Subdomain vs subdirectory for store
-
Hello,
The following services site
has a store at
Would the store be stronger if it was at
(in a subfolder) and included in the main navigation? The moz bar suggests not but I just want to make sure.
Thanks.
-
Yes, this is a great video by Matt Cutts. But I think he's mostly addressing how Google perceived people were trying to abuse their system, and what changes they made as a result.
Basically, he's saying that a subdomain doesn't make a big difference to Google's search rankings, and that in the past, people would use subdomains so that they could get additional search ranking placements (one for the main domain, another for a subdomain). He's made it clear that Google has put an end to this practice.
What he doesn't discuss is whether putting content on a subdomain is going to affect how Google scores the site, and if it scores a subdomain separately.
Most of the research out there still shows that the domain ranking is set differently for a subdomain vs. a subdirectory. Perhaps this might change in the future, but the general school of thought is that if you put all of your inbound links, social media shares, and content development into one domain (www.domain.com), it will do better than splitting the effort (part goes to shop.domain.com and part goes to www.domain.com).
Thanks!!
-
Jeff, have you seen this:
is he just trying to keep it simple and subdirectories are actually better?
-
Bob-
I've answered a similar question in the past here: http://moz.com/community/q/blog-on-subdomain
But the gist of it is:
store.mydomain.com --> content on the store. is treated as a different site, and SEO efforts (content, inbound links, social media) only help the subdomain.
mydomain.com/store --> subdirectories are usually the way to go. All of the content, inbound links and social media shares will help build the overall domain authority for you.
My recommendation is to go with the sub directory (mydomain.com/store/, and there are a whole lot of articles that back this up:
http://moz.com/community/q/blog-on-subdomain-vs-subdirectory-best-practices
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/subdomains-and-subdirectories/
http://moz.com/community/q/best-place-for-a-blog-blog-mydomain-com-or-mydomain-com-blog
Hope this helps...
-- Jeff
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
-
Content hubs vs blog
Hey all! I work for a large healthcare company. We're in the planning stages of redesigning our website, and the question came up of whether we needed to continue with the patient-focused blog at all when we could simply incorporate the blog articles into the service lines they best fit with (i.e. an article about feeding babies solid good would go under the pediatrics section of the website instead of the pediatrics section of the blog).Anybody have an opinion/insight on whether the articles would get better rankings being dispersed to the services sections of the website instead of concentrated on a blog? Or would good internal linking make the whole question moot?Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | MartyIHC1 -
Keyword Cannibalization vs. Optimizing Site
I am in the process of optimizing our website and I am having a hard time reconciling two best practices I have found on Moz. 1. You should avoid having multiple pages focus on the same keyword because you will lose some control of which result will show. 2. You should identify your core keywords and weave these keywords multiple times (naturally) throughout your site. I have spent months identifying our top 7 keywords and am working through the site now. The first piece of advice keeps giving me pause. Can anyone weigh in with other considerations or advice on how I can reconcile these two strategies. Thank you
On-Page Optimization | | NikCall2 -
More Singular KW Targeted Landing Pages vs. Less Multiple KW Targeted Landing Pages
So my question is... I have a adopted a site which currently ranks quite well for some industry competitive keywords with a number of poor quality landing pages which specifically target a singular keyword. I am wondering if its worth merging some of these pages together into one authoritative, better quality landing page targeting multiple keywords (as the intent for some of these keywords are largely the same). What i don't want to do is jeopardise the existing rankings in doing so. The alternative option would just be to improve the content on the existing landing pages without merging. What are peoples thoughts on this? Are there any positive case studies out there where merging has had a positive effect? Any help would be great. Regards,
On-Page Optimization | | NickG-1231 -
Recommend platform for fashion/bridal store
We currently use Bigcommerce, can anyone recommend a good platform for a bridal fashion store. We use a lot of pictures and banners. Also looking for a platform that allows for good SEO We are looking for an updated look particularly with a responsive format for mobile phones and ipads.
