Microsites: Subdomain vs own domains
-
I am working on a travel site about a specific region, which includes information about lots of different topics, such as weddings, surfing etc. I was wondering whether its a good idea to register domains for each topic since it would enable me to build backlinks. I would basically keep the design more or less the same and implement a nofollow navigation bar to each microsite.
e.g.
weddingsbarcelona.com
surfingbarcelona.comor should I rather go with one domain and subfolders:
barcelona.com/weddings
barcelona.com/surfingI guess the second option is how I would usually do it but I just wanted to see what are the pros/cons of both options.
Many thanks!
-
Unless there is a specific reason to keep the areas separate (e.g. you don't want people to be confused about the brand, or one activity is very inappropriate when paired with the other), it's usually best to keep the content on the same domain. brand.com/activity also usually looks more professional than exact-match-keyword.com. Furthermore, you often gain more trust when people see that the site's offering is well-rounded and includes a variety of activities.
You can also benefit from accumulating good reviews from happy customers to just one website, rather than accumulating surfing holiday reviews for one of your travel sites, wedding holiday reviews for another and so on.
Again, if you feel that the subjects clash badly and will create a weird user experience, you might look at developing different websites, but if you have a range of different activities / holidays that involve one location, I'd be 99% confident that these should all site on the same domain.
-
exact-match domain will not help seo rankings. EMDs are no longer as helpful as they once were.
-
From all the data I've gathered, I see the best way to go is subfolder. An exception might be if somebody searches for weddings in Barcelona, I think weddingsbarcelona.com would come first, all other factors being equal. How much that means to you I'm not sure, but if you want a safe way to go I say subfolders, as your SEO efforts for one will also help the other.
-
I prefer the second option as you dont have to build Domain Authority for both the domains seperately. Building Links and DA is a cumbersome task in itself and doing it double is double the effort.
Building links for a single domain for one domain is half the task and double the profit. Both your sub-folders will benefit from the main domain authority.
Hope it 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
-
Subdomain vs Subdirectory - Specific Case: A big blog in a subdomain
Hi. First of all, I love MOZ and learned a lot about SEO by reading articles here. Thanks for all the knowledge that i received here. I read all the articles about "Subdomain vs Subdirectory" in the MOZ community and I have no doubt that subdirectories are the best option for a blog. But, the company that I work now has a blog with more than 17.000 articles, 1.000 categories and tags, hosted on a subdomain structure. The website has a Domain Authority of 78 (I am working to improve these numbers) and the blog subdomain has the same (78). We had 2.7 million hits per month in the blog and 4.5 million hits per month in the site. I am advising the company to change the blog structure to subfolders inside the domain, but I'm finding resistance to the idea, because the amount of work involved in this change is enormous and there is still the fear of losing traffic. My questions are: Is there any risk of losing traffic with the amount of articles we have? What do we probably get if we change the blog structure to subfolders? Could we have increased authority for the domain? More Traffic? How can I explain to my superiors that we would probably have increase traffic for our keywords? Is there any way to prove or test the gains from this change before we run it? Thanks in Advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Marcus.Coelho0 -
Temporary Domain Changes
Hi All, Our development team needs to do a temporary site name change from www.sitename.com to new.sitename.com and then wants to return to www.sitename.com. They need to do this for the whole site due to how it's built with single sign on (SSO) and how certain post login pages utilize pre login pages and need to keep people logged in. This process is changing with a CMS upgrade and website and post login pages will be independent of the pre login pages moving forward. My question is what is the best way to manage this transition? Right now it seems like the best solution I've been able to work out with development is to reduce the domain shift down to one week and use 302 Redirects, don't index the new.sitename.com site, and for that week and take my lumps as they come from search. Looking for any other suggestion that may help marketing work with dev without casting blame on any teams for drops in organic traffic.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dapacifi0 -
Duplicate content across domains?
Does anyone have suggestions for managing duplicate product/solution website content across domains? (specifically parent/child company domains) Is it advisable to do this? Will it hurt either domain? Any best practices when going down this path?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pilgrimquality0 -
Dramatic drop in Domain Authority
I have a client who has reported a drop in Domain Authority from 16 to 1 in a matter of a few weeks. Also, MOZ was reporting links, but now none! I know there were some issues with the recent MOZ index update. However, this sounds like something else. Anyone got ideas on where we should start looking?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | muzzmoz0 -
Subdomains for US Regions
The company I work for is expanding their business to new territories. I've got a lot of stabilization to do in the region/state where we're one of the most well known companies of our kind. Currently, we have 3 distinct product lines which are currently distinguished by 3 separate URLS. This is affecting the user flow of our site, so we'd like to clean it up before launching our products into the various regions. The business has decided to grow into 5 new states (one state consisting of one county only) — none of which will feature all 3 products. Our homebase state is the only one that will have all 3 products this year. My initial thought was to use subdomains to separate out the regions, that way we could use a canonical tag to stabilize the root domain (which would feature home state content, and support content for all regions), and remove us from potential duplicate content penalization. Our product content will be nearly identical across the regions for the first year. I second guessed myself by thinking that it was perhaps better to use a "[product].root/region" URL instead. And I'm currently stuck by wondering if it was not better to build out subdomains for products and regions...using one modifier or the other as a funnel/branding page into the other. For instance, user lands on "region.root.com" and sees exactly what products we offer in that region. Basically, a tailored landing page. Meanwhile the bulk of the product content would actually live under "product.root.com/region/page". My head is spinning. And while searching for similar questions I also bumped into reference of another tag meant to be used in some similar cases to mine. I feel like there's a lot of risks involved in this subdomain strategy, but I also can't help but see the benefits in the user flow.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | taylor.craig0 -
Age of a re-directed domain same as age of a static domain?
I know domain age plays a role in SEO--but, I am wondering if a domain is set up to 301 re-direct to another domain if it builds the same amount of authority over time as the static domain--just looking at age as a ranking factor, not links accumulated over time.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Pros and cons of seperate sites vs. subdomains
First timer and new to SEO We are designing a website for a customer in south america that has 3 distinct divisions. We want to develop the site in the most SEO effective way possible. Each division will have its own keyword focus, its own associations and its own links. They will all link to each other from the main page company.com. we were thinking of creating 4 different seperate domains such as... www.company.com - basic high level company information with links to the other external sites below. www.company-contructionsoftware.com www.company-itservices.com www.company-graphicdesign.com so my questions are: 1- is it better in the long run to have domains that have the search terms in the url like specified above? We can optimize for the main site as well as the individual sites separately 2- would the result be the same using subdomains? for example, itservices.company.com 3- possibly hosting the 3 different sites in different locations? We want to make sure that we are building using the the best possible architecture for future optimization and internet marketing. What are the pros and cons? Thanks!!!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brantwadz0 -
Raise my Domain Authority and MozRank
I have a budget of about $10,000 over the next 2 months and I would like to raise my Domain Authority from 28 to past 50. What should I do with this money? I am looking for suggestions and ideas. If anybody wants to work on this, please PM me. I also need an On Page SEO expert to make corrections and suggestions. I can PM the actual domain to anybody interested.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | trickyzoo0