Sub domain or separate domain?
-
Hi Mozzers,
I'm redesigning a property database, and wondered whether it would be better to put this on a sub domain of my site or to set up a completely separate domain?
Back story: My core website is about lifestyle, holidays and property in France. It's very popular, and benefits massively from long tail search. It's a fairly strong, recognisable brand, so I assume any association the database has with the site would greatly benefit it... Maybe.
My current property database on the other hand is very poor in terms of SEO/visibility, etc, so we're having the whole thing redesigned from scratch.
For the database, is it better to set up a subdomain of my strong branded site, or set up a completely new domain targeting keywords in the URL?
Cheers!
Matt
-
Hi,
We have two sites mysite.com and aa.mysite.com. We want to track these sites separately. We created two different properties with IDs UA-XXX-1 for main domain UA-XXX-2 for subdomain.
gaq code for main domain is as following,
gaq code for subdomain is as following,
It works well for subdomain. But we want to see traffic from subdomain to main domain as referral.
What is wrong with the gaq code of main domain?
Do i need to change code or is it enough to inactivate subdomain tracking option in profile settings of main domain?Thanks in advance,
-
Thanks for the comprehensive response Harald! The blog was especially helpful.
I don't think I'm any closer to making a decision (because I don't think it will make much difference whichever way I go!) but the blog certainly helps.
Thanks again.
Matt
-
Hi Matt, First of all I want you to take a look at the below where I am describing the pros & cons of the sub domain & separate domain;
1. Subdomain
-
Maybe technically easier for some setups
-
Has some of the benefits of subfolder in inheriting parent domain authority and separate domain in providing backlinks to main site, but…
-
Needs to establish its own reputation through backlinks from other sites so…
-
Will not rank as highly or as quickly as a subfolder
2. Separate domain
-
Helps you control and generate external backlinks for which you control the anchor text, i.e. editorial links within blog copy back to category and product pages
-
Can create a more differentiated brand identity which can be seen as independent from the main site so generates more engagement with it’s audience potentially
-
Can target a different country, i.e. I have seen UK companies launching a US hosted blog
-
You may not rank competitively at all for weeks or months depending on the quality of the content you create. This may be hard to sell to your colleagues investing in it – it’s an act of faith…
-
Will require a long-term commitment to content creation and backlink development
So, to summarize If you create exceptional content which creates a lot of backlinks then separate domain can be valuable in providing links back to the main site from a separate authority site you control.
For more details please refer to this link:
Understanding root domains-Sub domians
I hope that you will found the solution.
-
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
-
Do more links from sub-domains to domain (website) hurt rankings?
Hi all, If there are multiple sub-domains like abc.website.com, 123.website.com, etc...and if the top pages of website are linked from multiple sub-domains via top menu or footer links; will this hurts? Will too much interlinking of few top pages of a website from it's sub-domains dilute link juice? How many links ideally we can add to website from a sub-domain? Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Shutting down m. domain
hi, we are planning to shutdown the m.xyz.com domain and currently www.xyz.com domain made as responsive design, earlier, we used to redirect all the moble devices to m.xyz.com domain and in m.xyz.com all pages are canonical and pointing to www.xyz.com Few mistakes we have done during the launch of m.xyz.com (almost all 2 years back)
Web Design | | Rahim119
lot of pages created as there was no tag add canonical, and there are some pages where canonical was not added and sometimes it will show in the destop results as well what steps we need do for shutting down m. domain.. pls suggest in mobile webmaster as well0 -
Creating Multiple Sub-Directories in Wordpress
Hi fellow Mozzers, I'm currently in the process of planning/building a website for e-commerce and have stumbled on a bit of a hurdle with sub-directories. I want to use a piece of software called SellerDeck to generate my e-commerce store and also my homepage (index.html). This element of the build is fine as the e-commerce store will sit in a sub-directory of .co.uk/store/. What I'm struggling with is the rest of the site architecture. I want to use Wordpress to manage content for the rest of the site. I want to have sub-directories .co.uk/help/ and .co.uk/blog/, all managed from one Wordpress installation. Is this possible? If not, does having two separate installations of Wordpress create any speed issues? Additional question for bonus points from me; lets say I wanted to do away with sub-directories for the /help/ and /blog/ elements (but keep the /store/), could I have a Wordpress installation that doesn't generate a homepage (index.php) so I can utilise the e-commerce software version instead. Essentially I'd be installing Wordpress at the root folder, but wouldn't have an index.php made by Wordpress. Many thanks in advance
Web Design | | BlueTree_Sean0 -
How to redirect special pages to new domain?
