Subdomain hosted on a different server VS Subfolder on main server
-
We have a website developed in ColdFusion on a server does not support PHP. We have a blog for the site using WordPress (PHP), hosted on a different server, with a subdomain as the URL. (example: blog.website.com)
I've heard that search engines treat subdomains as completely different websites from the main domain, so they could actually be in competition for rankings in the search engines - is that correct?
I am under the impression that the traffic to the blog will not show as traffic to the main website, because it is hosted on a different server - is that right?
If I am correct, I assume the best solution would be to install PHP on our main server, and put the blog in a subfolder ... or would the subdomain be OK as long as the blog is hosted on the main server?
Thanks!
-
A sub-folder would be best. So if you can install PHP, that would be great. If not, or if there are security concerns, I would suggest looking into Reverse Proxy.
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
-
Blocking subdomains with Robots.txt file
We noticed that Google is indexing our pre-production site ibweb.prod.interstatebatteries.com in addition to indexing our main site interstatebatteries.com. Can you all help shed some light on the proper way to no-index our pre-prod site without impacting our live site?
Technical SEO | | paulwatley0 -
SEO Problems with Loading to a Subfolder?
A client has a single page app website that shows https://example.com/example when you visit https://example.com . I don't think this is a redirect; I think it's a URL rewrite. My questions: Is this setup common with single page apps? What are the SEO benefits or drawbacks of having a domain's homepage load, rewrite, or redirect to a subfolder?
Technical SEO | | Kevin_P0 -
Direct link vs 302 redirect
So we have recently relaunched a site that we manage. As part of this we have changed the domain. The webdesign agency that built the new site have implemented a direct link from the old domain to the new domain. What is best practice a direct link or a 302 redirect? Thanks
Technical SEO | | cbarron0 -
How different should content be so that it is not considered duplicate?
I am making a 2nd website for the same company. The name of the company, our services, keywords and contact info will show up several times within the text of both websites. The overall text and paragraphs will be different but some info may be repeated on both sites. Should I continue this? What precautions should I take?
Technical SEO | | savva0 -
Another http vs https Question?
Is it better to keep the Transaction/ Payment pages on a commercial website as the only secure ones (https) and remainder of website as http? Or is it better to have all the commercial website as secure (https)?
Technical SEO | | sherohass0 -
Bandcamp subdomain
I have a website - www.weddingmusicproject.com that is doing quite well. However, we have all of the actual music listed on weddingmusicproject.bandcamp.com and have a number of very powerful pages there (bandcamp is a great product by the way). Is there a strong benefit to our domain's authority if we move our "bandcamp" site onto our own subdomain using their custom domain option - http://bandcamp.com/faq_custom_domains - Something like music.weddingmusicproject.com. I seem to think that it would increase our overall domain authority, but it wouldn't increase the number of inbound links or anything. If anything it would decrease the number of linking domains and bandcamp is quite a powerful site so those links would just turn into internal links. Thoughts? I know this is probably a basic concept, but I've thought it over a number of times and can't come to a conclusion.
Technical SEO | | deyobr0 -
Rel - canonical vs 301 redirect
I have multiple product pages on my site - what is better for rankings in your experiance? If I 301 the pages to 1 correct version of the product page - or if I rel caanonical to the one correct page?
Technical SEO | | DavidS-2820610