Subdomain or subdirectory
-
We're a big social networking site with over 1 million indexed pages and over 4 million visits a month. Our PR is 7.
We're about to acquire and rebrand the content of a large reviews website, current PR 3. The new content will be treated as a 'site within a site' with different navigation and interface.
With these factors in mind I think we need to create a new subdomain for the reviews site but I need to factor in the SEO implications, bearing in mind that new advertisers are going to be looking closely at our stats.
Migrating the content to a new subdomain I understand will be easier than siting it in a new folder.
Any advice appreciated
-
So despite the different look and navigation you recommend migrating the whole site to a subfolder on our subdomain?
If you own this site now I would suggest you take some time to investigate branding. A standard look and navigation is desired. On the other hand, you need to be careful making changes to successful platforms.
Based on what you have shared, the likely recommendation would be to use a subfolder, but a proper recommendation on such an important topic cannot be offered in a Q&A. A SEO would need to learn about your company, your business, your niche, the site you are absorbing, etc. prior to making a decision.
-
It's an existing reviews website with pretty good quality content -- and a good fit for our demographic.
We will re-brand the content and our users will add their own reviews.
So despite the different look and navigation you recommend migrating the whole site to a subfolder on our subdomain?
-
My main concern is the size of the new site and limits on the number of pages Google will crawl.
That should not be a concern. Google has the ability to crawl sites regardless of size. There are sites with millions of web pages. The largest forum site, http://www.gaiaonline.com/forum/index.php, has over 2 billion posts. I am not sure on the page count, but it's a lot.
Google will make whatever adjustments necessary to crawl quality content. The question is...do all of the pages on your site represent quality content? If your pages offer quality content, earn links, get tweeted / liked / +1'd, then Google will crawl them.
-
Thanks Ryan, really helpful and I'm starting to realise there are no definitive answers.
My main concern is the size of the new site and limits on the number of pages Google will crawl. This is not the only site within a site we're looking at.
-
It really depends on how closely you wish to integrate the reviews compared to your core social networking function. There are pros and cons to each approach. A great article on this topic:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites
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
-
Ecommerce store on subdomain - danger of keyword cannibalization?
Hi all, Scenario: Ecommerce website selling a food product has their store on a subdomain (store.website.com). A GOOD chunk of the URLs - primarily parameters - are blocked in Robots.txt. When I search for the products, the main domain ranks almost exclusively, while the store only ranks on deeper SERPs (several pages deep). In the end, only one variation of the product is listed on the main domain (ex: Original Flavor 1oz 24 count), while the store itself obviously has all of them (most of which are blocked by Robots.txt). Can anyone shed a little bit of insight into best practices here? The platform for the store is Shopify if that helps. My suggestion at this point is to recommend they all crawling in the subdomain Robots.txt and canonicalize the parameter pages. As for keywords, my main concern is cannibalization, or rather forcing visitors to take extra steps to get to the store on the subdomain because hardly any of the subdomain pages rank. In a perfect world, they'd have everything on their main domain and no silly subdomain. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alces0 -
Is Building a Local Directory of Businesses on a Subdomain Good SEO?
Hello Fellow Moz'ers: I own a small digital shop in a major US city. We had a marketing idea which I'd like some input on the soundness of. We are creating a professional services directory of 'digital professional services providers' in our hometown. The directory's membership will only be open to firms located within our city limits. The directory will be curated and maintained, ongoing, by us. Our motivation is 75% selfish and 25% benevolent. The idea is that, by building the directory on our subdomain, we hopefully will collect links, which ultimately will enhance search visibility. But I'm concerned about the devaluation directories have incurred in recent years and I've even seen advice given to the effect that listings in some directories might be harmful to a site's link profile. It is not our intention to harm those who might list in our directory. Any thoughts on this matter would be greatly appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Daaveey0 -
Changing a subdomain to a full domain to rank for a keyword
We have been attempting to get our blogsite to rank for our business name(Instabill). We are now considering changing the url from blog.instabill.com to something like instabillblog.com. I have following concerns about the change; Will changing the domain really be that helpful (i.e. will the change get our blog on page one for the term instabill) We have over 350 pages of content on our blog. Will changing the domain have possible negative effects ( I was thinking of using url updater in webmaster tools and creating a permanent 301 redirect from the older url to the new) Having never changed a url for a site with this much content and seo value for my company I would like to know the following from someone who has made mistakes here before; what not to do what steps you would take to make the transition easier Any help here will be greatly appreciated. cheers, Instabill
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Instabill0 -
Moving Part of a Website to a Subdomain to Remove Panda Penalty?
I have lots of news on my website and unlike other types of content, news posts quickly become obsolete and get a high bounce rate. I have reasons to think that the news on my website might be partly responsible for a Panda penalty so I'm not sure. There are over 400 news posts on the blog from the last 4 years so that's still a lot of content. I was thinking of isolating the news articles on a subdomain (news.mywebsite.com) If the news play a part in the Panda penalty, would that remove it from the main domain?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sbrault740 -
Duplicate content on subdomains.
Hi Mozer's, I have a site www.xyz.com and also geo targeted sub domains www.uk.xyz.com, www.india.xyz.com and so on. All the sub domains have the content which is same as the content on the main domain that is www.xyz.com. So, I want to know how can i avoid content duplication. Many Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HiteshBharucha0 -
Subdomain or Subfolder for Locations?
I have a client who is ranking #1 for every term related to "bathroom renovations (main city)". They have now started to take on dealers/franchisees in neighbouring cities, and each location would now like to be ranking for THEIR cities. Is it better to use bathcompany.com/location or location.bathcompany.com? Considerations: The site has the address and phone number of the main location listed in the header, so if we do /location you will still see the main NAP. Using /location, If someone browses beyond the location landing page, they will venture into pages that target the main city (ex. "Bath Remodelling (Main City)") Using a subdomain will mean that we will need to duplicate content such as their image gallery, and we will have to create new content for their service pages or risk duplicate content. (ex. "shower remodelling (city)") Questions By using /location they will benefit from the strength of the subdomain, while using a new location-based subdomain will this mean we will have to start from scratch in terms of domain authority / link-juice? Will the NAP in the header affect the ranking of these location pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ATMOSMarketing560 -
Is it bad to host an XML sitemap in a different subdomain?
Example: sitemap.example.com/sitemap.xml for pages on www.example.com.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOTGT0 -
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?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOPA0