Building a Large Local Services Directory - Subdomain Needed?
-
In 2012 we will be rolling out a directory of local services for our industry. This will ultimately be thousands of additional pages, with city/zip searching, individual provider pages etc.
The main reason is for UX -- providing local resources for our industry to compliment the online experience (we're an online B2C retailer)
My question is if there are pros/cons to putting this on a subdomain, or if having it on the root is ideal.
I don't see a huge influx of backlinks (making a sub fine) but I suppose that could change down the road. I do see some indexing benefits for new terms like 'service x in los angeles' etc, but that would also be fine on a sub.
It feels like it would be cleaner to keep separate and on a sub, but maybe we're missing something. We certainty don't want to hurt anything on our primary site which drives the business.
Thoughts?
-
To be honest you can run it off the sub folders on the website I have seen recently a big website which has a directory on it: http://marketing.com.au/
Also from a link juice point of view it would be better on the sub folder.
The issue is duplicant content from people copying other directories and placing the info direct on your site which can leave dup UGC.
If you website is established and already has ranks then I would go with the sub domain. you really need to put a internal case together and look at all options both positive and negative.
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
-
Would you pursue this paid directory link?
Hi all, I KNOW the hard and true answer to this, but I'm looking for deeper insights regarding Links like those contained on this page. I understand the by-the-book answer to this would be only pursue a paid link if it is "nofollowed" OR if it has the potential to bring in new business and traffic. My question is ....does a link like this actually pass SEO value? I see businesses killing it from an SEO standpoint with link profiles full of paid directory links like this. I also thought this conversation was more interested now that Google appears to devaluing links like this instead of issue penalties. Thoughts??
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RickyShockley0 -
What is future of Link building ? Any link building experts Here ?
Hey Everyone, its Muhammad Umair Ghufran I have one question about Link Building ? As my Knowledge Google Love the Quality content but Link building rank some low quality website Right ? So, what is the future of link building ; please explain indeep with complete reference for better understanding Thanks Regards: Muhammad Umair Ghufran
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | muhammadumairghufran0 -
How to build PA and DA for a new site?
Hi Guys, Any good tips on how to build PA and DA for a new website about 3 months old now, and our DA is at 5 while PA 1. Any good ideas from past experiences on how to build these up? Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | edward-may0 -
How to build authority links and how they look ?
Hi how to build authority links and how they look ? If you could give a few examples so that i can see how it looks. and i have 9 linking root domains which is really low. so what are linking root domains ? and what i need to about that ? Thank you 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ivek991 -
How is Google crawling and indexing this directory listing?
We have three Directory Listing pages that are being indexed by Google: http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/jsp/ http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/jsp/html/ http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/jsp/pdf/ How and why is Googlebot crawling and indexing these pages? Nothing else links to them (although the /jsp.html/ and /jsp/pdf/ both link back to /jsp/). They aren't disallowed in our robots.txt file and I understand that this could be why. If we add them to our robots.txt file and disallow, will this prevent Googlebot from crawling and indexing those Directory Listing pages without prohibiting them from crawling and indexing the content that resides there which is used to populate pages on our site? Having these pages indexed in Google is causing a myriad of issues, not the least of which is duplicate content. For example, this file <tt>CCI-SALES-STAFF.HTML</tt> (which appears on this Directory Listing referenced above - http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/jsp/html/) clicks through to this Web page: http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/jsp/html/CCI-SALES-STAFF.HTML This page is indexed in Google and we don't want it to be. But so is the actual page where we intended the content contained in that file to display: http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/category/meet-our-sales-staff As you can see, this results in duplicate content problems. Is there a way to disallow Googlebot from crawling that Directory Listing page, and, provided that we have this URL in our sitemap: http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/category/meet-our-sales-staff, solve the duplicate content issue as a result? For example: Disallow: /StoreFront/jsp/ Disallow: /StoreFront/jsp/html/ Disallow: /StoreFront/jsp/pdf/ Can we do this without risking blocking Googlebot from content we do want crawled and indexed? Many thanks in advance for any and all help on this one!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | danatanseo0 -
Ranking locally without local keywords in title?
I have a website that targets national keywords. I would like to be able to rank locally for these keywords as well without having the city in the title. What is the best strategy for this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cprodigy290 -
Google +one button - help needed
I have installed Google plus button on my homepage. My GA report is being displayed like this - 7 total events were recorded Total Events Unique Events 7 2 Event action Total Events on 4 off 3 My questions are - 1 ) Is someone clicking on Google plus button considered an Event ? 2 ) What is meant by 2 Unique Events 3 ) Why does GA report shows on 4 and off 3
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoug_20050 -
Mobile subdomain recommendations - Mobile SEO
My company is moving forward with creating a subdomain for mobile visitors (m.examplesite.com). I know there is much discussion on subdomain vs one url with different style sheets. That ship has sailed and the subdomain is the way we are proceeding. Google appears to recommend leaving both sites open to the normal Googlebot and redirecting the mobile bot to the mobile site (as we will be redirecting mobile visitors to the mobile subdomain). Has anyone had experience with this. Any duplicate content issues? Does anyone feel strongly that the normal Googlebot should be blocked from the mobile site (this seems to go against Google's recommendations)? It seems like another option is to use the canonical tag and let the search engines know the traditional site is the canonical page/version. Any recommendations? Any other issues that should be considered?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | btdavis0