Website, webshop and blog. Subfolders or subdomains?
-
Hello fellow mozzers,
I've seen a lot of discussion and confusion about whether you should use subfolders or subdomains when you have a website, a blog and a webshop.
Of course with subfolders the PageRank will be more effective since it's all in one domain.On the other hand subdomains will be a better user experience since you can focus on just the webshop or just the blog.
Was wondering how you guys/girls think what would be the best way to handle this.
-
Hey Wesley,
Sub-directory will be a good option. You can find more info http://moz.com/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites
I also like the common sense approach. Is your blog part of your site? Yes? Then have it as part of your site. Are you going to write around the topic of your products and services? Yep, Great. Then have it as part of your site so you can link them when natural to do so.
-
Thank you for the answer and video Christine!
-
DEFINATELY subfolders.
If they are going to affect your SEO, you want to avoid subdomains as each subdomain will be treated as separate and irrelevant from others with regards to link juice and authority build up
you may have to work a little harder this way to achieve similar user experience to sub-domains, using things like geolocation services instead, or even making your site socially friendly and personalized with SSO and so on, and you may have to change your web design around this as well by incorporating navigation buttons or breadcrumbs in proper locations to enhance or organize user experience. In the end, for most situations, subfolders will pay off far far better in the long run, especially for new sites who need heavy SEO work. Down the line and when traffic and authority are established, you can always switch to subdomains and not care about SEO anymore, with proper 301s and other mitigations.
-
Hi Wesley,
I am new here, but I believe I can answer this one. As of the end of 2012, according to Google's Matt Cutts, brands using multiple subdomains will no longer receive the SERP advantage and subdomains and subdirectories are now both classified as internal links. Cutt's is recommending that you choose the structure that is easiest for you to maintain. Here is the YouTube video for more explanation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MswMYk05tk
I hope that answers your question.
Thanks,
Christine DeGraff
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
-
Blog Content Displayed on Multiple Pages
We are developing an online guide that will provide information and listing for a few different cities in Canada and the US. We have blog content that will be pulled into each different city's blog articles page. Some articles are location agnostic and can be displayed for any city, and other articles will only be city specific, and only appear under a particular city. www.mysite.com//blog/seattle/article1
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EBKMarketing
www.mysite.com/blog/portland/article1 From what I know of SEO, it seems that this is a perfect example for the use of canonicalization. So for article that will appear in multiple city guides, should there be a tag that points to a home for that article www.mysite.com/blog/article1 Thanks0 -
Need assistance in improving SEO of website
Dear SEO Expert, We run a website www.guitarmonk.com. Moz has told us of some errors at our website viz.: Especially duplicate content etc and whatever in addition you suggest should be good for the website for certain relative important keywords. Regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Guitarmonk0 -
Is WordPress a Blog in the eyes of Google?
Hi, My online Shop is based on WordPress with the WooCommerce plugin. Now, I have met a SEO guy who told me that's bad in the eyes of Google: Because Google apparently sees my website as a blog and not as a E-Commerce site. Wow, this statement really confused my, since I am working so hard on content and good rankings. Any opinions on this would be appreciated. Best, Robin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | soralsokal0 -
Redirecting external blog to main website blog - two questions I'm struggling with
Hiya Mozzers - I have a blog separate from main website which is duplicating the blog on the main website. This separate blog is duplicating the main website blog, so it needs to be closed down and redirected. There are some 200 pages of separate blog (identified via Screaming Frog). So I am suggesting the blog pages should be 301 redirected from the separate blog to the equivalent blog pages on the main website. Q1) Should the root domain of the separate blog be 301 redirected to the main www.mainwebsite.com/blog page, or to the root domain of the main website? Q2) Should the blog pages, which lack equivalent content on the main website, be 301 redirected to the main www.mainwebsite.com/blog page, or to the root domain of the main website? Thanks for your help on this one, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart1 -
How to structure articles on a website.
Hi All, Key to a successful website is quality content - so the Gods of Google tell me. Embrace your audience with quality feature rich articles on your products or services, hints and tips, how to, etc. So you build your article page with all the correct criteria; Long Tail Keyword or phrases hitting the URL, heading, 1st sentance, etc. My question is this
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mark_Ch
Let's say you have 30 articles, where would you place the 30 articles for SEO purposes and user experiences. My thought are:
1] on the home page create a column with a clear heading "Useful articles" and populate the column with links to all 30 articles.
or
2] throughout your website create link references to the articles as part of natural information flow.
or
3] Create a banner or impact logo on the all pages to entice your audience to click and land on dedicated "articles page" Thanks Mark0 -
Where to begin (SEO-wise) with my Website?
Hello, We hired a company to design an e-commerce website for us. Along the way they did some initial SEO design, but we are clearly a long way from where we need to be. I'm not a web-designer or a knowledgeable SEO person. I have the website linked to webtools, google analytics and obviously this site as well. I've been toying with the idea of just trying to accomplish some SEO myself, but the more I read about SEO, the more daunting it seems. I'm a full-time military pilot, so this seems like it involves more time than I have to give. Where do I begin? My Website www.phoenixprintingsolutions.com Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JRodBeMe0 -
Ajax website and SEO
Hi all, A client of mine has a website similar to Pintrest. All in Ajax/. So imagine an ajax-grid based animal lover site called domain.com. The domain has three different Categories Cats, Dogs, Mice. When you click on a category, the site doesn't handle the URL and doesn't change the domain So instead of the domain going from domain.com to domain.com/cats, it uses the Ajax script and just shows all the cat pins. and when you click on each pin/post it opens a page such as domain.com/Pin/123/PostTitle It doesn't reference the category. However a page domain.com/cats does exist and you can go there directly. Is this an SEO issue for not grouping all pins under a category? How does Google handle Ajax these days, it use to be real bad but if Pintrest is going so well i'm assuming times have changed? Any other things to be wary of for a grid based/ajax site? I am happy to pay for an hour or two for a more in depth audit/tips if you can feed back on the above. Fairly urgent. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Profero1 -
Duplicate Content http://www.website.com and http://website.com
I'm getting duplicate content warnings for my site because the same pages are getting crawled twice? Once with http://www.website.com and once with http://website.com. I'm assuming this is a .htaccess problem so I'll post what mine looks like. I think installing WordPress in the root domain changed some of the settings I had before. My main site is primarily in HTML with a blog at http://www.website.com/blog/post-name BEGIN WordPress <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | thirdseo
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]</ifmodule> END WordPress0