Subdomain SEO question (php script on domain + wordpress on subdomain)
-
Hi Moz fellows,
I am doing my first website which is entirely .php scripted. But I would like to have a wordpress blog to create content and blog posts, while the .php side of the website is more for sales pages and user generated listings.The only way to do this is to install wordpress on a subdomain "blog.website.com"
QUESTION: If all my keywords targeted content is on the subdomain's Wordpress blog, but all my guest blogging efforts link to my main website, which one will rank? The subdomain or the domain?
I need the domain to rank well as it is a Fiverr-like script, so if tons of people land on my "blog.website.com" subdomain, they will not convert into users...
Let me know if you have experience with such a scenario, and thank you all in advance for your help!
-Marc
-
Hi Marc,
When you say Wordpress blog do you mean you'll be hosting the WP blog on your own server? Or you're using one hosted on wordpress.com (albeit via blog.yoursite.com) ?
If you are hosting it yourself then WP runs on PHP so normally plays pretty nicely with other PHP sites, just install it in a subfolder (so www.yoursite.com/blog/) and you should be good to go (unless you have any re-write rules that could mess with what wordpress is trying to do - just make sure thay they don't touch on the /blog/ sub-directory).
If you are hosting on wordpress.com then why not install WP on your actual site and use the above method?
I won't go into the merits of guest blogging as a link building strategy here
Best wishes,
Stuart
-
People who will land on your blog will probably not convert!! I believe this is very much depends upon how you are going to use it. If you utilize your side bar properly and in your content if you can smartly encourage your users to shift to the main website the conversion rate from the blog can be vital.
As far as the rankings are concern, page with better content and more quality links will rank better as compare to the one that contain low quality content and no or low quality links on it.
If you want your main commercial pages to rank then tray to get links to the main page plus increase your domain authority of the website and as subdomain are now considered as a part of the main domains, getting links on the blog will also help you rank better as a whole.
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
-
When domain a buys domain b (whose links direct to c), does domain a has links redirecting to domain c ?
Hi, I really need to know what happens when a company or domain (a) acquires another company with domain (b) with its links pointing to yet another location (c). Does company a then have redirects to c?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Yeshourun0 -
Technical SEO Question: Why is our new platform showing a small decline in traffic?
Hi there! We are in the process of transitioning to a faster platform, and we recently moved a subset of URLs over. The subset that moved over saw a drop. We didn't change the URL pattern, or the content. The only thing that is different is the new platform. Here's a link to one of the URLs that is currently served from the new platform: http://bit.ly/1YjXD7H And, here is an example of a URL currently served from the older platform: http://bit.ly/1Jtx7Di Any ideas why the newer platform is seeing a decline in organic traffic?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Negative SEO penalty, new domain?
One of my clients has just been hit with a Penguin 3.0 penalty. They have been subject to a negative link building attack for the last 5 months and despite my best effort it appears I haven't disavowed enough, someone was building a lot of links to them and all really low quality spam and a lot of forum profiles. They still rank for their brand, the site is in the index but the only rankings I can see are in Google Local. My advice to them for the quickest way back into Google is to get a new domain and relaunch on this new domain. The challenge is, the domain they want to buy used to be used as a domain in the 'erotic video distrubution' industry. It currently has 17 backlinks from 9 domain and the anchor text is mostly brand related but I can see that 70 links have already been deleted. I would consider this to be too high risk but would be interested to see if everyone agrees with me, it would be an awesome domain name if the history wasn't there!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Karen_Dauncey0 -
Should I redirect all my subdomains to a single unique subdomain to eliminate duplicate content?
Hi there! I've been working on http://duproprio.com for a couple of years now. In the early stages of the website, we've put into place a subdomain wildcard, that allowed us to create urls like this on the fly : http://{some-city}.duproprio.com This brought us instantly a lot of success in terms of traffic due to the cities being great search keywords. But now, business has grown, and as we all know, duplicate content is the devil so I've been playing with the idea of killing (redirecting) all those urls to their equivalent on the root domain. http://some-city.duproprio.com/some-listing-1234 would redirect to equivalent page at : http://duproprio.com/some-listing-1234 Even if my redirections are 301 permanent, there will be some juice lost for each link redirected that are actually pointing to my old subdomains This would also imply to redirect http://www.duproprio.com to http://duproprio.com. Which is probably the part I'm most anxious about since the incoming links are almost 50/50 between those 2 subdomains... Bringing everything back into a single subdomain is the thing to do in order to get all my seo juice together, this part is obvious... But what can I do to make sure that I don't end up actually losing traffic instead of gaining authority? Can you help me get the confidence I need to make this "move" without risking to lose tons of traffic? Thanks a big lot!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DuProprio.com0 -
What is the best route SEO wise for implementing a Wordpress blog that has a domain under go daddy and hosting under a third party like Kalio Commerce?
I am currently trying to implement a Blog on a Ecommerce site that has its domain set up under Go Daddy, but it is hosted under a platform called Kalio Commerce. I am trying to implement a Wordpress blog because I am most familiar with it and believe it offers more strength SEO wise but the Ecommmerce platform by Kalio does not offer the ability to install Wordpress or any CMS platform other than its own. I am stuck wondering if I could find a way to either implement a blog through a sub-folder (mydomain.com/blog) while using wordpress on hosting added to the go daddy server under their domain. If Kalio Commerce doesn't have any way of adding a blog to its own hosting is this hindering my clients ability to be fully optimized for fresh content? Now I am not too familiar with adding sub-domains with hosting under a different platform. I am more in tune with building a wordpress ecommerce site and implementing blogs under the wordpress structure. This is a leap for me and it is getting to be a little overwhelming so if any one has prior experience with this please let me know if I can find a way through this without putting my SEO consulting at risk. So far I have gotten to the conclusion that I can set up hosting for the companies site under Go Daddy even though they have their hosting under Kalio. If I am to set up hosting under Go Daddy would this cause the DNS routing to be compromised. If this is so must I set up hosting under a separate domain (myotherdomian.com) and have Kalio set up a Sub-Folder like so (mydomain.com/blog) and just have the DNS of the blog installed on (myotherdomain.com) point to the folder in Kalio hosting for mydomain.com? So now that I explained my situation, what is the best route SEO wise for implementing a Wordpress blog that has a domain under go daddy and hosting under a third party like Kalio Commerce?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cscoville0 -
Are free WordPress templates bad for SEO?
Hello, I often build sites using WordPress. The other day I read an article in which the author stated that the sites built using the free WordPress template are not SEO-friendly. Could someone please confirm this statement? Does this mean that I need to develop themes myself or buy WordPress templates? Thank you for your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | salvyy0 -
Purchased a high ranking domain and want to transfer my site to the new domain
I recently purchased a highly ranked domain. The link profile is very good and I don't want to lose to many links however I want to transfer my site to that domain. What is the best way of doing this without losing the current rank on search engines? Also how much does the transfer of registrar information impact my SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ydop0 -
Where do I redirect a domain to strengthen another domain?
I've got a UK domain that I need to redirect to a US domain. Should I point it to the root domain or a landing page off the root and what it the benefit to doing one over the other?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JCorp0