Hello. I have 2 websites in diffrent category and i want to move some of my visitor that arrived in specific page of doamin1 (url like this: http://example.com/pages/.........)to root of domain 2.
Web Design | | vahidafshari450 -
B2C directory website adding B2B ecommerce sub-domain
Hey fellow Mozzers, Just got back from Mozcon and enjoyed getting to know a handful of you. I do in house SEO for a B2B wholesaler. We have a B2C website directory for homeowners to locate contractors to work on their home. On the site we have a products section which includes tech specs but not pricing. Our contractors have been asking us to add the ability to purchase their items online, so we are wanting to add a B2B sub-domain (store.domain.com) to our website for the contractors to purchase products online. We do not want consumers to be able to purchase the items and will have pricing behind a log in. I have a few questions that I'm hoping you might be able to answer: 1. What would be the best practice to not have duplicate content errors with products that are listed on both sites? Should we rel-canonical items shown on both domains or do something else?
Web Design | | AC_Pro
2. We are not against having the new site be crawled, but will Google be upset/ding rankings because pricing is behind a log-in? Are there certain best-practices for B2B ecommerce sites?
3. Do you know of any other sites that have done this/do you have any recommendations on how to best implement this?0 -
Is it possible to redirect the main www. domain - but keep a subdomain active?
Hi Mozzers, Quick question, which I hope one of you can answer... Let's say I have a website (i) www.example.com and on that a subdomain exists, (ii) subdomain.example.com. Let's say I want to change my main domain from www.example.com to www.newwebsite.com. I'd 301 all content, use GWT to notify Google of a change of address etc etc. Having done that, is it still possible to keep the original subdomain active? So, even though www.example.com has been redirected / transferred to www.newwebsite.com, subdomain.example.com would still exist. If that is possible, what is the implication for Domain Authority? On the one hand, I have transferred the main site (so DA from that will transfer to the new site); but part of that root domain is still active. Make sense? Any answers? Thanks everyone...
Web Design | | edlondon0 -
What seo benefit does setting up a photo gallery where each photo is a separate web page?
what seo benefit does setting up a photo gallery where each photo is a separate web page? My old SEO guy set up my photo gallery like that claiming that because each photo was a separate page, it added a big seo benefit and i never understood what he was talking about. Maybe alt text on the photo with key phrases in it pointing to my other pages to give my site a theme for google? I'm not really sure. He has since moved away and i am considering redoing the photo gallery to multiple images on one page to be more user friendly to my users. This photo gallery is 3 years old and the photos might have some page rank to them helping my site so i don't want to remove this gallery if there really is a benefit to it and it will hurt my site. I once removed four static page rank 3 pages from my site that weren't used for my site anymore and my rankings dropped 5 positions. Thoughts anyone? Thanks! Ron
Web Design | | Ron100 -
Can "poor" subdomains drop PR of the root domain?
The page rank of my company's website has dropped from a 6 to a 4 over the past year or so. In that time, we implemented subdomains for development sites to show clients progress on their websites. I noticed that our "dev" sites are being indexed while in development and my question is, will Google drop pagerank of our root domain purely off of these "dev" subdomains? Example - our site is www.oursite.com Dev site - development1.oursite.com I just began investigating the drop and this came to my mind yesterday but am not too sure what type of impact these non-credible subdomains will have on our root domain. Any thoughts?
Web Design | | ckilgore0