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
-
thank you for this. I was looking at sites such as citylocal.co.uk and thebest.co.uk who do this for each city. They are a totally different type of website to our health site but they have a subdomain for each city, so i thought this maybe a way to go but obviously with what you have said, it is not the best approach to take.
many thanks
-
Hey Tim,
There have been quite a few signals that, outside blogging and similar platforms that offer websites as subdomains, Google generally treats a subdomain and its parent domain as the same entity. This has been actually reinforced last year when they changed how Google treats subdomains inside Webmaster Tools.
I'll also quote Rand Fishkin on an answer he gave on subdomains vs subfolders last year:
"Thus, having a single subdomain (even just domainname.tld with no subdomain extension) with all of your content is absolutely ideal from an SEO perspective. It's also more usable and brandable, too IMO."
Regarding your domain-per-city idea, going on what Rand said, it would make even less sense from an SEO perspective.
To answer your question, linking back from the subdomain to main site will likely not help you with any rankings.
Hope this helps!
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
-
Linking Domain vs Domain authority : Do they related!!!? (Case study)
Hi everyone
Link Building | | serikozay
I just came across a website which I'm working on. As we know DA & PA directly related to each other. I'm building organic links through last year and the result is so odd !
As you see in Pic 1, number of linking domains is naturally increasing. But in Pic 2 DA gets negative impact through this process and decreases!
How are they related anyway? Can anyone helps?
site : didar.me 111.JPG
222.JPG0 -
Domain seo vs subdomain
when building links is it better to link to the main domain (www.aabbccarpetcleaning.com) or www.aabbcccarpetcleaning/carpet-rug-cleaning
Link Building | | dhanson240 -
Wrong page ranking and rank drop, help!
Dear Moz community I would like to hear your advice about our current SEO problems. Our website is www.poolsonline.nl. This is a website where people can learn the Polish language on our website. This website has been online since 2007. The website got really outdated, so we built and launched a new version on March 1st (one month ago). We have created a salespage that we would like to rank for the keywords 'cursus Pools' (Polish course) first of all and 'pools leren' (learn Polish) secondly. The page is https://www.poolsonline.nl/cursus-pools-leren-spreken/ The old website was on rank 4-5 (roughly) for 'cursus Pools' and 'pools leren'. When we launched the new website we were on the top 5 with two of our pages. We were even on rank 1 and our salespage was also showing on the first page and often also in the top 5 (below the 'wrong' page of ours). We got quite a lot of trafic and new clients. However the problem was that the wrong page was ranking higher. We wanted our salespage to rank and not our home page (https://www.poolsonline.nl/) and not our free lesson (https://www.poolsonline.nl/lessen/groeten-en-gesprek-voeren-in-het-pools-les-1/). So what we did: Read/watched recourses about this problem: https://moz.com/blog/wrong-page-ranks-for-keywords-whiteboard-friday and https://moz.com/blog/wrong-page-ranking-in-the-results-6-common-causes-5-solutions and others. Removed the keywords (cursus pools en Pools leren) from the wrong pages (home and free lesson pages). Optimized the Salespage for these keywords Improved internal linking with these key words to our salespage Worked on link building for our salepage. We got about 5-10 links to our salespage in the first week of March (5 seems to be significant for this competition and we are working on more). These links are not yet in Moz OSE, but Google has indexed these pages and links. For reference, here are some of these links (not all): http://www.iculture.nl/apps/ik-spreek-pools-taalcursus-pools-op-iphone/ http://linktopoland.com/nl/cursus-pools-leren-spreken/ http://naukaholenderskiego.pl/artykuly/aplikacje/rozmawiamy-po-niderlandzku-aplikacja-na-iphone-i-ipad/ http://pnkv.nl/nieuwsbericht.php?bericht=rozmowy-po-polsku-juz-po-6-miesiacach http://poolsewoorden.nl/pools-leren/aanmelden/ http://poniderlandzku.nl/ Shared and promoted our salespage on social media What we expected: Our salespage to show up on top for these keywords Our ranking to improve What happened: Our salespage disappeared all together from the search results for these search terms (it does show up for more specific search queries, for example 'cursus pools leren spreken') Our site seems to keep dropping lower and lower. We are now on the bottom of page 1 or on page 2 for 'cursus Pools' and 'Pools leren' and not with the desired page Questions we have for you to help us: Why do you think our salespage is not showing up anymore for these keywords ('cursus pools' and 'pools leren')? Do you think we got a penalty for over optimization or bad links? What can we more to get our salespage to rank for these keywords? (we are working on building/earning more links) What can we do to restore our rankings and not drop lower anymore? Do we need to give our efforts more time? How long? Any other adivce? Thanks so much in advance!
