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.
Subdomain for every us state?
-
Hi,
one of our clients has an idea of making subdomains from his main website to sell his online advertisements in all states in USA.
f.e:
He wants to have a subdomain for every state and there to be information related only or mainly to this state?
I am not sure about is this a good idea? What is your opinion about it?
-
If the domain is has an extremely high authority (80+), I would consider it due to potential to dominate the SERPs by getting the www.web version and state.web version both to rank high.
Thanks, the domains authority is 43, it is not so high.
_Yes, stick with folders. It's much simpler and much better organization (states correct as Atlanta a city). _
Yes, it is true, thank you!
Next, I second everyone else, subfolders are much more organized, subfolders look better, and subdomains are an old SEO strategy (a little spammy, especially for a new domain)
It is an old domain (registered 1994). What guys you mean by better structured? Sorry if it is a simple question, I just want to be sure if it is what I think.
Also if a web site is in subdomain, does the main domain still pass some authority to the subdomain or not much?
-
I would stick with folders for two main reasons:
- First, yourdomain.com is part of your online brand. If every state's URL is statename.yourdomain.com, I think this takes away from your brand because the first thing people see when they look at the URL bar or in search results is a state name and not your URL
- Next, I second everyone else, subfolders are much more organized, subfolders look better, and subdomains are an old SEO strategy (a little spammy, especially for a new domain)
-
Yes, stick with folders. It's much simpler and much better organization (states correct as Atlanta a city).
-
subfolders are better than subdomains, it's all under one site instead of 59 (according to obama) individual subdomains.
that was an old school strategy when Google really gave push to having the keywords in the domain name and spammers took advantage of it to rank better by creating subdomains for each keyword phrase
-
I would advise against it.
I would stick them all in subfolders of the www version of the site. www.web.com/texas
If the domain is has an extremely high authority (80+), I would consider it due to potential to dominate the SERPs by getting the www.web version and state.web version both to rank high.
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
-
Can subdomains avoid spam penalizations?
Hello everyone, I have a basic question for which I couldn't find a definitive answer for. Let's say I have my main website with URL: www.mywebsite.com And I have a related affiliates website with URL: affiliates.mywebsite.com Which includes completely different content from the main website. Also, both domains have two different IP addresses. Are those considered two completely separate domains by Google? Can bad links pointing to affiliates.mywebsite.com affect www.mywebsite.com in any way? Thanks in advance for any answer to my inquiry!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
The Great Subdomain vs. Subfolder Debate, what is the best answer?
Recently one of my clients was hesitant to move their new store locator pages to a subdomain. They have some SEO knowledge and cited the whiteboard Friday article at https://moz.com/blog/subdomains-vs-subfolders-rel-canonical-vs-301-how-to-structure-links-optimally-for-seo-whiteboard-friday. While it is very possible that Rand Fiskin has a valid point I felt hesitant to let this be the final verdict. John Mueller from Google Webmaster Central claims that Google is indifferent towards subdomains vs subfolders. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h1t5fs5VcI#t=50 Also this SEO disagreed with Rand Fiskin’s post about using sub folders instead of sub domains. He claims that Rand Fiskin ran only 3 experiments over 2 years, while he has tested multiple subdomain vs subfolder experiments over 10 years and observed no difference. http://www.seo-theory.com/2015/02/06/subdomains-vs-subfolders-what-are-the-facts-on-rankings/ Here is another post from the Website Magazine. They too believe that there is no SEO benefits of a subdomain vs subfolder infrastructure. Proper SEO and infrastructure is what is most important. http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2015/03/10/seo-inquiry-subdomains-subdirectories.aspx Again Rand might be right, but I rather provide a recommendation to my client based on an authoritative source such as a Google engineer like John Mueller. Does anybody else have any thoughts and/or insight about this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB3 -
Blog subdomain not redirecting
Over the last few weeks I have been focused on fixing high and medium priority issues, as reported by the Moz crawler, after a recent transition to WordPress. I've made great progress, getting the high priority issues down from several hundred (various reasons, but many duplicates for things like non-www and www versions) to just five last week. And then there's this weeks report. For reasons I can't fathom, I am suddenly getting hundreds of duplicate content pages of the form http://blog.<domain>.com</domain> (being duplicates with the http://www.<domain>.com</domain> versions). I'm really unclear on why these suddenly appeared. I host my own WordPress site ie WordPress.org stuff. In Options / General everything refers to http://www.<domain>.com</domain> and has done for a number of weeks. I have no idea why the blog versions of the pages have suddenly appeared. FWIW, the non-www version of my pages still redirect to the www version, as I would expect. I'm obviously pretty concerned by this so any pointers greatly appreciated. Thanks. Mark
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarkWill0 -
Franchise sites: Should each franchise have a subdomain or subdirectory?
One of my clients has about 40 franchisees who are going to have their own sites on a WordPress multisite installation. The question they're wondering: should these be on subdirectories (thesite.com/this-franchise) or on subdomains (this-franchise.thesite.com)? Which is best for SEO? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ideasandpixels0 -
How can I get a list of every url of a site in Google's index?
I work on a site that has almost 20,000 urls in its site map. Google WMT claims 28,000 indexed and a search on Google shows 33,000. I'd like to find what the difference is. Is there a way to get an excel sheet with every url Google has indexed for a site? Thanks... Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
If a website Uses <select>to dropdown some choices, will Google see every option as Content Or Hyperlink?</select>
If a website Uses <select> to dropdown some choices, will Google see every option as Content Or Hyperlink?</select>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Zanox0 -
Archiving a festival website - subdomain or directory?
Hi guys I look after a festival website whose program changes year in and year out. There are a handful of mainstay events in the festival which remain each year, but there are a bunch of other events which change each year around the mainstay programming.This often results in us redoing the website each year (a frustrating experience indeed!) We don't archive our past festivals online, but I'd like to start doing so for a number of reasons 1. These past festivals have historical value - they happened, and they contribute to telling the story of the festival over the years. They can also be used as useful windows into the upcoming festival. 2. The old events (while no longer running) often get many social shares, high quality links and in some instances still drive traffic. We try out best to 301 redirect these high value pages to the new festival website, but it's not always possible to find a similar alternative (so these redirects often go to the homepage) Anyway, I've noticed some festivals archive their content into a subdirectory - i.e. www.event.com/2012 However, I'm thinking it would actually be easier for my team to archive via a subdomain like 2012.event.com - and always use the www.event.com URL for the current year's event. I'm thinking universally redirecting the content would be easier, as would cloning the site / database etc. My question is - is one approach (i.e. directory vs. subdomain) better than the other? Do I need to be mindful of using a subdomain for archival purposes? Hope this all makes sense. Many thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cos20300 -
Move blog from subdomain to main domain on ecom site?
I am wondering what my fellow mozers think. Pretty set about my direction but want to get any other input to aid in my decision. Have an ecom site with a www.blog.maindomain.com. The blog is fairly new and no major rankings. There are only about 30 posts. This isn't a super competitive market and the blogging won't be a huge part of our content strategy but I would like to use it for passing juice etc. Would you go through the trouble to move the blog to www.site.com/blog and redirecting all the old content to new?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PEnterprises0