Blog on Subdomain vs. Subdirectory - Best Practices
-
Hi,
I have recently been told that it no longer impacts authority or rankings if a blog is set up on a subdomain (blog.domain.com) rather than a subdirectory (/blog). However, I am reluctant to do so because I remember learning how blog subdomains did not adhere to SEO best practices.
Would anyone be able to shed some light on the latest SEO best practices regarding this topic?
Many thanks,
Erin
-
Can Moz weigh in on this please? There is a lot of really good discussion on this particular topic across multiple threads but no clear direction. What does Moz recommend and why? The why is important and here's why.
If I have a client with an established blog that uses the blog.domain versus domain/blog structure, should I be recommending they migrate to a different structure?
-
Thanks Greg,
Super helpful video.
I have a Blogger blog and it is much harder to host it on a subdirectory and extremely easy to host it on a Subdomain. That video was extremely helpful in making a decision as to which one to use. It just saved me lots of hours of toil and pulling my hair out getting a subdirectory set up and configured, when from the horses mouth, it looks like a subdomain is just fine.
-
An interesting discussing. This is something I have been looking into recently for a blog of mine.
Thanks
-
Interesting point. Thanks for sharing this video!
-
Does the advice still hold true given this video?
-
Thanks everyone for your responses!
-
Hi Erin,
Sub directories are the preferred method. This has been asked many times on SEOmoz so I'll post a few links so you can have a look at some of the responses and exactly why they are preferred:
http://www.seomoz.org/q/blog-vs-blog
http://www.seomoz.org/q/best-place-for-a-blog-blog-mydomain-com-or-mydomain-com-blog
http://www.seomoz.org/q/subdomains-vs-subfolders
Hope that helps!
Brad
-
Well there is a very old debate and many SEO will recommend you using sub directory instead of sub domain.
Reasons why you should use Sub directory instead of sub-domain:
- Search engine still counts sub domain as another website so if the blog is in sub directory it will be considered as the part of the website
- Your over all SEO efforts will impact on sub directory which is not the case in terms of sub domain.
- Its way easier to rank for long tail keywords with sub directory instead of sub domain.
If SEO is not a problem for you are you are more interested in branding then i think subdomain goes well as its easier to remember and write directly in the URL bar.
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 to best handle search landing pages - that don't exist
I have quite a bit of blog information that can be searched, which results in "pages" that don't actually live anywhere. These are scanned by Moz and appear as poor page quality for speed, etc. How do I get the service to either ignore all of these or is there a way to treat them as a real page with content? As there are quite a few generated over time, I'd like to be able to capture them somehow. Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | amac70 -
Subdir vs Subdomain vs ccTLD
Hello Community, I'm running a .com website with India targetted audience on Webmastertools from 2 years. Now I want to start a separate zone for US. .us domain is not available for my domain right now. So what is your suggestion for best results: 1. domain/us (Subdirectory) 2. us.domain (Subdomain) 3. new domain (separate website) I think Subdomain can work great if I will pass place a header link sitewide. Or that can reduce authority as mentioned on few blogs? Let me know your thoughts
On-Page Optimization | | sah900 -
New jobboard: Can redirecting folder (site.com/jobboard) to subdomain (jobboard.site.com) hurt SEO?
Hi there, I'm planning to implement a jobboard on my website which needs to be installed on a subdomain (jobboard.site.com) but I'd really like to use site.com/jobboard for promoting this jobboard (jobboard collects external industry jobs). Are there any possible disadvantages when I set up a 301 redirect from jobboard.site.com to site.com/jobboard? Also: What if I want to move this jobboard to a unique domain one day (e.g. jobboard-industry-xy.com), Would that be tricky (as I'd basically have to redirect the folder-to-subdomain redirect to an external domain and therefore get a folder-to-subdomain-to-external-domain redirect...)? Cheers, Thomas
On-Page Optimization | | stl990 -
Which Blog Platform to link to an eCommerce site is best?
I just hired a content writer to blog on my site, but I want to make sure I have the right blog set up properly before doing so. I currently have my blog on my own domain. http://alturl.com/ixd7p It's a pretty crappy blog, to be quite frank. (The link to the blog is in the footer). It doesn't allow me to change category titles so it's throwing duplicate content - not good. I am seriously considering getting a self hosted Wordpress blog and linking that to my site instead at 3dcart- so it will be blog.domainname.comMy CONCERN.... I always heard that it's best to have the blog right right on the eCommerce site (just as I have it now) because it keeps feeding the domain fresh content. If I have a self hosted Wordpress blog and have it linked to my site, will it still feed my site fresh content?
On-Page Optimization | | tutugirl0 -
What is the best way to integrate our blog into our ecommerce website?
Hi all, We run an eCommerce website at www.oursite.com plus a blog (including news / articles / reviews / how-to guides etc.) at blog.oursite.com (those aren't really our site URLs, BTW ;-). For SEO reasons previously discussed on here, and for ease of use for our customers / browsers, we now want to integrate the two more closely. This will mean: Our blog will move to www.oursite.com/blog We will try to feature the blog content in places where it is relevant to customers (so e.g. news and blog posts about shoes would appear on our shoes category page, a review of some Adidas XL1000 shoes would appear on the Adidas XL1000 shoes product page) The blog is currently run on a wordpress.com site, so we'll need a new CMS (or wordpress.org) to get more control of the data. My issues are that, although it's good from a users point of view, having blog articles appear in lots of different places on the site might cause issues with duplicate content from a search engine's point of view. Has anyone got any pointers on how to integrate the two in a way that will make most use of the good original content coming out of our blog, while not "watering it down" by spreading it around too much? Can anyone point to examples of shops that do this well? Is there any software (other than Wordpress) that people would recommend using? As always, any help greatly appreciated! Alex
On-Page Optimization | | reddogmusic0 -
ECommerce Product Meta Descriptions vs. Product Descriptions
Wondering if using on-page product descriptions as the individual product meta descriptions is a best practice for an eCommerce site? Instead of writing two product descriptions (one regular and one meta), I am thinking if the product copy is SEO rich, we'd be good to use just the one for both purposes. Thoughts? Ideas? Suggestions? Seems that many companies follow this practice. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | kennyrowe1 -
Mobile vs Website Duplicate Data / Meta
SeoMoz is reporting duplicate content, title tags, and other meta information and seems to be showing that my mobile site (located on m.website.com) is a duplicate of website.com I was figuring I could add "Mobile SiteName" to the title to avoid the duplicate title but am a little confused as to how to approach the duplicate content side of it
On-Page Optimization | | Check_City0 -
What's the Best Way to Hide Redirects from Search Engines?
Hey everybody, I like to use php redirects for affiliate links so they look better. I keep them all in the same directory. I read recently that these may hurt SEO. A couple quick questions: Is this the best way to redirect affiliate links? Should I simply block the directory in robots.txt? Any other suggestions from you SEO guyses and galz? Thanks! Jared
On-Page Optimization | | JaredB0