On-Page Optimization | | CostumeD0 -
Getting the Titles and Headings Right on Product Pages. Userbility vs SEO
Hey Mozzers, I am optimising a chaotic section of the site including many similar products. Writing unique content etc. The titles and urls were all over the place so my first job was to tidy them up so I could make some sense of the situation, especially as sometimes they didn't even match! I should point out were on Magento, so product name = Both the Heading and Title of the page, the meta title can be set separately. When i refer to title I mean both <title>and <h1></strong><br /><br />Before they existed as such<br />URL: domain.com/200-x-0-5-g-rs-232-balance.html<br />TItle: PC-1234 200 x 0.5g x 0.3 RS-232 Balance<br /><br />This format was (Product Code, Capacities, Resolutions, Accuracy, Product Title)<br /><br />The issue was all 60 products in a page followed this format. Navigating through the page was a nightmare and was just a jumble of numbers and highly confusing even to me who learnt what they all mean, especially when you had 8 products from the same range you got presented with<br /><br />APC-1234 200 x 0.5g x 0.3 RS-232 Balance<br />APC-1235 500 x 1g x 0.3 RS-232 Balance<br />APC-1236 1000 x 2g x 0.3 RS-232 Balance<br />APC-1238 5000 x 10g x 0.3 RS-232 Balance<br />APC-1239 10000 x 15g x 0.3 RS-232 Balance<br />APC-1210 20000 x 25g x 0.3 RS-232 Balance<br />APC-1211 50000 x 50g x 0.3 RS-232 Balance</p> <p>I changed them to something more user friendly.<br /><br />URL: domain.com/200g-precision-balance.html<br />Title: 200g Precision Balance<br /><br />This has seen the following benefits<br />- URL is now clear and means something to the user<br />- Product titles are easy to navigate and the page is more pleasing to the eye<br />- The jumble of numbers in the title are now all labelled and shown below each product listing in bullet point so the user can see the basic spec of a product without having to decipher any titles<br /><br />Upon reflection I has a couple of concerns I was hoping you could discuss, I am wondering if I have made the titles too simple.<br />1) I have no product code in the title<br />We have our own products manufactured and sell existing brands with their own product codes. Some of these can be lengthy. Adding them makes them hard to the eye and the page looked cramped.<br /><br />The codes are listed beneath each product title on category pages and on a list on the actual product page, but no where in the titles. <br /><br />2)None of our products have a brand listed in the title<br />None of the products on the site had brand names in anything but the images when i started and as such it snuck under my radar. But should i pre-fix all titles with a brand name?<br /><br />Should </p> <p>URL: domain.com/200g-precision-balance.html<br />Title: 200g Precision Balance</p> <p>become</p> <p>URL: domain.com/BRAND1-200g-precision-balance.html<br />Title: BRAND1 200g Precision Balance<br /><br />My instinct tells me to change things to include brands as its useful to the customer and should have an SEO benefit, but to leave out product codes as they are accessible to the customer where they are now and dont make things messy and unreadable.<br /><br />As always, thanks for the input!</p></title>
On-Page Optimization | | ATP0 -
Disallow indexing of ALL subdomains
I'm using www.domain.com as my development hosting. Each website that i'm developing get's a temporary URL like this: project1.domain.com
On-Page Optimization | | conversal
project2.domain.com
project3.domain.com
... Now i'd like to set that ALL these subdomains can not be indexed in Google. Now I manually have to do this for each subdomain's site, and when I go online I have to change the robots.txt again. So I would like to make things a bit easier for me. Is this possible?0 -
Which is Best Practice for creating URLs for subdomain?
My website is related to education. We have created sub domains for all major colleges, universities & Entrance exams like Gre, Toefl ETC. for eg: amityuniversity.abc.com (Amity is Name of University ) Now if have to mention city name in URL as well (college is located in multiple locations) amityuniversity-delhi.abc.com
On-Page Optimization | | rohanarora536
amityuniversitydelhi.abc.com Now my Q is can we use hyphens in sub domains if we have to add city name or shall we create without using any hyphens. In Directory structure we can always separate words with hyphens, can we follow same practice in subdomain as well Which is a best URL for subdomain amity-university-delhi.abc.com
amityuniversity-delhi.abc.com
or amityuniversitydelhi.abc.com0 -
My Domain Name - short vs relevant
I'm creating a website for my new web design company in Vancouver. I'm looking to target such keywords as "Web Design Vancouver", etc. I have another company with a hyphenated domain name which is terrible when I'm on the phone and my client asks me for my domain (hard to say, always spelling it out). Also I wanted to have a good snappy name for my new business so I found a 6 letter .com and matching .ca for my company. My question is: is it best to use a short domain name or is it better have my keywords in the domain name? eg. xyz.com vs xyzvancouverwebdesign.com Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | VebianWebandMobileDevelopment0