SEO for a Domain which contains Multiple individual sites

[kevinbp]

My website structure

www.example.com (wordpress installation number 1)
www.example.com/forum/ (vbulletin installtion)
www.example.com/shop/ (wordpress installation number 2)

Each of these individual pages contains a fresh wordpress/vbulletin installation with their individual admin control panel.

1. Am i doing this website entirely wrong?
2. Is my website considered as a single website or does Google classify it as 3 different websites?
3. My Ranking page is, www.example.com, and by blog post is www.example.com/forum/blog. When i do a link within my blog entry to my main ranking page, does it count as external or internal link?

[evolvingSEO]

Hi Kevin

Looks like you have some great answers here. I'll just add my 2 cents as well:

1. Not doing it wrong at all.
2. Google will consider it the same site for sure if it's all under sub-folders and not sub-domains. They will even consider sub-domains "one site" so long as you have consistent design, navigation, UX etc.
3. This would count as an internal link.

[davebuts]

Adding to what Keszi said:

1 & 2) If that's what is required for your site then it's fine - it's quite common for a Magento e-commerce site to run a WordPress blog. As long as the different CMS installs are in sub-folders and not sub-domains, you should treat them as a single website.

3) Viewing /forum/blog/ doesn't require people to login? As long as the link can be crawled (if it requires login then it won't be crawled by search engines) it will be counted as an internal link - doesn't matter if it's coming from a different CMS install.

[Keszi]

Hi Kevin,

In my opinion, you aren't doing anything wrong by having 3 engines running one domain. Just do not over-complicate it for yourself in the future.

Having 3 installations (2 wordpress and 1 forum) doesn't count as three different sites, it will be part of the same site (and even some people won't tell the difference).

If you check out Moz, for example, you will see that they have different parts of their website split up in "individual" parts (Moz Blog, YouMoz, Community, etc. etc. etc.). That doesn't mean that they have so many websites. They have 1 Domain, that is all.

Might be, that they also run it from different engines (I do not know), but it could be done.

Now, if I put here a link towards Moz homepage, that will count as an internal page.

I hope this has cleared up a little-bit.

Gr., Keszi