help with increase traffic but i am not sure if this is true. I would like to know if i should use a subdomain name to increase the size of my website and increase traffic. I have also read that it is a good idea to put a blog on a subdomain name. Can anyone share their experience and let me know if they have found that sub domains are a good idea
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Domain Masking with New Keyword-Rich Domains
Hello, friends. We have an ecommerce site and we also own several keyword-rich domains but haven't done anything with them yet. Is there any value in using domain masking to point them to either product pages or special landing pages on our primary ecommerce site? Here's an example: Primary site is widgetzone.com Keyword rich URL is acmewidget.com (which is totally blank and isn't indexed) It could point to our category page for Acme Widgets: widgetzone.com/category/acme-widgets or it could point to a new landing page: widgetzone.com/acme-widgets My concern is that because the keyword-rich URL hasn't been utilized at all there's really no point in redirecting it. I'm of the mind that it's either going to be ineffective at best or a duplicate content issue at worst. What do you guys think? As a follow-up, if we don't redirect these domains, what should we do with them? Just try to sell them off rather than create totally new sites?
Technical SEO | | jbreeden0 -
Blog URLs
I read somewhere - pretty sure is was in Art of SEO - that having dates in the blog permalink URLs was a bad idea. e.g. /blog/2011/3/my-blog-post/ However, looking at Wordpress best practice, it's also not a good idea to have a URL without a number - it's more resource hungry if you don't , apparently. e.g. /blog/my-blog-post/ Does anyone have any views on this? Thanks Ben
Technical SEO | | atticus70