Link Building | | rdudkiewicz0 -
Manual action and no ranking impact?
Hello, I received the message in Google Webmasters Tools about unnatural links to site (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UFHCw4Q_FQ) for two of my websites. I have a hard time undestanding why since I don't buy links, I don't do link exchanges and I don't directories or article directories. Anyways, I received this message on Friday and I didn't lose any rankings on either of those sites or at least not on my main keyword which is the only one that matters. Is it normal that I didn't lose any rankings? Would you advise I do anything specific? Thanks a lot.
Link Building | | EndeR-0 -
Link building need help
I've been doing link building for the past 2 months for a website. I've put together some blog posts and submitted them to some sites. However, I don't want to repeat the content on other sites or use the same sites again for links. The problem with this company is that nothing is happening. The last press release they issued was in 2010 and in the 4 months I've been working for them nothing has happened. I have found a few good quality websites in our niche which I could approach for links, but I want to have good content to put on them. Does anyone have any ideas as how to create content that would be suitable, bearing in mind this a B2B company.
Link Building | | AAttias0 -
Page Rank Sculpting
Just a thought. With the way pagerank works and passing link juice evenly across all your links. Would it make sense to structure your site so that each page passes your all your link juice from lets say your homepage to another page. Then that page would contain all the link juice from the homepage. Then do the same thing with the next pages. For instance Homepage - linkjuice 10 link1 - follow link2 rel=nofollow link3 rel=nofollow link4 rel=nofollow link5 rel=nofollow Link1 - linkjuice 10 link1 rel=nofollow link2 - follow link3 rel=nofollow link4 rel=nofollow link5 rel=nofollow Link2 - linkjuice 10 link1 rel=nofollow link2 rel-nofollow link3 - follow link4 rel=nofollow link5 rel=nofollow Link3 - linkjuice 10 link1 rel=nofollow link2 rel-nofollow link3 rel=nofollow link4 - follow link5 rel=nofollow Link4 - linkjuice 10 link1 rel=nofollow link2 rel-nofollow link3 rel=nofollow link4 rel=nofollow link5 - follow and so on. Theoretically would'nt this help pass a ton if not all of link juice to your main links? Sorry if this is a dumb question, it's late and sometimes my mind goes places 🙂
Link Building | | cbielich0 -
Looking for Feedback on Rankings Dropping
Hi, I am looking for some guidance on figuring out a problem I am having with one of my clients. Their site is http://www.macton.com. They have seen a pretty significant drop in rankings for "hoist systems" "industrial turntables" and "railroad equipment." Below is my analysis and thoughts. Please let me know if you have any input you can provide me with. Hoist Systems Rankings started dropping significantly July 2nd. Their average position was around the 2nd - 3rd page. They're now in position 100. Some things I noticed is that Google is now ranking the page /freight_rail/portable-car-hoist-freight for this term, whereas a few months ago it was ranking /rail_equipment/car-hoist. I'm not sure why Google has started to rank this new page for this term when there is no reference to that keyword in the page and the other one is better suited. Industrial Turntables Rankings started dropping off in January and they have been up and down and even fell off for a bit in March. They took a deep dive May 28 - Jun 11 and are slowly picking up. I noticed that Google is also changing which page it is choosing to rank for this term. Currently it is ranking /rail_equipment/locomotive-turntables, previously it was ranking the homepage around May 28th, and before that it was /equipment/industrial-testing. Some things we thought would help this was to create a whole new page just on industrial turntables in order to rank better for this term. Another thing that I think would be highly beneficial is to do some more aggressive link building. Their top anchor text is all brand related, and very few include their target keywords.To my knowledge, I don't think they have a penguin issue, although I could be mistaken. Can anyone provide input and/or guidance on my analysis? Any suggestions?
Link Building | | TopFloor0 -
Exact Match Domain Names
Basically without a doubt having a exact match domain name is a massive benefit. If you targeted a keyword with 2 different sites one with an EMD and one without, I could quite easily expect the EMD to pop up page 1/2 and the non EMD site to be 10 pages deep. I'm going to be honest, I hate how much weight is put on the EMD, Domain brokers are focused on purely finding these, buying them up and selling them way above there worth. Google needs to realise this is a massive problem because I see sites with great content, great moz trust and rank being outranked by a EMD that sits on a squeeze page. Question: If no link building was taking place on the EMD site, lets say it ranked page 2, position 4 but you was linking building on the NON EMD how long to get it up to the EMD site?
Link Building | | activitysuper0