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,
-
Thank you Joseph
-
Search engines generally treat subdomains more like a separate site then if it was in a subfolder. The downside to the subdomain is that your link juice from the main domain may not transfer to the subdomain and vice-versa. Here's a good article from Rand, a little old but still a lot of info.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites
-
Thanks for that but why is number one the best SEO practice?
-
Hi there,
Your best bet is to set the URL structure like this www.site.com/page-name rather than pagename.site.com. The first method is SEO best practice, the second way makes it seem like each subdomain is its own site.
Good luck.
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
-
Subdomain vs Subdirectory - Specific Case: A big blog in a subdomain
Hi. First of all, I love MOZ and learned a lot about SEO by reading articles here. Thanks for all the knowledge that i received here. I read all the articles about "Subdomain vs Subdirectory" in the MOZ community and I have no doubt that subdirectories are the best option for a blog. But, the company that I work now has a blog with more than 17.000 articles, 1.000 categories and tags, hosted on a subdomain structure. The website has a Domain Authority of 78 (I am working to improve these numbers) and the blog subdomain has the same (78). We had 2.7 million hits per month in the blog and 4.5 million hits per month in the site. I am advising the company to change the blog structure to subfolders inside the domain, but I'm finding resistance to the idea, because the amount of work involved in this change is enormous and there is still the fear of losing traffic. My questions are: Is there any risk of losing traffic with the amount of articles we have? What do we probably get if we change the blog structure to subfolders? Could we have increased authority for the domain? More Traffic? How can I explain to my superiors that we would probably have increase traffic for our keywords? Is there any way to prove or test the gains from this change before we run it? Thanks in Advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Marcus.Coelho0 -
Subdomain cannibalization
Hi, I am doing the SEO for a webshop, which has a lot of linking and related websites on the same root domain. So the structure is for example: Root domain: example.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mat_C
Shop: shop.example.com
Linking websites to shop: courses.example.com, software.example.com,... Do I have to check which keywords these linking websites are already ranking for and choose other keywords for my category and product pages on the webshop? The problem with this could be that the main keywords for the category pages on the webshop are mainly the same as for the other subdomains. The intention is that some people immediately come to the webshop instead of going first to the linking websites and then to the webshop. Thanks.0 -
No designated 404 page, but any made-up URL path displays homepage Good / Bad?
I have a custom website where if you type in companyxyz.com/_any-made-up-url _it displays the homepage. So then you will see the homepage and in the URL bar the made up URL path remains visible "companyxyz.com/any-made-up-url" Is this good or bad or not an issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rich_Coffman0 -
Do low quality subdomains affect the ranking performance/quality of a root domain?
Hi, Late last year the company I work for launched two new websites that, at the time, we believed were completely separate from our main website. The two new websites were set up externally and were not well-planned from an SEO perspective (LOTS of duplicate content) - hence, they have struggled to rank on Google. Since the launch of the new websites we have also noticed that our main website (that previously ranked very well) has suffered a decline in visitation and search engine rank. We initially attributed this to a number of factors, including the state of the market, and ramped up our SEO efforts (seeing minor improvement). We have since realised that these two new websites have been set up as subdomains of our main website, with MOZ displaying the same domain authority and root domain backlink profile. My question is, do poor quality subdomains affect the ranking performance of a root domain? I have not yet managed to find a definitive answer. Please let me know if more information is required - I am quite new to the whole SEO concept. Thanks! Amy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | paulissai0 -
Subdomain, subfolder or separate domains?
Hi Mozzers, We're in the process of re-developing and redesigning several of our websites, and moving them all onto the same content management system. At the moment, although the websites are all under the same brand and roughly the same designs, because of various reasons they all either live on a separate domain to the main website, or are on a subdomain. Here's a list of what we have (and what we're consolidating): Main site - http://www.frenchentree.com/ Property database - http://france-property.frenchentree.com/ (subdomain) Forum - http://www.france-forum-frenchentree.com/ (separate domain) Classified ads - http://www.france-classified-ads-frenchentree.com/ (separate domain) My question to you lovely people is: should we take this opportunity through the redevelopment of the CMS to put everything into subfolders of the main domain? Keep things as they are? Put each section onto a subdomain? What's best from an SEO perspective? For information - the property database was put onto a subdomain as this is what we were advised to do by the developers of the system. We're starting to question this decision though, as we very rarely see subdomains appear in SERPs for any remotely competitive search terms. Our SEO for the property database is fairly non-existent, and only ever really appears in SERPs for brand related keywords. For further info - the forum and classifieds were under a separate brand name previously, so keeping them on separate domains felt correct at that time. However, with the redevelopment of our sites, it seems to make more sense to either put them on subdomains or subfolders of the main site. Our SEO for the forum is pretty strong, though has dwindled in the last year or so. Any help/advice would be very much appreciated. Thanks Matt
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Horizon0 -
How to Hide Directories in Search?
I noticed bad 404 error links in Google Webmaster Tools and they were pointing to directories that do not have an actual page, but hold information. Ex: there are links pointing to our PDF folder which holds all of our pdf documents. If i type in , example.com/pdf/ it brings up a unformated webpage that displays all of our PDF links. How do I prevent this from happening. Right now I am blocking these in my robots.txt file, but if i type them in, they still appear. Or should I not worry about this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hfranz0 -
Redirecting www.example.com to www.example.com/directory/
Hi All, There's been some internal debate going back and forth about redirecting the homepage of a site to a directory. There are a few different POVs circulating, one of which is that it's no different than redirecting to a /index page. Basically, the homepage is ranking for the keyword that we want the directory to rank for but I can't seem to justify placing this type of redirect. The content on both pages is different, but for the term both the homepage and the directory make sense to rank. Has anyone ever done anything like this before? Can anyone see any reason to do something like this? I believe this move would dilute the link value we currently have going to the homepage and potentially cause us to lose our #2 slot with the homepage in favor of a lower spot with the directory. I'd love to hear any thoughts on this/learn if anyone has experimented with this tactic. Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JamieCottle280 -
Entering into a new website franchise model, currently subdomains, client wants scalability. Best approach?
This is my first experience with a franchise model business. It is less than 1 year old and on page SEO is in pitiful shape with hundreds of subdomains already for specific locations. What is the best approach to take here? I've seen a lot of debate regarding subdomains and folders and it seems the folder structure may be the best long term course of action but I'm still a bit unclear on this. What is the best approach to ensure that all SEO addressed on the site has the most impact and moving forward, what is the best method to scaling the SEO for franchisee owners. What is the best practice to help each location be best positioned in search in the future, how much should the corporate franchise site typically provide in terms of SEO services to franchisees, and how does the lead SEO consultant scale those services to franchisees?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | methods0