Blog.mysite.com or mysite.com/blog?
-
Hi, I'm just curious what the majority think of what's the best way to start a blog on your website for SEO benefits. Is it better to have it under a sub domain or a directory? Or does it even matter?
-
From everything I've read, I agree that your safest bet is to go with the subfolder.
-
I agree with Tim and Adam and that said, sub-folders are better as a general rule of thumb for sure.
You might also want to refer to other similar questions here on SEOMOZ.
-
http://www.seomoz.org/q/blogs-are-best-when-hosted-on-domain-subdomain-or* http://www.seomoz.org/q/setting-up-a-company-blog-subdomain-or-new-url* http://www.seomoz.org/q/blog-vs-blog
and the post from Matt Cutts as well as the article from Rand that Adam mentioned.
-
-
I think Adam has hit the nail on the head. We recently moved our blog site from a subdomain to a subfolder and 301'd all the old URL’s with the intention that any entries that users find genuinely useful or interesting will be potentially linked to, thereby providing a benefit to the root domain.
As long as your blog is tightly related to your core business activity then I would go down the subfolder root although, in all honesty, I think subdomains potentially look a little more professional.
-
Hi Tim,
I generally prefer to go with the subfolder option (mysite.com/blog) rather than the subdomain (blog.mysite.com). The reason I prefer this option is because having the blog in a subfolder means that it will benefit from the value of the root domain. In other words, links that are obtained by the root domain will pass that value to the subfolders. However, a subdomain is treated as a separate site and therefore not much value is passed via the root.
Rand provides an excellent answer in a previous Q&A of a similar topic:
Hope that helps,
Adam.
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
-
How/when do you trim your article pages?
Hi all, I wanted to ask what have you all done to your article section that has made a difference to the site's SEO performance? What's the criteria for deciding which articles top cut or 301 redirect to the main page For example: 1. you have a slightly irrelevant article to your website topic, low conversions, but a lot of quality links to page, but no primary keywords in article title. 2. You have a slightly irrelevant article to your website, low conversion, but a lot of quality links AND you have your site's primary keywords in article title 3. You have a relevant topic to the site, but low engagement and low conversions Thanks for all your help!
On-Page Optimization | | SDavis111 -
Ignore SEO and traffic/calls dropped
I got caught up in a disaster of a website that consumed 3/4 of a year, all the while our SEO was put on the backburner with only occasional "massaging" to keep it going. Now our traffic has dropped almost 25% along with our incoming calls. Our rankings have remained steadily good- medium but definitely not bad during this period. My question: Who else has had this experience and how long did it take to rebound? TY
On-Page Optimization | | KevnJr
KJr0 -
Is this blog running on the Genesis Framework?
Hi all, WordPress isn't my area of specialty in terms of themes and identifying what a blog might currently be using. Here's the link: http://www.pens.com/blog I've had one developer tell me this blog is on the Genesis framework and another one told me it is not. Can someone weigh in here and also give me some tips on how to know one way or the other? If it is not on the Genesis Framework, can you provide any helpful links/tutorials on how to get this blog onto the Genesis Framework? We want to be able to use Yoast SEO and apparently our current theme will not allow us to do so. Thanks in advance! Dana
On-Page Optimization | | danatanseo0 -
Duplicate content issue, across site domains (blogging)
Hi all, I've just come to learn that a client has been cross-posting their blog posts to other blogs (on higher quality domains, in some cases). For example - this is the same post on 3 different blogs. http://thebioethicsprogram.wordpress.com/2014/06/30/how-an-irb-could-have-legitimately-approved-the-facebook-experiment-and-why-that-may-be-a-good-thing/
On-Page Optimization | | ketanmv
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/billofhealth/2014/06/29/how-an-irb-could-have-legitimately-approved-the-facebook-experiment-and-why-that-may-be-a-good-thing/
http://www.thefacultylounge.org/2014/06/how-an-irb-could-have-legitimately-approved-the-facebook-experimentand-why-that-may-be-a-good-thing.html
And, sometimes a 4th time, on an NPR website. I'm assuming this is doing no one any favors and Harvard or NPR is going to earn the rank most every time. I'm going to encourage them to publish only fresh content on their real blog, would you agree? Can this actually harm the ranking of their blog and website - should we delete the old entries when migrating the blog? They are going to move their Wordpress Blog to hosting on their real domain soon:
http://www.bioethics.uniongraduatecollege.edu/news/ The current set up is not adding any value to their domain. Thank you for any advice! Ketan0 -
Dealing with thin content/95% duplicate content - canonical vs 301 vs noindex
My client's got 14 physical locations around the country but has a webpage for each "service area" they operate in. They have a Croydon location. But a separate page for London, Croydon, Essex, Luton, Stevenage and many other places (areas near Croydon) that the Croydon location serves. Each of these pages is a near duplicate of the Croydon page with the word Croydon swapped for the area. I'm told this was a SEO tactic circa 2001. Obviously this is an issue. So the question - should I 301 redirect each of the links to the Croydon page? Or (what I believe to be the best answer) set a rel=canonical tag on the duplicate pages). Creating "real and meaningful content" on each page isn't quite an option, sorry!
On-Page Optimization | | JamesFx0 -
Redirect a blog category page to the homepage?
Hi folks Following Penguin 1.1, I have a client site at number 5 for their primary keyword. (was creeping up page 2 with whitehat link building and tight on-site SEO.) However now the page ranking at No. 5 is for a blog category archive. What do people think the quickest / safest way to get this ranking directed back to the homepage is? Many thanks Simon
On-Page Optimization | | SCL-SEO0 -
Do JSON feed / XML Feeds have any SEO benefits?
We are looking to use a 3rd party customer review provider and I have been told by their rep that it has a feature which allows us to display reviews placed with them about us on our website via JSON feed or XML feed (I have limited technical knowledge so have no idea what this is but am hoping our developer does!) I wanted to ask whether providing data in either format has any SEO benefits? My initial thoughts to provide customer reviews was to be useful to the customer and be useful for search engines as it will be continually updating user generated content (?) Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | jannkuzel0 -
What's the best strategy for reducing the number of links on a blog post?
I'd like to optimize my blog better for search. The first reccomendation I got from my SEOMoz Pro Campaign Crawl was that I needed to reduce the number of links per page on my site. I have lots of links from navigational items in the sidebar that people do click on. I'd really like to keep some or all of the tags and categories I list. Comments are another issue. Most of our posts get about 10 comments. However, our best posts get 50-100 comments. Those comments create a lot of links. I was planning on attempting to reduce the number of links using javascript but I guess Google understands javascript now. I may still do this b/c our pages are huge and some progressive rendering would likely help the user experience. Can you use javascript (ajax or otherwise) to limit the number of links on your page in a way that helps your SEO efforts? Any specific suggestions for reducing links that come from comments and navigational items? How much will reducing the number of links on a given page help with SEO? Any simple way to estimate or quantify this without diving in? Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | TaitLarson0