Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Subdomain versus Subfolder for Local SEO
-
Hello Moz World,
I'm wanting to know the best practices for utilizing a subdomain versus a subfolder for multi location businesses, i.e. miami.example.com vs. example.com/miami; I would think that that utilizing the subdomain would make more sense for a national organization with many differing locations, while a subfolder would make more sense for a smaller more nearby locations. I wanted to know if anyone has any a/b examples or when it should go one way or another?
Thank you,
Kristin Miller
-
Hi Richard, I understand that it gets posted about in fair detail , but I do feel that the issue of when trying to create a branded enterprise for an SMB that's trying to move toward franchising is typically not addressed. This was a particular situation I was inquiring about not just a general inquiry about subdomains versus subfolders.
-
Good points all Richard!
"Those that don't have Google+ and haven't setup social and other profiles or have NAP listings typically rank poorly even if they are EMD."
Yes, sorry I should have qualified I was only talking about local listings in the pack. In regular organic it's somewhat different. The specific potential benefit I was pointing out, only works for local pinned listings. And Google mainly seems to still like EMDs and PMDs in local pack listings .
But like you said you can't just do any one thing and expect to rank. You can have a subdomain or even an EMD and if everything else isn't optimized well or there are violations or the competition is stronger, you still may not rank.
-
Linda, I think the reason EMDs still work is because of their citations and links from those and branded profiles. Mostly, these type of links don't show in tools like OSE and Ahrefs. If you really look, those that have an address, and Google+ listing will have a lot more listings elsewhere because of syndication and include keyword rich titles, content on the page, etc. Those that don't have Google+ and haven't setup social and other profiles or have NAP listings typically rank poorly even if they are EMD. The other trend I've noticed is that some of these rank well for variations of their phrase (because I feel they are getting special treatment as a brand) but for something in the same niche but not included in their brand terms, they don't necessarily rank well for.
-
However, just an FYI with something else to consider. I've been meaning to do a post about this with examples, so this Q will hopefully motivate me to get it done...
We know how Google loves EMDs and PMDs in local. In competitive markets they are usually the ones that rank on top.
If the link on the G+ L page is domain.com/miami. Then what shows on the G+ L page AND in the SERPs is simply domain.com
However if the link on the G+ L page is miami.domain.com then city ends up showing on the domain on G+ L and in the SERPS.
Example: See Mr Rooter in the B spot here: https://www.google.com/search?q=memphis+plumber
In the SERPs in the URL Memphis is highlighted by Google since the query was Memphis Plumber.And Memphis is in the URL on the G+ L and shows up like this: memphis.mrrooter.com where otherwise memphis would be cut off and not showing on the page: https://plus.google.com/101436210710682267977/about (Not a client or anything, just one of many random examples I've been collecting for my subdomain post)
Now I'm not saying you should use subdomains just for this reason. And not even saying it will necessarily help ranking, even though I've seen tons of subdomains that rank high.
Just throwing it out there for consideration and think the benefits should be weighed against the other pros and cons.
What do you think? Do you think having city in the URL in the SERPs and on the G+ L page could possibly help with ranking in that city?
-
Hi Kristin,
While I don't have any a/b testing to share on this, I personally prefer the subfolder approach and would write the URL:
I simply find subfolders easier to work with, but that's a matter of opinion.
-
This is probably the number one question asked in the Q&A section. I think it gets answered about every week. Subfolder is preferred as subdomains can potentially be treated as a separate website. Keep them in subfolders and you'll help the entire site.
-
Additionally, for a larger practice I feel that a subdomain logically makes more sense to be able to market a franchise as a whole. Then utilizing the subdomains to optiize an individual location level.
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
-
What's your proudest accomplishment in regards to SEO?
After many years in the industry, you come to realize a few things. One of of the biggest pain points for us at web daytona was being able to give clients a quick keyword ranking cost estimation. After multiple trial and error and relying on API data from one of the most reliable SEO softwares in our industry, we were able to develop an SEO tool that allows us to quickly and accurately get the estimated cost for a given keyword (s) using multiple variables. Most agencies can relate to that story. It’s something my colleagues and I at Web Daytona have been through before. Finding the cost and amount of time needed to rank for a keyword is a time consuming process. That’s why it’s a common practice to sell SEO packages of 5-10 keywords for about $1000-2000 / month. The problem is not all keywords are equally valuable, and most clients know this. We constantly get questions from clients asking: “how much to rank for this specific keyword?” It’s difficult to answer that question with a pricing model that treats the cost of ranking every keyword equally. So is the answer to spend a lot more time doing tedious in-depth keyword research? If we did we could give our clients more precise estimates. But being that a decent proposal can take as long as 2-5 hours to make, and agency life isn’t exactly full of free time, that wouldn’t be ideal. That’s when we asked a question. What if we could automate the research needed to find the cost of ranking keywords? We looked around for a tool that did, but we couldn’t find it. Then we decided to make it ourselves. It wasn’t going to be easy. But after running an SEO agency for over a decade, we knew we had the expertise to create a tool that wouldn’t just be fast and reliable, it would also be precise. Fast forward to today and we’re proud to announce that The Keyword Cost Estimator is finally done. Now we’re releasing it to the public so other agencies and businesses can use it too. You can see it for yourself here. Keyword-Rank-Cost-Ectimator-Tool-by-Web-Daytona-Agency.png
Local Website Optimization | Mar 29, 2021, 10:45 AM | WebDaytona0 -
More pages on website better for SEO?
