Best way to set up a support site - sub domain, separate site or com/support?
-
My company is setting up our support site. It has been suggested that we set it up as a separate domain - www.company-support.com, rather than setting it up as a sub-domain (www.support.company.com) or the usual www.company.com/support. The person who proposed this believes it wlll create link juice, but i wonder if splitting the traffic will create more harm than good? Opinions please!
-
Hi googilvie
you sound sceptical about this persons' suggestion, and I would be too.
What is the purpose of the support site? That's perhaps a daft question but presumably it's primarily to support customers with the effects of lowering support costs, increasing renewals or repeat sales or whatever? Or is it to add content for SEO purposes.
Either way I wouldn't use a new domain.
For usability I would put the support section on the same domain (in a folder) or a sub-domain
For SEO I would put it on the same domain, both to earn any incoming links for your primary sales domain, and also to avoid a discrete 'support site' outranking the main one on any brand or product name searches.
I can't think of a single brand or company that uses a separate domain for support, which is often a good indicator of whether something is a good idea
Michael
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
-
Will links from startup/tech blogs help a site rank for *money* keywords?
If a startup has a tech blog (say, domain.com/tech) and a startup journey blog (on domain.com/journey — think groovehq.com/blog), will garnering high PA/DA links to those pages help the root domain rank for keywords related to the startup's services? For example, continuing the Groove example, will quality links to their aforementioned startup blog help them rank the homepage for Online Help Desk Software? Even when those links are from non-helpdesk content on non-helpdesk sites? My theory is that links from high DA sites won't be a bad thing — as long as they're not from spammy pages and done naturally. In some niches, where it's hard to get organic product-related links, this might be a worthwhile strategy. Am I right? Or sadly misguided...? 🙂 EDIT: BTW. The niche I have in mind is fairly uncompetitive, and it'd be easier to garner links from the startup/tech community than the niche community itself.
Link Building | | brandrsn1 -
Linking Between Sites
Hi everyone, Hope you are all doing well. If a company owns several different websites that are supposed to be different brands but are part of the same niche/sector is it OK to link between them? Or would this be seen as violation? Thanks
Link Building | | National-Homebuyers0 -
What is the best way to pass link juice?
We have an e-commerce site that, according to Moz, has too many on page links. The main navigation has top level links and about 45 sub-category links. Our question is -- Should we keep the main navigation and top level categories as do follow and change the sub-category navigation to no follow? Or, should we make the top level categories no follow and keep the sub-category navigation do follow?
Link Building | | MountainMedia0 -
Sub domain names will they help with rankings
Hi, i have a site where i want to use sub domains to showcase the different areas in the country that we work, and i was thinking of having a couple of domain names with the city names to showcase the work we do in that city. I would like to know if by having a subdomain name and then linking it back to the main site if this will help me with the rankings for the main site. look forward to hearing from you
Link Building | | ClaireH-1848860 -
If a bad link domain drops from my site do I regain authority.
Hi Guys, I wanted to know for example if 2 years ago I purchased SEO from some guys that were building links to sites that had very high PR which was important way back when. And now those links are negatively affecting my SEO stopping me reaching position 1 for a term 'replacement keys' and we are stuck in position 2. If the sites were to be reset or domains sold for those sites that were linking in do you think this was remove the penalty on us as a knock-on effect. Thanks James
Link Building | | jameslane880 -
Linkbuilding - Which is best?
Okay so we all know that: 1 Link on 10 Sites > 10 Links on 1 Site (potentially untrue with spammy links on 1 site than 10 links on high authority but that's not the point of this discussion) I've had some discussions at work I seem to be fighting a losing battle... So the questions is... which is better? 1 Link on 1 Site vs 5 Links on 1 Site (same site) We seem to operate on the form of - once we have a link from the site (in most cases blogs for product reviews / guest posts) - that's it , we move on and never talk to them again. For continued growth of links, would it be beneficial if we guest posted on some sites once a month? Then we get a steady stream of links each month.
Link Building | | FreddieChatt1 -
Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links to http://www.loveandlucky.com/
On FEB I got a message on my Google Webmaster Tools saying "Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links to http://www.loveandlucky.com/" How can I know what inbound links Google considered as unnatural? thanks.
Link Building | | cardif0 -
What are the best back links for a review site?
This is specifically for reviews for web hosting or VOIP services. Very technical. Where should I look for sites to get backlinks from?
Link Building | | Aqua0