SEO for a Domain which contains Multiple individual sites
-
My website structure
www.example.com (wordpress installation number 1)
www.example.com/forum/ (vbulletin installtion)
www.example.com/shop/ (wordpress installation number 2)Each of these individual pages contains a fresh wordpress/vbulletin installation with their individual admin control panel.
- Am i doing this website entirely wrong?
- Is my website considered as a single website or does Google classify it as 3 different websites?
- My Ranking page is, www.example.com, and by blog post is www.example.com/forum/blog. When i do a link within my blog entry to my main ranking page, does it count as external or internal link?
-
Hi Kevin
Looks like you have some great answers here. I'll just add my 2 cents as well:
- Not doing it wrong at all.
- Google will consider it the same site for sure if it's all under sub-folders and not sub-domains. They will even consider sub-domains "one site" so long as you have consistent design, navigation, UX etc.
- This would count as an internal link.
- Not doing it wrong at all.
-
Adding to what Keszi said:
1 & 2) If that's what is required for your site then it's fine - it's quite common for a Magento e-commerce site to run a WordPress blog. As long as the different CMS installs are in sub-folders and not sub-domains, you should treat them as a single website.
3) Viewing /forum/blog/ doesn't require people to login? As long as the link can be crawled (if it requires login then it won't be crawled by search engines) it will be counted as an internal link - doesn't matter if it's coming from a different CMS install.
-
Hi Kevin,
In my opinion, you aren't doing anything wrong by having 3 engines running one domain. Just do not over-complicate it for yourself in the future.
Having 3 installations (2 wordpress and 1 forum) doesn't count as three different sites, it will be part of the same site (and even some people won't tell the difference).
If you check out Moz, for example, you will see that they have different parts of their website split up in "individual" parts (Moz Blog, YouMoz, Community, etc. etc. etc.). That doesn't mean that they have so many websites. They have 1 Domain, that is all.
Might be, that they also run it from different engines (I do not know), but it could be done.
Now, if I put here a link towards Moz homepage, that will count as an internal page.
I hope this has cleared up a little-bit.
Gr., Keszi
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
-
Question on site structure
My client is a nationwide company. They provide building maintenance services in 7 different cities. In each city they provide a different range of services. They currently have a single service page for each service and no mention on that page of the cities they offer the service. The service pages are getting no SERP visibility. We are running Paid Search and recommending SEO. I'm wondering whether it would be beneficial to build out specific service pages for each city so the content is more relevant to both users and search engines. What is best practice in this situation? Client wants to dominate SERPs in each market for the services they offer.
On-Page Optimization | | SEOinSunnyNelson0 -
Reducing number of site pages?
Hi, I am looking through my site structure and I have a lot of pages left over from the days of article keywords. Probably 7 or 8 years ago, someone sold my husband on article key word pages. I have slowly gotten rid of a lot of them as they have fallen out out of the ranks. I would like to get rid of the rest, probably 5 or 6 pages. Will it hurt my rankings to delete pages and redirect them? My customers really like the simplicity of our site and I want to keep it that way, plus clean up flags that Moz is telling me is a problem. I think its easier to keep less pages top notch than have to worry with a lot of them. Especially since my customers aren't viewing them. Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | CalicoKitty20000 -
Duplicate ecommerce domains and canonical
Hi everybody! I'd like to discuss the SEO strategy I've thought regarding a client of mine and ask for help because it's a serious case of duplicate content. There is a main website (the business model one) where he compares the cost of medicines in several pharmacies, to show the cheapest shopping cart to the customer. But the shopping has to been made in another domain, within the selected pharmacie, because my country's law in Europe says that is compulsory to sell the medicines only on the pharmacy website. So my client has started to create domains, one for each pharmacy, where the differences between them are only some products, the business information of the pharmacy and the template's colour. But all of them shares the same product data base. My aim is to rank the comparing website (it contains all the products), not each pharmacy, so I've started to create different content for this one. Should I place rel=canonical in the pharmacies domains t the original one? For instance: www.pharmacie1.com >> www.originaltorank.com www.pharmacie2.com >> www.originaltorank.com www.pharmacie1.com/product-10 >> www.originaltorank.com/product-10 I've already discuss the possibilities to focus all the content in only one website, but it's compulsory to have different domains in order to sell medicines By the way, I can't redirect 301 because I need these websites exist for the same reason (the law) He is creating 1-3 new domains every week so obviously he has had a drop in his SEO traffic that I have to solve this fast. Do you think the canonical will be the best solution? I dont want to noindex these domains beacuse we're creating Google Local pages for each one in order to be found in their villages. Please, I'll appreciate any piece of advice. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | Estherpuntu0 -
Multiple domains vs single domain vs subdomains ?
I have a client that recently read an article that advised him to break up his website into various URL's that targeted specific products. It was supposed to be a solution to gain footing in an already competitive industry. So rather than company.com with various pages targeting his products, he'd end up having multiple smaller sites: companyClothing.com companyShoes.com Etc. The article stated that by structuring your website this way, you were more likely to gain ranking in Google by targeting these niche markets. I wanted to know if this article was based on any facts. Are there any benefits to creating a new website that targets a specific niche market versus as a section of pages on a main website? I then began looking into structuring each of these product areas into subdomains, but the data out there is not definitive as to how subdomains are viewed by Google and other search engines - more specifically how subdomains benefit (or not!) the primary domain. So, in general, when a business targets many products and services that cover a wide range - what is the best way to structure the delivery of this info: multiple domains, single domain with folders/categories, or subdomains? If single domain with folders/categories are not an option, how do subdomains stack up? Thanks in advance for your help/suggestions!
On-Page Optimization | | dgalassi0 -
SEO for luxury brands!?
Hi all, It is widely known fact that you will be a bit in trouble if you will need to do SEO for luxury brand that is not willing to sacrifice design, layout etc. for SEO purposes. So basically - there is no content to optimize and there is almost no keywords to rank! 😉 Just wondering - how would be the best to approach such kind of terrible situation? Regards, Jungle
On-Page Optimization | | Jungles0 -
Why does Google no longer like our site?
Hey guys, I'm trying to figure out why the traffic and rankings have been plummeting on www.readprint.com. It's a collection of both public domain books and books on Amazon's store. If anyone can offer any pointers as to if it's duplicate content or ??? It used to get 300K visits/mo but has slowly been dropping over the last year. I appreciate anyone's expertise!
On-Page Optimization | | CoBraJones0 -
Home Page SEO
Hi! We recently re-designed our home page in early March. After Google panda, we re-tweaked it again, before we take it live, we really want to get some expert's opinions. We would be grateful for any comments/suggestions/feedback, particularly in the following area (you will need to click a few times to get the page to real size): is the bottom content ok? please scroll down all the way. 2) We used semantic keywords for 5-6 anchor interlinks to the same page to promote core products from the home page. Is this too much? 80% links on the footer is a repetition of header navigation links, do these footer serve any SEO value or is it over - optimization? Here is the URL: https://www.dropbox.com/gallery/36547134/1/WebDesign?h=109d4a Thanks a lot!
On-Page Optimization | | ypl0 -
Site Wide Link
I have just run up the link explorer on my site and discovered that every page home page link points back with the text home - I assume this is bad in terms of SEO , my site name is ccie and I assumed that it put the site wide link of ccie to the entire site, however it seems to be the breadcrumb default of home which is doing it/. www.rogerperkin.co.uk/ccie Should I be looking to change this so my top keyword points back from each page to the home page. I am running wordpress and assumed the site name was the home link on all pages. Can anyone advise the best practice? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | rogerp0070