Hi all, Is creating more pages better for SEO? Of course the pages being valuable content. Is this because you want the user to spend as much time as possible on your site. A lot of my competitors websites seem to have more pages than mine and their domain authorities are higher, for example the services we provide are all on one page and for my competitors each services as its own page. Kind Regards, Aqib
Local Website Optimization | Aug 8, 2021, 10:42 AM | SMCCoachHire0 -
In local SEO, how important is it to include city, state, and state abbreviation in doctitle?
I'm trying to balance local geographic keywords with product keywords. I appreciate the feedback from the group! Michael
Local Website Optimization | Nov 13, 2017, 5:07 PM | BFMichael0 -
Do I need to change my country og:locale to en_AE
Hi MOZ, I have a site that is aimed at the English speaking market of the United Arab Emirates. The language tag is currently set to lang="en-GB" and the og:locale also set to en_GB. The domain is a .com and aimed at the whole world. Should I be trying to target en-AE and en_AE for these tags instead of GB?
Local Website Optimization | Aug 23, 2016, 1:33 PM | SeoSheikh0 -
Using geolocation for dynamic content - what's the best practice for SEO?
Hello We sell a product globally but I want to use different keywords to describe the product based on location. For this example let’s say in USA the product is a "bathrobe" and in Canada it’s a "housecoat" (same product, just different name). What this means… I want to show "bathrobe" content in USA (lots of global searches) and "housecoat" in Canada (less searches). I know I can show the content using a geolocation plugin (also found a caching plugin which will get around the issue of people seeing cached versions), using JavaScript or html5. I want a solution which enables someone in Canada searching for "bathrobe" to be able to find our site through Google search though too. I want to rank for "bathrobe" in BOTH USA and Canada. I have read articles which say Google can read the dynamic content in JavaScript, as well as the geolocation plugin. However the plugins suggest Google crawls the content based on location too. I don’t know about JavaScript. Another option is having two separate pages (one for “bathrobe” and one for “housecoat”) and using geolocation for the main menu (if they find the other page i.e. bathrobe page through a Canadian search, they will still see it though). This may have an SEO impact splitting the traffic though. Any suggestions or recommendations on what to do?? What do other websites do? I’m a bit stuck. Thank you so much! Laura Ps. I don’t think we have enough traffic to add subdomains or subdirectories.
Local Website Optimization | Jul 29, 2016, 3:20 PM | LauraFalls0 -
Local Service pages guide?
There are a lots of Local landing pages guide on the internet. Is there any guide for Local service pages? How to create them, what to include?
Local Website Optimization | Apr 23, 2016, 3:08 PM | Michael.Leonard0 -
Improving SEO with no blog
I have a client who understands the value of content for SEO - however getting them to provide some content has proven an impossible task. I've tried every way to make it easy for them. I've offered to come over to their office myself and see if I can just take 15 minutes of their time and record their answers to a few questions. The response is that's a great idea, we'll set up a time...and no time is ever good. So I've thought, what can I do without them? Unfortunately, their industry is so technical and so niche I'd need to have a law degree to even begin to understand exactly what they do, and as they are in law it's probably better to have no content than content with something even slightly incorrect in it. For now, all I can do is summarize and share news from a government website to their social media accounts. It's not highly effective. Their on-page SEO for the main site is completely optimized. I've placed them in every free listing I can possibly find - both industry and local sites. I have them update me on any local events, conferences and/or trade shows they attend for possible backlinks. What else can I do? I suppose I fear that if I can't provide them any additional results, they will stop seeing the value in SEO services, and I'd have a hard time disagreeing as I can't think of what else to do for them. Thanks for any help!
Local Website Optimization | Sep 14, 2015, 6:31 PM | everestagency1 -
Call Tracking, DNI Script & Local SEO
Hi Moz! I've been reading about this a lot more lately - and it doesn't seem like there's exactly a method that Google (or other search engines) would consider to be "best practices". The closest I've come to getting some clarity are these Blumenthals articles - http://blumenthals.com/blog/2013/05/14/a-guide-to-call-tracking-and-local/ & the follow-up piece from CallRail - http://blumenthals.com/blog/2014/11/25/guide-to-using-call-tracking-for-local-search/. Assuming a similar goal of using an existing phone number with a solid foundation in the local search ecosystem, and to create the ability to track how many calls are coming organically (not PPC or other paid platform) to the business directly from the website for an average SMB. For now, let's also assume we're also not interested in screening the calls, or evaluating customer interaction with the staff - I would love to hear from anyone who has implemented the DNI call tracking info for a website. Were there negative effects on Local SEO? Did the value of the information (# of calls/month) outweigh any local search conflicts? If I was deploying this today, it seems like the blueprint for including DNI script, while mitigating risk for losing local search visibility might go something like this: Hire reputable call-tracking service, ensure DNI will match geographic area-code & be "clean" numbers Insert DNI script on key pages on site Maintain original phone number (non-DNI) on footer, within Schema & on Contact page of the site ?? Profit Ok, those last 2 bullet points aren't as important, but I would be curious where other marketers land on this issue, as I think there's not a general consensus at this point. Thanks everyone!
Local Website Optimization | Sep 21, 2015, 10:57 AM | Etna1