Subdomain canonicalisation
-
Hi Moz fans,
I had a telephone conversation with an SEO company last week and they mentioned that the following "versions" of my domain were causing a canonicalisation issue;
I've already fixed the /index.html issue but do the above 3 also need to be fixed? Is the best solution to use a 301 redirect?
As a side note, the SEOmoz web app doesn't identify these as being duplicate content...
Regards, Ash
-
Hey Ash,
If you use a canonical in the index.html, then when you load example.com or example.com/ or etc. etc. versions you basically load the index.html (in which there is configured the canonical link).
My developer usually makes a 301 redirect from non-www. to www. and we implement to canonical link into index.html and that is it
I hope it helped,
Istvan
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
-
Why does Moz recommend subdomains for language-specific websites?
In Moz's domain recommendations, they recommend subdirectories instead of subdomains (which agrees with my experience), but make an exception for language-specific websites: Since search engines keep different metrics for domains than they do subdomains, it is recommended that webmasters place link-worthy content like blogs in subfolders rather than subdomains. (i.e. www.example.com/blog/ rather than blog.example.com) The notable exceptions to this are language-specific websites. (i.e., en.example.com for the English version of the website). Why are language-specific websites excepted from this advice? Why are subdomains preferable for language-specific websites? Google's advice says subdirectories are fine for language-specific websites, and GSC allows geographic settings at the subdirectory level (which may or may not even be needed, since language-specific sites may not be geographic-specific), so I'm unsure why Moz would suggest using subdirectories in this case.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdamThompson0 -
Subdomain vs Subdirectory - does the content make a difference?
So I've read through all of the answers that suggest using a subdirectory is the best way to approach this -  you rank more quickly and have all of your content on one site.  BUT what if you're looking to move into a totally new market that your current site/content isn't in any way relevant to? Some examples are Supermarkets such as Tesco (who seem to use a mix of methods) http://www.tesco.com/groceries/, http://www.clothingattesco.com/, http://www.tesco.com/bank/ which links out from their main site to http://www.tescobank.com/ etc and Sainsburys http://www.sainsburys.co.uk/ who use subdomains - here they have their grocery offering, their bank offering, clothes, phones etc split into subdomains. If you have a product that is totally new to your Brand and different from all the products on your current site, does this change the answer to subdirectory vs subdomain? Would be great to hear your expert opinions on this. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | giffgaff2 -
International Subdomain Headache
My client set up a separate domain for their international clients, then set up separate subdomains for each country where they're active (so, for example, the original site is xx.com and the global is xxworldwide.com, with subdomains like mx.xxxworldwide.com). They auto-translated a large amount of content and put the translations on those international sites. Â The idea was to draw in native speakers. Now, I don't think this is a great practice, obviously, and I'm worried that it could hurt their original site (the xxx.com in the example above). Â My concern is that Google will see through the translated text, since it was handled with Google Translate, and penalize both sites. Â I don't think the canonical tag applies here, since Google recommends a no-follow for autotranslated text, but I've also never dealt with this type of situation before. Anyways, if you made it through all of that, congratulations. Â My question is whether xxx.com is getting any negative effects other than a potential loss of link juice -- and whether there's any legitimate way to present auto-translated text with a few minor changes without incurring a penalty.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ask44435230 -
Subdomains and Forwarding Domains
Will someone who has experience chime in on these two issues below: Do sub-domain links which link back to the main site count as a new link from a new site; or would they be considered more of an internal link? Basically, would a sub-domain link to the main site be like a link from a unique website, or treated like any other internal link on the main site? I am speaking in terms of link juice. Should we 301 sub-domains to the main site internally? Thank you, we really appreciate any input you have!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DJ1230 -
[Need advice!] A particular question about a subdomain to subfolder switch
