Subdirectories vs subdomains
-
Hi SEO gurus
Anyone has input on what's better?
blog.domain.com vs domain.com/blog
store.domain.com vs domain.com/store
etc
I think the subdir (/xyz) will concentrate authority on the same subdomain so should be better? However sometimes it is tidier on the server to maintain online stores or blogs in a separate strucutre so subdomains work better in that sense. I just want to make sure that doesn't affect SEO?
Cheers!
-
Thanks for the responses Yumi, @oznappies & Aaron
-
Sub directories/folders used to be the definite way to go for the most SEO value however things have evened out for the most part. I think sub directories are more user friendly... we are used to the slash... extra periods can get tricky.
-
I've asked this one on here before and have some test sites trialling both ways and the sub-directory gains rank much faster from the root than the sub-domain.
-
in my opinion? definitely subdirectory. and in fact it will still be tidier on the server maintainability ..
For example please consider the following setup
you have your MYDOMAIN.com located at /var/www/html-mydomain
and by using a SUBDOMAIN.MYDOMAIN.COM, you will generally have them at /var/www/html-subdomain-mydomain
it looks tidier as you said it BUT you can achieve exactly the same thing using MOD_REWRITE
so perhaps right now your MYDOMAIN.com/SUB is located at /var/www/html-mydomain/SUB right? you can actually write a .htaccess that whenever user is going to MYDOMAIN.com/SUB it actually load the page under /var/www/html-subdomain-mydomain instead ! (so the server maintainability between using the subdirectory and subdomain will be exactly the same)
a much more technical example , put this inside your .htaccess of your root domain home directory
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^[www\.]*sub-domain-name.domain-name.com [NC] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/sub-domain-directory/.* RewriteRule ^(.*) /sub-domain-directory/$1 [L]
This will cause the following situation
when people go to http://sub-domain-name.domain-name.com/a.html AND http://domain-name.com/sub-domain-directory/a.html
both of them will open your /sub-domain-directory/a.html instead
hope this help
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
-
Help Center/Knowledgebase effects on SEO: Is it worth my time fixing technical issues on no-indexed subdomain pages?
We're a SaaS company and have a pretty extensive help center resource on a subdomain (help.domain.com). This has been set up and managed over a few years by someone with no knowledge of SEO, meaning technical things like 404 links, bad redirects and http/https mixes have not been paid attention to. Every page on this subdomain is set to NOT be indexed in search engines, but we do sometimes link to help pages from indexable posts on the main domain. After spending time fixing problems on our main website, our site audits now flag almost solely errors and issues on these non-indexable help center pages every week. So my question is: is it worth my time fixing technical issues on a help center subdomain that has all its pages non-indexable in search engines? I don't manage this section of the site, and so getting fixes done is a laborious process that requires going through someone else - something I'd rather only do if necessary.
Technical SEO | | mglover19880 -
Search Console Indexed Page Count vs Site:Search Operator page count
We launched a new site and Google Search Console is showing 39 pages have been indexed. When I perform a Site:myurl.com search I see over 100 pages that appear to be indexed. Which is correct and why is there a discrepancy? Also, Search Console Page Index count started at 39 pages on 5/21 and has not increased even though we have hundreds of pages to index. But I do see more results each week from Site:psglearning.com My site is https://wwww.psglearning.com
Technical SEO | | pdowling0 -
Are subdomains a good seo strategy for a multistore e-commerce?
Hi there I'm wondering what is the best strategy to work with multi-stores on magento: to use or not to use subdomains? Suppose we have the www.website.com and we configure it to use multistore. The url base will not have the store id on it so it will not be like www.website.com/store1 and www.website.com/store2. It will simply rely on the user session so if we have two categories for each store it will acces using: www.website.com/category1 (for store 1) www.website.com/category2 (for store 2) The homepage will allways be set on www.website.com so we should have a single page for several "home pages" (depending on the user session / store he is accessing). I guess this is not a good option if we want to rank for different keywords (for each store). So I was wondering if it is a good solution to set: store1.website.com store2.website.com This way we have 2 "home pages" each one able to rank. Does it make sense? Is it good or bad for seo? Another option I was considering was: www.website.com (for store 1) store2.website.com (for store 2) store3.website.com (for store 3) www.website.com/blog (for blog) Can this work? Good or bad for seo? best regards
Technical SEO | | qgairsoft0 -
SEO impact of the anatomy of URL subdirectory structure?
I've been pushing hard to get our Americas site (DA 34) integrated with our higher domain authority (DA 51) international website. Currently our international website is setup in the following format... website.com/us-en/ website.com/fr-fr/ etc... The problem that I am facing is that I need my development framework installed in it's own directory. It cannot be at the root of the website (website.com) since that is where the other websites (us-en, fr-fr, etc.) are being generated from. Though we will have control of /us-en/ after the integration I cannot use that as the website main directory since the americas website is going to be designed for scalability (eventually adopting all regions and languages) so it cannot be region specific. What we're looking at is website.com/[base]/us-en. I'm afraid that if base has any length to it in terms of characters it is going to dilute the SEO value of whatever comes after it in the URL (website.com/[base]/us-en/store/product-name.html). Any recommendations?
Technical SEO | | bearpaw0 -
Www2 vs www problem
Hi, I have a website that has an old version and a new version. The content is not duplicate on the different versions.
Technical SEO | | TihomirPetrov
The point is that the old version uses www. and non-www before the domain and the new one uses www2. My questions is: Is that a problem and what should be done? Thank you in advance!0 -
Sub Domain vs. New Root Domain for New Brand
Would you recommend a new brand be placed as a subdomain to the existing parent company or create a separate root domain for this new brand?
Technical SEO | | ScratchMM0 -
Internal vs external blog and best way to set up
I have a client that has two domians registered - one uses www.keywordaustralia.com the other uses www.keywordaelaide.com He had already bought and used the first domain when he came to me I suggested the second as being worth buying as going for a more local keyword would be more appropriate. Now I have suggested to him that a blog would be a worthy use of the second domain and a way to build links to his site - however I am reading that as all links will be from the same site it wont be worth much in the long run and an internal blog is better as it means updated content on his site. should i use the second domain for blog, or just 301 the second domain to his first domain. Or is it viable to use the second domain as the blog and just set up an rss feed on his page ? Is there a way to have the second domain somehow 'linked' to his first domain with the blog so that google sees them as connected ? NOOBIE o_0
Technical SEO | | mamacassi0