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.
Do knowledge base plugins on a subdomain have seo benefit?
-
Hi SEO Moz,
We want to use a knowledge base plugin (cheaper & faster than building it ourselves) where we can have Q&As for our website. We want this to help with our SEO by adding in our keyterms that we want to rank for.
We've looked into TenderApp & Get Satisfaction which look like good solutions - however, as they're both on a sub-domain do we get any seo benefit from this? When people link to our knowledge base, will this help our website at all - or is the benefit going to go to TenderApp/Get Satisfaction?
For instance -
Our website URL is http://widget.products.com
The KB URL is http://widgetsupport.products.com
If the above plugin is not a good solution, is there anything else that is better?
Any help will be greatly appreciated!!
Thanks.
-
Thanks Marcus - really great advice!
We checked out SupportPress on WooThemes and really liked it! Plus you are right as to how we can run it on our own domain.
What we might do is pick 5 keywords we want to rank for, and move all our sites under one domain - this should help spread the link juice through to the less performing sites, as our main site gets a lot more press and links.
Hopefully this is a good strategy!
Thanks for the help.
-
Right, the first issue, there are loads of options. I would personally look at something like this:
http://www.woothemes.com/2011/07/supportpress/This is a WordPress theme that expands on the core functionality and creates a support environment. This is a full theme so you would likely need another wordpress installation in a sub directory but it will give you a rich support environment and all on the same URL.
Alternatively, if you don't want to manage another install, you could use a WordPress forum plugin, BBPress will do the job but there are a list of options here:
http://chasesagum.com/5-best-choices-for-wordpress-forum-pluginsOn your other issue, that is a big vague, the sub domain is a different product / service and essentially a seperate site so it needs to rank (or not) on it's own merit. As it happens, this is the problem you will have with the knowledgebase if you put it on a separate subdomain.
With no URL or an in depth look I can only give you generic advice but really, I would look to bring all of this under one domain and have one, well ranking site rather than 3 separate sites that all struggle.
Hope that helps!
Marcus -
Hi Marcus,
Thanks for that! We use WordPress as the CMS for our site. With something like TenderApp - we want to use it for Q&A but mainly, to have a very large and solid FAQ and Glossary on there (generated by us - and using keywords we want to rank for). I really like the SEO Moz one but I believe it's built in PHP? We don't have the resources or time at the minute to build our own service so we would like to use a plugin, but one that is hosted on our domain. Does something like this exist?
Also, I have another problem. Our website has another subdomain - our main site sells certain paid-for products, but we also offer a self-service solution that is free that is branded differently (though we do associate it with our brand name). Currently, this self-service solution is hosted on a subdomain to our main site - but is not doing very well in ranking for our keywords. What would you recommend we do? Our keywords are not in the domain name unfortunately.
Thanks for your help!
-
Hey
These are essentially forums for you to engage with your customers and not a million miles away from this here Q&A system.
If you are using these to answer common customer questions, build a knowledge base and benefit from user generated content then it would certainly be better to have this on the main domain as a subdirectory than to have it on the sub domain.
Sure, you could have links from the sub domain back to the main site but really, these are two separate entities and in every discussion where people have asked the subdomain vs directory question I have never seen anyone say subdomain.
You want one site with one set of inbound links and one nice healthy link profile if at all possible.
This is a good read:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-micrositesAlso, loads of other articles on SEOMoz answering this question to give you some further reading:
https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ie=UTF-8&ion=1#hl=en&sclient=psy-ab&q=subdomain+or+subdirectory+site:seomoz.org&oq=subdomain+or+subdirectory+site:seomoz.org&gs_l=serp.3...4939.10518.0.10589.34.25.7.0.0.1.253.1620.23j1j1.25.0...1.0...1c.AWvjSgMGrPI&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&fp=6dd2acfce60f574c&biw=1366&bih=643&ion=1What are you using for your main site? A CMS? There maybe an easy solution without having to go this subdomain route. Let me know what you are using and I will try and offer some suggestions as I am sure the rest of the happy shiny seomoz people will as well.
Hope this helps.
Marcus
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
-
does <base> in html affect seo?
hey, just wanna know does <base> in head of website affect SEO? and if it's a yes, how?
Technical SEO | | m17001 -
JavaScript page loader - SEO impact
Hello all,
Technical SEO | | Lvet
I am working on a site that has a bizarre page load system. All pages get loaded trough the same Javascript snippet, for example: Changing the values in the form changes the page that is loaded. The most incredible thing is that, against my expectations, pages do get indexed by Google.
My question is: "Does loading pages dynamically using JavaScript affect the overall SEO performance?" Why are pages getting indexed? Thank you for shedding light on this.
Cheers
Luca0 -
Should we remove category paths for better SEO?
We're looking to build some serious content and capitalise on long-tail keyword traffic for our sub-category pages, example for targeted keyword "designer dining tables". Example of current link: www.website.com/designer-furniture/designer-dining-tables.html Would removing the category paths help? Example result - www.website.com/designer-dining-tables More user friendly URLs and better for SEO would you suggest? The only problem is, if we removed the paths would this have a hit on our traffic? Any advice would be much appreciated. We are using Magento platform.
Technical SEO | | Jseddon920 -
How do you build your pre-sales seo audit
Hello Moz community, I'd like to know if you build "pre-sales seo audit" when selling your services to a prospect. I think the main idea of a pre-sales audit is to show your prospect that you understand his industry (trends & competition) understand the opportunities know the roadblocks on his website If so, i'd be interested in discussing the information you put into your pre-sales audit and how you organise it. If you know ressources i should read as regards to mini seo audit / pre-sales seo audit just paste the link 🙂 Thanks for your answers
Technical SEO | | Sindicic_Alexis0 -
Yoast SEO Plugin and Theme Conflict - Meta Tags
I have installed yoast seo plugin and a theme that I purchased.
Technical SEO | | vivadata
I have added site title and meta description for the index page through yoast seo plugin see here http://screencast.com/t/AdjMynym8Tm however this does not work as can be seen on the test site
http://importingtips.com/test/ does anyone have any advice? Thanks0 -
Does Bitly hurt your SEO?
I often use bit.ly or Google URL shortener in links when other websites post my articles so I can track clicks. However, I am thinking this may HURT my SEO given that it is taking away a back link to my website. Is that logic correct ? If so, what is a good way to be able to track clicks if a website posts your article without jeopardizing the SEO value?
Technical SEO | | StreetwiseReports1 -
Image Size for SEO
Hi there I have a website which has some png images on pages, around 300kb - is this too much? How many kbs a page, to what extent do you know does Google care about page load speed? is every kb important, is there a limit? Any advice much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0 -
What are your best tips for SEO on a shopping cart?
So, I am working on a shopping cart platform (X-Cart) and so far don't like it. Also, the web designer is not someone I've worked with before and he is understandably conservative about access--which limits what I can and cannot do from the back end. One of the things I like to do is include text for the search engines. However, based on conversion, etc., I think the product images on a landing page (main brand info with specific products that show up) should show up first to move toward conversion first. I am thinking of adding the text below the product images on the brand pages so the viewer sees the products first while still keeping the content seo. My practice is to use between 300-350 words minimum on a page. Just wondering what best practices you have for a shopping cart. Care to share? Any tips or hints? Thoughts on what I might do that would be most effective? As always, thanks in advance for your sage advice!
Technical SEO | | TheARKlady0