Outsourcing development to external agencies

[tgraham]

We are a large charitable organisation which has not paid too much attention to SEO guidelines in the past and as such have a number of websites that have been built by external development agencies.

The question that we would like to ask is how this is affecting our SEO. The sites that have been built previously have been created on subdomains and we know that this is an issue. Subdomains are considered separate sites by the Search Engines and not all equity is passed from the subdomains to our main sites, especially as our internal link structure is poorly constructed. However if we had put the sites under our main website URL in subfolders would we still be reducing our page rank and link equity as the pages are hosted by the companies that built them often in a different programming language (Open Source rather than Enterprise) and sometimes in a different country.

One company that we asked to build pages for us recently said that it was no problem with SEO because they would put the content in an iFrame to one of our main domain URL in a subfolder but I know that iFrames pass all link equity to the company where the site is actually located/hosted.

What are the brilliant SEOMOZs communities thoughts on this?

Thanks very much.

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EDIT - 1100hrs.

Thanks to all the responses so far, but we've not quite got to the root of the issue - sorry it's probably the way I've phrased the question.  Essentially we host our own website but our internal team does not have the resource to build all the functionality required by the business.  So if we need a platform that manages our events or a platform that manages our community it has to be built externally then integrated into our existing structure as it would cost too much / take too long / potentially don' t have the expertise to do internally.  External companies tend to have the best functionality but then we are directing our visitors to their sites.  So we are asking them to integrate their sites into ours for an extra fee but what we are trying to find out is whether or not this is worth it in terms of search equity for our site if we only lose visitors once they have arrived at our site and are then directed off...?

[StalkerB]

The page on your domain that has the iFrame in it would get credit for both (assuming you have analytics on it :D).

The visitor would actually be on your site and the iFrame is just a window to the other site where they can see the content.

[tgraham]

Ooops posted twice - one won't delete so amended this one!

[tgraham]

Ok Barry thanks but what about time on page and visitor numbers?  Who would Google credit with those numbers?

[StalkerB]

Okay, I follow now. And the developers have suggesting putting these tools/content in iFrames on the site so people link to the page on your site rather than directly to the site the content is hosted on.

Well, as for whether iFrames would 'work' it would depend on what the content was and if people needed to link to specific URLs, but if it was the sort of thing that people could still get the functionality of but not need to deep link, then that may work.

If you do go down this route please make sure there is some actual content on the page (Google won't see the stuff in the iFrame as being on page content), so add a description of what users can do on the page, a banner with some good alt text, etc.

So, again, please speak about the specifics with someone, but embedding external content in iFrames could be a reasonable (if not great) workaround for you if you can convince people to link to the page the iFrame is on and not the content in the iFrame.

[tgraham]

Hi Barry - yes that's pretty much it.  The tools that we're using aren't as generic as Flickr and Google Calendar, they're more refined for our business, but you get the gist of it.  Our business relies on promoting content to visitors through search and we're worried that by satisfying visitor needs by sending them off to externally created communities and feature rich events platforms our own content won't be promoted by the search engines which is the sole reason for having a site!

[StalkerB]

So we are asking them to integrate their sites into ours for an extra fee but what we are trying to find out is whether or not this is worth it in terms of search equity for our site if we only lose visitors once they have arrived at our site and are then directed off...?

So are you saying (for example) you want to use Flickr for image hosting, Google Calendar for events planning, Proboards for a forum, Cafepress for a store, that kind of thing? And are worried linking to all this offsite content means you're losing the value having the content on your proper domain would provide?

[Getz.pro]

You are welcome!

[Getz.pro]

LOL and I thought it was a typo

[tgraham]

By the way anyone coming to this post might not understand  tl;dr literally means, "Too long; didn't read". I had to look it up!

[tgraham]

Thanks so much for all of the great information. This really helps in clarifying my understanding of separate sites, subdomains and hosting. Now just need to work out how to pursuade the business to start building a new community platform internally.

