Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Blogs are best when hosted on domain, subdomain, or...?
-
I’ve heard the it is a best practice to host your blog within your site. I’ve also heard it’s best to put it on a subdomain. What do you believe is the best home for your blog and why?
-
Andrew while I agree with what you say, is there not a greater risk if your blog is hacked and then a hacker may gain access to the server where as on a sub-domain the blog can be on a different server?
-
Just because you have WordPress running your blog, doesn't mean WordPress has access to edit the files of the main eCommerce site. You can install a standalone WordPress blog in examples.com/blog and have regular HTML files serving example.com
You can also takes steps to secure your WordPress installation on top of this.
-
Agree that blogs are best in a sub folder BUT if you have an ecommerce site it is best practice to have your blog on a subdomain
This is purely for security reasons, if your wordpress blog gets hacked, the hackers will not gain access to your eCommerce site as it is on a different server
-
Rand agrees with this approach too - just check out http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites/
"Starting a blog? I almost always recommend yoursite.com/blog over blog.yoursite.com. Want to launch a new section of content? Use yoursite.com/newstuff rather than newstuff.yoursite.com."
There's also this: http://www.hyperarts.com/blog/blog-hosting-external-subdomain-subdirectory-best-seo/ which may help as well.
-
Thanks for the expanded explanation! Onward and upward then...
-
Subdomains are a dangerous choice unless you know exactly how to deal with them from a high level SEO perspective because it's too easy to miss all sorts of issues.
Just one example (and it goes way beyond "losing a very very small amount of link juice):
Even though you get the SEO value at the root domain level even in a subdomain scenario, since you use www for the main site, that itself is considered a subdomain. So the main site (the www subdomain) still doesn't get all the strength value from new content, inbound links, and social mentions for the blog subdomain.
Even then, if you were to switch to domain.com (and redirect all www.domain.com to that), the most value/strength/trust signal value comes from self-contained.
There ARE exceptions to this under very specific and narrow circumstances. For example, if you have an eCommerce site, and your blog is not focused on your products, but instead, is more informational in nature revolving around other topics (such as the manufacturing process in your industry, or how consumers use products (not just yours), etc.), having the blog on the main domain tree could potentially dilute the ecommerce value of the main site.
Again though, the need to get it "right" is just not worth the effort of splitting them out in most situations.
<colgroup><col width="605"></colgroup>
| http://uhealthsystem.com/doctors | -
Thanks for the quick reply...I have the book - and it certainly is meaty
!I have been going about the way you describe (www.domain.com/blog) just wanted to get some re-affirmation after hearing from (what I think) is a reputable source that subdomain is better.
Everyone on board with this approach or does anyone have a strong argument against?
-
Technically, you're loosing a very very small amount of link juice by hosting it on a subdomain. The optimal configuration is www.domain.com/blog.
Source - SEO Secrets (great book by the way)
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
-
Redirect multiple domains to 1 domain or not?
Hi there, I have client who has multiple domains that already have some PA and DA. Problem is that most websites have the same content and rank better on different keywords.
Technical SEO | | Leaf-a-mark
I want to redirect all the websites to 1 domain because it’s easier to manage and it removes any duplicate content. Question is if I redirect domain x to domain y do the rankings of domain x increase on domain y? Or is it better to keep domain x separately to generate more referral traffic to domain y? Thanks in advance! Cheers0 -
URL Structure On Site - Currently it's domain/product-name NOT domain/category/product name is this bad?
I have a eCommerce site and the site structure is domain/product-name rather than domain/product-category/product-name Do you think this will have a negative impact SEO Wise? I have seen that some of my individual product pages do get better rankings than my categories.
Technical SEO | | the-gate-films0 -
Correct linking to the /index of a site and subfolders: what's the best practice? link to: domain.com/ or domain.com/index.html ?
Dear all, starting with my .htaccess file: RewriteEngine On
Technical SEO | | inlinear
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.inlinear.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://inlinear.com/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.html
RewriteRule ^(.)index.html$ http://inlinear.com/ [R=301,L] 1. I redirect all URL-requests with www. to the non www-version...
2. all requests with "index.html" will be redirected to "domain.com/" My questions are: A) When linking from a page to my frontpage (home) the best practice is?: "http://domain.com/" the best and NOT: "http://domain.com/index.php" B) When linking to the index of a subfolder "http://domain.com/products/index.php" I should link also to: "http://domain.com/products/" and not put also the index.php..., right? C) When I define the canonical ULR, should I also define it just: "http://domain.com/products/" or in this case I should link to the definite file: "http://domain.com/products**/index.php**" Is A) B) the best practice? and C) ? Thanks for all replies! 🙂
Holger0 -
Should we move our documentation off subdomain?
Background: We have a popular open source e-commerce platform at http://spreecommerce.com. Right now the documentation is on http://guides.spreecommerce.com. We have "edge" documentation (for stuff that's not yet released) on http://edgeguides.spreecommerce.com but since it's largely duplicative we've told google not to index any of the edge stuff (via robots.txt). Question: Should we consider moving the guides under the main website under /docs or something like this? There's a ton of great content that people often read to learn more about the platform. Seems like we might be diluting our juice a bit to have it on a separate domain. WDYT?
Technical SEO | | schof0 -
Subdomain vs Main Domain Penalties
We have a client who's main root.com domain is currently penalized by Google, but the subdomain.root.com is appearing very well. We're stumped - any ideas why?
Technical SEO | | Prospector-Plastics0 -
Best Way To Clean Up Unruly SubDomain?
Hi, I have several subdomains that present no real SEO value, but are being indexed. They don't earn any backlinks either. What's the best way of cleaning them up? I was thinking the following: 1. Verify them all in Webmaster Tools. 2. Remove all URLs from the index via the Removal Tool in WMT 3. Add site-wide no-index, follow directive. Also, to remove the URLs in WMT, you usually have to block the URLs via /robots.txt. If I'd like to keep Google crawling through the subdomains and remove their URLs, is there a way to do so?
Technical SEO | | RocketZando0 -
Any way around buying hosting for an old domain to 301 redirect to a new domain?
Howdy. I have just read this QA thread, so I think I have my answer. But I'm going to ask anyway! Basically DomainA.com is being retired, and DomainB.com is going to be launched. We're going to have to redirect numerous URLs from DomainA.com to DomainB.com. I think the way to go about this is to continue paying for hosting for DomainA.com, serving a .htaccess from that hosting account, and then hosting DomainB.com separately. Anybody know of a way to avoid paying for hosting a .htaccess file on DomainA.com? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | SamTurri0 -
What is best practice for redirecting "secondary" domain names?
For sites with multiple top-level domains that have been secured for a business or organization, I'm curious as to what is considered best practice for setting up 301 redirects for secondary domains. Is it best to do the 301 redirects at the registrar level, or the hosting level? So that .net, .biz, or other secondary domains funnel visitors to the correct primary/main domain name. I'm looking for the "best practice" answer and want to avoid duplicate content problems, or penalties from the search engines. I'm not trying to game the system with dozens of domain names, simply the handful of domains that are important to the client. I've seen some registrars recommend hosting secondary domains, and doing redirects from the hosting level (and they use meta refresh for "domain forwarding," which I want to avoid). It seems rather wasteful to set up hosting for a secondary domain and then 301 each URL.
Technical SEO | | Scott-Thomas0