SEO advice with having a blog on sub domain.
-
Righto, so:
I've been working on our company website www.nursesfornurses.com.au which is built on .asp which is a real pain because the site is built so messy and on a very dated CMS which means I have to go back to the dev every time I want to make a change.
We've made the decision to move the site over to Wordpress in stages. So, (and I hope logically), i've started by making them a proper blog with better architecture to start targeting industry related keywords.
I had to put it on a sub domain as the current hosting does not support Wordpress http://news.nursesfornurses.com.au/Nursing-news/
The previous blog is here: http://www.nursesfornurses.com.au/blogIts not live yet, so I'm just looking for SEO advice or issues I might encounter by having the blog on a sub domain. In terms of user experience, I realise that there needs a clearer link back to the main website, I'm just trying to work out the best way to do it...
Any advice / criticism is greatly welcomed.
Thanks
-
So If i move the content of the current blog:
http://www.nursesfornurses.com.au/blogTo my subdomain:
http://news.nursesfornurses.com.au/Nursing-news/Should I be expecting to see a decrease in rankings, even if I do 301 redirects from all the blog posts to the new ones..?
I'm just trying to get this as black and white as possible for my directors.
-
If you are looking for the fastest way to do this, just clone and backup your existing WP site and database, then move to your test environment and start building your new site there. That way you will already have all of your old blog posts in place, and save a ton of time, especially if the blog has been styled to look like the main URL.
For the blog, I agree with others in stating you should keep it as part of your main website. Doesnt make sense to have it on a subdomain unless you have to, like your old ASP configuration.
-
I noticed in the Matt Cutts article that: news.google.com would be suitable on a sub domain, so perhaps this will apply...?
we've added a fair amount of content which was previously in the members area so in some ways this is a separate entity
If I setup 301 redirects on all the blog pages pages would this pass the page authority to the new blog pages?
-
Thanks for your responses, and I agree that we need to move host but its a pretty big thing to do and in our current situation it will take months to redevelop the site completely to Wordpress so we really have to do it in stages.
I did notice in the Matt Cutts article that: news.google.com would be suitable on a sub domain, so perhaps this will apply, also we've added a fair amount of content which was previously in the members area.
If I setup 301 redirects on these pages would this not pass the page authority to the new blog?
Thanks for your responses, this situation is looking tricker than ever!!
-
Stelios gives the technical details. Now for the encouragement....
For all of the work that you can put into a website, you owe it to yourself to ditch a host, a CMS, an SEO, a developer, a technology or anything else that forces you to run a blog on a subdomain.
-
Hello,
Thanks for your question. My advice is to keep your blog on your main domain, not separate it to be a subdomain.
The reason for this is a subdomain is it's own separate entity and you won't get the benefit of the authority that's part of your main domain, and blog posts should be relevant to a service and internal link to them. For example, how this post links to the Nurse CPD page (except I'd use Nurse CPD has the anchor text, not the brand name in this case).
Matt Cutts wrote about this in 2007, and I think the information is still valid. In his post, he stated that his preferred use of a subdomain was to separate out information that is completely different. For example, if you had a staff portal, this could sit on a subdomain as it's purpose would than the information on your main website.
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
-
Low Domain Authority
Hi Our Domain Authority has dropped recently from 29 > 23 - which is really low. I wondered if anyone had any ideas of why this might be? http://www.key.co.uk/en/key I'm seeing ranking/traffic improvements for SEO & I'm not currently building any bad backlinks, I did a sweep to Disavow any bad ones last Oct. I am planning to add good quality links, but is there anything else I can do to improve the authority?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Negative seo problem
Hello, Someone attacked our website with negative SEO and our website fell drastically. If i use bing webmaster tools link explorer i see dozens and dozens spam links but if open a link i don't find this link in that website. Is it possible that someone added the links and then remove thouse links when we got hit? Or is it possible to hide the links that they don't show up on webpage but they are still there? How can i use Google disavow links tool if there is no links in thouse websites but Bing link explorer shows spam domains pointing to our website. BR, T
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | otsinguturundus0 -
How to move blog to new domain with different theme & categories
I have a wordpress blog hosted on a separate domain. I have a new empty blog on a subdomain of my-commerce main site. The new blog has a different wordpress theme & categories than the old blog. What is a good way to populate the new blog with content from the old? What do I do with the old blog once the move is done? Thank you for your thoughts on this Handcrafter
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stephenfishman0 -
Domain Forwarding - SEO Impacts?