[Getz.pro]

I can't see it drastically hurting you as long as you keep them as subdomains.

iFrames will work if moving to subfolders as long as the page that contains the iFrame has other content and the iFrame resides within the page. If not, the iFrame page (external) won't bring any juice to your page/site.

Still, I would keep as subdomains and cross link when naturally applicable.

Then talk to Kris about getting a new site redone : ) I am sure there are developers in your area that would volunteer as you would provide them with volunteer hours they can write off at the end of the year. And someone local should be empathetic to your cause and you can always bribe with a backlink to their site

[tgraham]

Yep - you've both got it!

This was the question I needed answering:

Just to be clear though, you cannot have different parts of a site hosted on different servers, so parentcharity.com/sales andparentcharity.com/community MUST be hosted on the same siteserver.

and this is the main problem as the function is proprietary:

_If the functionality is proprietary and can't be hosted with the partentcharity, I would leave things as they are until you can afford to re-build the site and just cross link as needed. _

So we're in a quandry, we can't afford / haven't got the internal developer time to build a bespoke community site and the external functionality is proprietry so we can't bring it in-house and are therefore getting little search value from our subdomained community.

[StalkerB]

First, bringing these pages under the same hosting account should not be an issue as this is simply a copy and paste of folders. Unless the functionality is strictly limited to the hosting company.

If the functionality is proprietary and can't be hosted with the partentcharity, I would leave things as they are until you can afford to re-build the site and just cross link as needed.

Yeah, this was the tl;dr for mine I should have put in Sums it up perfectly.

[Getz.pro]

Ok, having external developers does not intrinsically negatively impact SEO.

Is the functionality proprietary? If not, why not copy the code from all external hosting accounts to your main hosting account?

[Getz.pro]

Oh, so community and sales are hosted outside of parentcharity? That's why I was not grabbing what you were saying. That's a bit weird and I understand the conundrum.

First, bringing these pages under the same hosting account should not be an issue as this is simply a copy and paste of folders. Unless the functionality is strictly limited to the hosting company.

If the functionality is proprietary and can't be hosted with the partentcharity, I would leave things as they are until you can afford to re-build the site and just cross link as needed.

[StalkerB]

Well, to see if I can clarify your position:

You have multiple subdomains each using a different CMS/system to run and you want to bring them all under one CMS/system during a site restructure.

You could, most likely, run each of the systems in their own folder (e.g. /blog/ is powered by Wordpress, /shop/ is powered by Joomla) but I think this is a case of better to do something well if you're going to do it at all and bring it under one main CMS.

I recently had to do this from a bespoke CMS to an open source one and, as there was no real way for them to talk to one another, it was unfortunately a copy and paste job. I only had about 2000 pages though, so would seem less likely you can manually do it with 100,000

If you can export your content in say XML or a database and then parse it into a format that your main CMS would recognise that may be one way of doing it.

Now looking at your response below you've no coder/programmers as such working for you, so what I've suggested may be a bit beyond what you can achieve without hiring one.

Just to be clear though, you cannot have different parts of a site hosted on different servers, so parentcharity.com/sales and parentcharity.com/community MUST be hosted on the same server.

The language that powers each of these sections CAN be different, but you'll most likely have to speak to your current providers and ask if they can move it to the same server. If it's a bespoke solution they may not be able or willing to move it to a server they don't control.

Let me know what I'm missing

[tgraham]

Yes - External providers = paid developers and web functionalities defined in urls below (events, communities). We understand that iFrame is a bad solution but it was suggested by an external developer who suggested that they were competant at SEO!  

[tgraham]

No problem, for obvious reasons I have to stay anonymous but essentially we have:

www.parentcharity.com
community.parentcharity.com
sales.parentcharity.com

we want to put all of these into:

www.parentcharity.com/community
www.parentcharity.com/sales

but the subdomains community. and sales. are currently hosted externally and in a different programming language

Also the business now requires an events platform but we haven't the resources to build it internally so can it be created externally and integrated and is it even worth doing it?

