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?
-
-
using subdomains for locations is a technique that spammers took advantage of and as a result is no longer recommended. Use directories/folders or simply targeted landing pages in the same folder.
a) You can code it so that you don't show a global phone number in the header
b) it's your site, you don't have to create links that take the user to deeper location pages if you don't want to
c) Regardless you need to create unique content anyway, if it's on a subdomain or directory it's still using the same template and you need totally unique content for each page, don't just swap out location names.
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
-
Hubspot (Primary CMS) and WordPress Blog on Subfolder?
We are thinking about transitioning a WordPress blog from a subdomain to subfolder on our main root domain that is run on Hubspot. Is there anything that we need to be aware of? In my mind, it should be a simply as creating the WordPress instance on a subfolder and then importing everything in and then setting up 301 redirects. Has anyone done this before? I ask because our product managers would like to continue to update their blogs within the WordPress environment rather than transition over to Hubspot. Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | s1jkirkpatrick0 -
Google Adding Wrong Location to Title Tag on Multi-Branch Business Homepage
We're a business with 5 separate locations across 5 cities in Upstate NY. While doing some visual ad previews in the adwords interface I noticed that Google is altering my title tag and adding the word "Rochester" to the end of it, cutting short my designated title tag. Rochester is the location of our headquarters so not a big deal for 1/5th of our customers. But to my dismay, the same thing is happening when searching from the geo locations of my other branches. So when searching for my business in Buffalo (we have a physical address in Buffalo), the title tag in the results still says our company name and "Rochester". This of course is likely leading to confusion and actively harming our organic CTR in our branch locations. This is happening in all of the remaining 4 branch locations. I'm at a loss, I tried lengthening the title tag but it still gets cut off. The term Rochester appears (as do the other branch locations) in my meta description for the homepage as well as in the text of the page itself. I haven't gone so far as to remove that yet and hopefully don't have to. Does anyone have any ideas? Thank you in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Doylejg30 -
How much SEO damage would it do having a subdomain site rather directory site?
Hi all! With a coleague we were arguing about what is better: Having a subdomain or a directory.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gaston Riera
Let me explain some more, this is about the cases: Having a multi-language site: Where en.domain.com or es.domain.com rather than domain.com/en/ or domain.com/es/ Having a Mobile and desktop version: m.domain.com or domain.com rather than domain.com/m or just domain.com. Having multiple location websites, you might figure. The dicussion started with me saying: Its better to have a directory site.
And my coleague said: Its better to have a subdomain site. Some of the reasons that he said is that big companies (such as wordpress) are doing that. And that's better for the business.
My reasons are fully based on this post from Rand Fishkin: Subdomains vs. Subfolders, Rel Canonical vs. 301, and How to Structure Links for SEO - Whiteboard Friday So, what does the community have to say about this?
Who should win this argue? GR.0 -
How can I get Bing to index my subdomain correctly?
Hi guys, My website exists on a subdomain (i.e. https://website.subdomain.com) and is being indexed correctly on all search engines except Bing and Duck Duck Go, which list 'https://www.website.subdomain.com'. Unfortunately my subdomain isn't configured for www (the domain is out of my control), so searchers are seeing a server error when clicking on my homepage in the SERPs. I have verified the site successfully in Bing Webmaster Tools, but it still shows up incorrectly. Does anyone have any advice on how I could fix this issue? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cos20300 -
Microsite Subfolder URL vs Redirected TLD for best SEO
We have a healthcare microsite that is in a subfolder off a hospital site.They wanted to keep their TLD and redirect from the subfolder URL. Even with good on-page SEO, link building, etc., they're not organically ranking as well as we think they should be. ie. They have http://our-business-name.com vs. http://hospital.org/our-business-name/ For best SEO value, are they better off having only their homepage as TLD and not redirect any interior pages but display as subfolder URL? ie. Keep homepage as http://our-business-name.com but use hospital urls for interior pages http://hospital.org/our-business-name/about/ Or is there some better way to handle this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IT-dmd0 -
Subdomain and root domain
Hey Everyone, our page has multiple domains and I'm wondering how it affects search rankings today. I saw some stuff from almost a year ago, but I'm not sure if something has changed. We currently have our root domain "www.xyz.com" and started moving some pages over to a different sub-domain "web.xyz.com" because of usability and ease of adjusting content. How much will this affect our seo? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | josh1230 -
Better SEO Option, 1 Site 3 Subdomains or 4 Separate Sites?
Hey Mozzers, I'm working with a client who wants to redo their web presence. They have a a main website for the umbrella and then 3 divisions which have their own website as well. My question is: Is it better to have the main site on the main domain and then have the 3 separate sites be subdomains? Or 4 different domains with a linking structure to tie them all together? To my understanding option 1 would include high traffic for 1 domain and option 2 would be building Page Authority by having 4 different sites linking to each other? My guess would be option 2, only if all 4 sites start getting relevant authority to make the links of value. But right out of the gates option 1 might be more beneficial. A little advice/clarification would be great!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MonsterWeb280 -
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
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CecilyP0