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
-
Best way to give away rank?
We have a set of branded and unbranded keywords that we want our product site to rank very high for. Right now, our support site owns the first page of rankings for most of the keywords we care about. What is the most efficient way to give the rank currently enjoyed by our support site to our product site? Both have very high domain authority and tons of backlinks. Here are some factors that might apply: Support site has lots of copy including these keywords, while product site doesn't (yet) Support site doesn't currently include a lot of links to the product site (and vice versa) They're on the same domain -- support is at support.domain.com, product is on www.domain.com Support site has many more pages and their URLs are more semantically related to keywords I know there are lots of structural improvements implied by the above -- on the product site, increase the amount of copy (and landing pages) focused on keywords and significantly improve internal links, etc. But I'm wondering if the fact we control both sites gives us any options we wouldn't have in a competitive situation?
On-Page Optimization | | hoosteeno0 -
Unique Pages with Thin Content vs. One Page with Lots of Content
Is there anyone who can give me a definitive answer on which of the following situations is preferable from an SEO standpoint for the services section of a website? 1. Many unique and targeted service pages with the primary keyword in the URL, Title tag and H1 - but with the tradeoff of having thin content on the page (i.e. 100 words of content or less). 2. One large service page listing all services in the content. Primary keyword for URL, title tag and H1 would be something like "(company name) services" and each service would be in the H2 title. In this case, there is lots of content on the page. Yes, the ideal situation would be to beef up content for each unique pages, but we have found that this isn't always an option based on the amount of time a client has dedicated to a project.
On-Page Optimization | | RCDesign741 -
Blog Site Set-Up/Frequency
Hello! I am a new blogger that is just getting started. All I have done so far is purchase a domain name and signed up with Blue Host. From what I am reading, WordPress seems to be the most recommended plug-in to get going. There is a lot of material out there on SEO and I wanted the community's thoughts on where to start. My blog is intended to provide readers with information on a particular topic. It is a vast area with much to write about - I intend on populating the content myself/with the help of experts in the field. It is not news so it is not time sensitive. Here are my questions: 1. As this is a brand new site, should I be blogging every day or is couple of times a week sufficient? I am able to produce content fairly quickly in the beginning as there is a lot to write about. Should I write a whole lot of content first and then release it on a schedule (twice a week, daily, etc.)? As it is a new site, I don't want it to launch with just one article.. 2. I am taking a WordPress class next week, but as someone that is not too familiar with copy/backlinks, other mechanisms to boost SEO. does WordPress make it easy enough to optimize your site for search results or does it require more expertise? As far as I see, my first tasks are to 1. ) set up the site effectively so people can find it and 2.) create valuable/engaging content. Appreciate any advice on setting up the site, blogging frequency, other tips to get going. I don't want to launch a site and get dinged by Google for reasons I am unware of..At some point, when I have a robust set of content, I am thinking of FB advertising to increase traffic to the site. Seems a bit premature to do that at this point.. Thanks all in advance for your feedback!
On-Page Optimization | | mmprakash0 -
SEO for multilingual and multiregional site seperated with subdirectories on same domain
Hi all, I am working on a website that is multilingual and multiregional.
On-Page Optimization | | helgeolaussen
The site is on a single TDL where the countries are seperated with subdirectories.
I am only working with SEO for one country, so just one of the subdirectories.
Do you guys have any tips on important stuff to remember when doing SEO for this site?
Any pros or cons for this? Ty0 -
Transfer Blog From External Domain
Hi All I am in stages of transferring a blog. We currently have partial manual penalty for unnatural links, and we received sample links of our own blog, which happened to be originally setup on another domain. e.g. example.co.uk and the blogs hosted on exampleblog.co.uk - the only way these were linked were through anchor text in each and every blog - so it's clear why this has been picked up. We are now going to transfer these across to our actual domain. Around 60% of the blogs had no meat, so we have pruned through these. What is the best solution; Redirecting ONLY the good blogs via 301 Redirect and 404 pages with no meat OR Redirecting ONLY the good blogs via 301 Redirect the others to Example.co.uk/Blogs Thanks Tom
On-Page Optimization | | TomPryor830 -
Making a subdomain more search engine friendly?
I have a volusion website, and I cannot have a subdirectory, it must be a subdomain. Is there anything I can do to optimize this subdomain to make it more search engine friendly?
On-Page Optimization | | SKMEIS0 -
What is the best practice for changing a url of an existing page
I a looking through the on-page SEO reports in SEOmoz for one of my sites. It suggests that I change the url of a particular page to match the desired search term I want to rank for. In this case it is a site for a local business and the url is example.com/testimonials. when it probabaly should have instead been example.com/city-business-reviews. I have just a couple links to this page and I'm stuck towards the bottom of page 1 in the SERPs currently. Questions... 1. Should I change the url to include the exact keyword term I want the page to rank for? 2. If yes, what is the best method to ensure that any existing link juice to the current url is retained? Would I change the url, then create a new page with the old url and apply a 301 redirect to point it to the new page? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | fastestmanalive0 -
Best Way To Host Images For Image Optimization
I need an image optimization expert to tell me whether or not we are hosting images properly for SEO. Currently, we upload all images to Picasa and then call them out with a webpart in our content management system. See example here - http://www.tennisnow.com/Photos/2011-BNP-Paribas-Open-Day-5.aspx Here's an example of the url that is attached to each image - http://lh5.ggpht.com/_1Oyc-Zgkrpk/TX5H-Pfyd7I/AAAAAAAARbc/nG3Cw-G5tsY/s400/1215548409_FU9xA-L.jpg We have a lot of images, and we've hosted them on Picasa for speed purposes based on a recommendation from our developer (makes the pages load faster). I've read that Google can now factor page load time into its ranking parameters. We are not seeing the images from each photo gallery being indexed on images.google.com. We are torn. What should we do to rank for these images?
On-Page Optimization | | tennisexpress0