I have a site that has been active for years - thinkbiglearnsmart.com. Awhile ago I had purchased about 50 domain names that were relevant to my company. I still have those urls and would like to use them to point to different pages on my site - just because they have good key words in the URLs. For example - one is dreamweavertrainingclassesonlinelive.com. Currently they are all redirecting to my homepage. A. is that hurting me? B. I would like to redirect to the more relevant page. ie the page dedicated to Dreamweaver training (http://thinkbiglearnsmart.com/dreamweaver-creative-cloud-training-course/ ) Will this hurt my Dreamweaver keyword for example because there is already a 301 redirect on that page from a very old Dreamweaver link which was something like thinkbiglearnsmart.com/dreamweaver C. On my hosting account where I can select where the URL forwards to - it has an option for "Location forwarding" and "Frame forwarding" - currently they are set to Frame forwarding - which one is best? Any help is much appreciated!!! Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | webbmason0 -
Renaming your domain from an existing live domain and SEO implications - Please Help *shudder*
Please see the details below. Site A: http://south-african-holiday.mobi is an existing site that is our best site. It is Joomla 3.1 and runs all our ecommerce. Site B: http//www.southerncircle.com/ is our original and has the best DA but is out of date and pretty clunky. joomla 1.5 and all bookings (tour site) are redirected to Site A for processing. Instead of redesigning the Site A I'd like to change the domain name of http://south-african-holiday.mobi -> http://southerncircle.com So far my reading and research (Thanks MOZ for awesome forum!) has provided me with: 1. Do the SEO groundwork. i.e. remove dead links from both sites. Delete useless content and generally tidy up both sites. 2. Map all pages from site a: http://southerncircle.com -> http://south-africa-holiday/ so that the existing pages that have good ranking will have a home on the new site. 3. When ready do a small sample 301 redirect from: http://southerncircle.com to http://south-africa-holiday.mobi. 4. arghhhh now I'm stuck ..... If I redirect to this site then I lose my http://southerncircle.com domain which is what I want to keep....I just want the .mobi site to move to the southerncircle.com site.... I don't consider myself totally thick but this is really confuseing the *$%# out of me PLEASE could you give me some insight here. I'm sure it has been done before without completely losing the sites seo ranking and sending my site into SEO oblivion. If there are any JOOMLA gurus that have done this I'd love to hear from you as well. Many thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SoutherlySwell0 -
Sub-domain or new domain for new location
I have a small law firm in Dallas, TX. I will be moving to Austin, TX in the next 2 years. My website is doing great here in Dallas, but I have focused on keyword phrases that include the word "Dallas." I would like to leave my current website as is and maintain a Dallas office to keep the business flowing from this website. I am trying to determine the best way to get Austin business from a 2nd website. I know I will need new content that includes the use of the word "Austin". My question is: Should I put the new content on (1) a subdomain (i.e. austin.copplaw.com) or (2) a new domain (i.e. copplawfirm.com). I really want to be a player for the google local search results in both cities. I can use a different name for my law firm in Austin, if necessary. Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Regards, Zac
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seozac0 -
Blog content - what to do, and what to avoid in terms of links, when you're paying for blog content
Hi, I've just been looking at a restaurant site which is paying food writers to put food news and blogs on their website. I checked the backlink profile of the site and the various bloggers in question usually link from their blogs / company websites to the said restaurant to help promote any new blogs that appear on the restaurant site. That got me wondering about whether this might cause problems with Google. I guess they've been putting about one blog live per month for 2 years, from 12/13 bloggers who have been linking to their website. What would you advise?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
SEO for a plumber?
Hello, How does a small, local business win at SEO (without abusing directories, articles, and paid links)? It seems that everyone is saying "create unique content", but that just doesn't seem realistic for a small plumber in a big metro area. One might suggest coming up with helpful articles about plumbing tips, etc., but there are thousands of spun articles on article directories already. On page optimization is in place, we are listed in the main directories, we've asked the people we know to link to us, and we are engaged in social media. What would you recommend next? Thanks, Will
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WillWatrous0