Thanks.

[Getz.pro]

First, sub domains don't HURT you and are recommended if the content is vastly different as I pointed out.

Lets qualify some terms:

external providers = paid developers?

web functionality = what are these functionalities?

Having a developer build your site has not intrinsic negative effect on SEO nor does adding functionality. iFrames are not recommended and if you are getting your functionality through them, that could be an issue.

Define more of what you are doing.

[tgraham]

Hi Barry, thanks for your response - the subdomains are not targeting specific countries and we're aware that they should be brought in from the cold into one subfolder of our main domain. However we're unsure of the best way to do that considering they utilise different technologies to work.

[Getz.pro]

Please provide URLs. I don't think you clarified what you want. : )

[tgraham]

Hi Richard, thank you very much for taking the time to respond but the question isn't about the issues or benefits of subdomains - we already have them and we're looking to consolidate into one domain with subfolders, we know they are not helping.  The question is can we use external providers of web functionality while still building link equity for our main sites or do we have to build and host internally at much greater expense and limited functionality to get credit with the search engine giants even thought we're providing a better user experience?

[tgraham]

Hi Kris, a complete site restructure is on the cards and, while your offer is very kind, this rebuild could easily take up a year of all your developers' time (over 100k pages) and a monster CMS system, think just a little smaller size than the BBC. The nub of the question is can we use external providers of web functionality while still building link equity for our main sites?

[Getz.pro]

If these charitable websites are in fact different entities, then sub-domains are good, but I would have different URLs. If you place all these domains after your TLD (top level domain) and they are different, with different physical addresses, this could also send some weird information to SEs and to users.

www.FoodRescue.parentcharity.org

www.YouthOutreach.parentcharity.org

With Food Rescue and Youth Outreach being different organizations I would give them different TLDs.

www.FoodRescue.org

www.YouthOutreach.org

Then be sure to cross link when it is natural to do so.

If they are the same organization, just different outreaches within the org, then I would subfolder each of them.

www.parentcharity.com/food-rescue/

www.parentcharity.com/youth-outreach/

Hope that helps

[StalkerB]

Hmm, agree with Kris that it may be better to redevelop the site, but also agree that it would be worth speaking to an agency about specifics (and the iFrame thing is a weird/bad choice).

If you're an international charity and your subdomains are hosted in individual countries targeting those countries I'd be reluctant to state that you should definitely move them without looking at them individually. If the subdomains are simply because you gave control to the developers to build each site, then it would probably make sense to standardise them.

Also, while microsites aren't always a great idea if some of the subdomains targeted a specific project your charity was undertaking I may also consider the odd exact match domain instead of moving it into a subdirectory, but again, would need to know more so please do get in touch with a few agencies about helping you

Also be very careful with your redirects and map them properly. If you are bringing them all in line with each other and putting them on the one CMS then there's a strong chance your URL structure will change and may even produce duplicates.

And finally, taking this on will probably be quite a large project, so plan accordingly. Site structure, internal linking and updating on page factors can all have huge benefits if done properly.

[KrisRoadruck]

Hmm. Well there is a LOT of ground to cover here but I would say the short version is it sounds like its time to rebuild your website. Depending on the size and scope of the project my firm may be willing to take it on pro-bono. We actively give to charity every year and though that usually means monetary donations I would absolutely be interested in donating something that we do best!

Now to the core of the question, yes having everything on a single domain is usually better. There are situations were subdomains are appropriate but without more information I'd say this is likely not the case for you. I also think that having your subdomains hosted in different parts of the world is likely sending some really odd signals to google as to the connection between your subdomains and the main site. I would definately try to get the whole site hosted in one place.

I can't fathom a good reason to use iFrames in the senario you are discribing instead of just self-hosting the content in the correct location.