Hello Moz Community! I really was hoping to get your help on a issue that is bothering me for a while now. I know there is a lot of about this topic but I couldn’t find a good answer for my particular question. We are running several web applications that are similar but are also different from each other. Right now, each one has its own subdomain (which was mainly due to technical reasons). Like this: webapp1.rootdomain.com, webapp2.rootdomain.com etc. Our root domain currently points with 301 to webapp1.rootdomain.com. Now, we are thinking about making two changes: changing to a subfolder level like this: rootdomain.com/webapp1 , rootdomain.com/webapp2 etc. Changing our rootdomain to a landing page (lisitng all the apps) and take out the 301 to webapp1 We want to do these changes mainly for SEO reasons. I know that the advantages are not so clear between subdomain/subfolder but we think it could be the right way to go to push the root domain and profit more from juice passing to the different apps. The problem is that we had a bad experience when we first switched from our first wep app (rootdomain.com) to an subdomain (webapp1.rootdomain.com) to set them equal with the other apps. Our traffic dropped a lot and it took us 6 weeks to get back on the same level as before. Maybe it was the 301 not passing all juice or maybe it was the switch to the subdomain. We are not sure. So, I guess my question is do you think it is the right thing to do for web apps to go with subfolders to pass more juice from root to subfolders? Will it bring again huge drops in traffic once we make that change? Is it worth taking that risk or initial drop because it will pay off in the future? Thanks a lot in advance! Your answers would help me a lot.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ummaterial0 -
Disavowin a sitewide link that has Thousands of subdomains. What do we tell Google?
Hello, I have a hosting company that partnered up with a blogger template developer that allowed users to download blog templates and have my footer links placed sitewide on their website. Â Sitewides i know are frowned upon and that's why i went through the rigorous Link Audit months ago and emailed every webmaster who made "WEBSITENAME.Blogspot.com" 3 times each to remove the links. I'm at a point where i have 1000 sub users left that use the domain name of "blogspot.com". Â I used to have 3,000! Question: When i disavow these links in Webmaster tools for Google and Bing, should i upload all 1000 subdomains of "blogspot.com" individually and show Google proof that i emailed all of them individually, or is it wise to just include just 1 domain name (www.blogspot.com) so Google sees just ONE big mistake instead of 1000. This has been on my mind for a year now and I'm open to hearing your intelligent responses.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shawn1240 -
Subdomains for US Regions
The company I work for is expanding their business to new territories. I've got a lot of stabilization to do in the region/state where we're one of the most well known companies of our kind. Currently, we have 3 distinct product lines which are currently distinguished by 3 separate URLS. This is affecting the user flow of our site, so we'd like to clean it up before launching our products into the various regions. The business has decided to grow into 5 new states (one state consisting of one county only) — none of which will feature all 3 products. Our homebase state is the only one that will have all 3 products this year. My initial thought was to use subdomains to separate out the regions, that way we could use a canonical tag to stabilize the root domain (which would feature home state content, and support content for all regions), and remove us from potential duplicate content penalization. Our product content will be nearly identical across the regions for the first year. I second guessed myself by thinking that it was perhaps better to use a "[product].root/region" URL instead. And I'm currently stuck by wondering if it was not better to build out subdomains for products and regions...using one modifier or the other as a funnel/branding page into the other. For instance, user lands on "region.root.com" and sees exactly what products we offer in that region. Basically, a tailored landing page. Meanwhile the bulk of the product content would actually live under "product.root.com/region/page". My head is spinning. And while searching for similar questions I also bumped into reference of another tag meant to be used in some similar cases to mine. I feel like there's a lot of risks involved in this subdomain strategy, but I also can't help but see the benefits in the user flow.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | taylor.craig0 -
Subdomain or directory path?
Hi Mozzers, Client: Important carpet cleaner player in the carpet cleaning industry Main Goal: Creating good content to Get more organic traffic to our main site Structure of the extra content: It will act like a blog but will be differentiated from the regular site by not selling anything but just creating good content. The look and design will be different from the client's site. SEO Question: Which option is more beneficial, creating a subdomain or adding a regular page within the website following a directory path URL? If possible, please state what are the advantages and disadvantages of these 2 options in terms of SEO. Thank you and have a great weekend everyone,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0