Subdomains and SEO
-
My question has 2 parts: 1) Can you optimize a subdomain template site (a company is providing us with a template site they provide many other salespeople, but we can control the meta and content on each page), and 2) Does forwarding and masking another domain to the subdomain in question, hurt my SEO efforts?
-
this is the way I understood it - if you can add the canonical url to each page it is ok. If you can't add the canonical you shouldn't mask the url as you will be creating duplicate content as each page is accessible on 2 urls, the subdomain and your personal domain
-
Thanks so much for the response. Just to be sure I understand, for the mypersonalsite.com redirecting to the template site, there is a mask involved, so you never actually see the templated site's URLs.
So instead of mypersonalsite.com redirecting to templatedsite.bigsite.com, it shows mypersonalsite.com once redirected and instead of showing templatedsite.bigsite.com/page1 it shows mypersonalsite.com/page1
So does defining the canonical still work in this case? And it would need to be defined on all the templated sites URL's correct? We can access each page on the templated site, however, I'm not sure we can access the head section though, just page content.
-
Hi Chris
you can optimize a subdomain- although it's always better to use the main domain. In your case it depends a bit on the flexibility you have to create unique content within the provided template.
i assume that the second question is about accessing the same content using a different url - it's not necessarily a problem & can even help from SEO point of view if you are able to define the canonical url on the template site
Situation would then be: template site mysubdomain.bigsite.com - all urls have canonical to mypersonalsite.com -> all the urls of the template site will be indexed on mypersonalsite.com
if you cannot define the canonical url it's duplicate content and should then be avoided.
rgds
Dirk
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
-
How will it affect my site SEO, if I get backlink from a hign spam score percentage site like 70 % .
**Above how much percentage of spam score should I avoid getting backlinks. **
Link Building | | ShashankDubey10 -
How does PageRank pass through a backlink on a subdomain vs. subdirectory?
Scenario 1: I earn a link on exampleblog.root.com/example-page/. The DA is 90, but it's a brand new page so PA is 0. Subdomain is also new, zero backlinks. Scenario 2: I earn a link on root.com/example-page/. The DA is 90, PA is still new so 0 for now. My assumption is that PR will flow from the homepage through the subdirectory then ultimately to my domain. If the subdomain doesn't inherit any of the root-level metrics, then should I even be worried about the DA in scenario 1? What are the seo implications between the 2 scenarios?
Link Building | | mcelano_compassknowledge.com0 -
Geographical Relevance of Back links - Important for SEO?
If I have an AU domain, will Google give more weight to back links from other AU domains in the Australian search results, or will quality links from anywhere in the world count much the same? Intuitively, you would think that AU links would be more relevant for an AU site in the Australian SERPS and Google would therefore give these more weight, but are there any good articles/research/anecdotal accounts to show this? Thanks!
Link Building | | TracyMu0 -
How do you use a blog to help SEO.
Hi, So you launch a blog on your website, fill it with lots of great content and update weekly with more great content. From what I know your looking to gain 2 things! 1. Users linking back to your blog and 2. Sharing the content on social networks. Building up social lists on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ etc so when you do post something new you have a hub of users to help push your post by sharing it on social networks which should also help to generate more backlinks. Is this the main purpose of a blog for SEO? Would anything else apart from the above effect the SEO for the site? Maybe the freshness of content also has a positive impact! Also if your blog is picking up lots of links, for this example lets say 100 links a month and the rest of the site outside of the blog is picking up 10 a month will the blogs power of picking up links effect the rest of the sites rankings, would you need to anchor text link out of the posts in the blog to make the most out of it? Cheers
Link Building | | activitysuper0 -
Smashing Magazine SEO article today: Question about a few things in it...
First off, here is the link - http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/06/28/content-creators-benefit-from-new-seo/ Right, Number 5 and particularly this part: 'Quick tip for creatives: Set up a personal Google+ profile and incorporate the rel=author link into your published content. (Instructions on how to do this are provided in the next section.)' Create a personal Google+ profile page with a high-quality headshot; Validate your email address; In the byline of any content that you create, set the anchor text to be your name as it appears in your Google+ profile, and link to your profile with a URL that looks like this:https://plus.google.com/102318046680468697385?rel=author. When your content is published, link back to its URL from the “Contributor to” section of your Google+ profile. So lets say you got a Google+ profile, you got a guest post going out on a Auth website, in the byline you have an anchor text link (which is your profile name) and your linking to your profile page. The guest post goes up, you go into your Google+ profile and link to the guest post through 'Contributor to'. How does this benefit your websites rankings? The only thing I can see it benefiting is the blog the guest post is on??
Link Building | | activitysuper0 -
SEO value to Reddit backlinks?
Can someone point me to an authoritative article on the value of Reddit links? I'm trying to determine if it's something we want to put effort into doing on a regular basis. Are reddit links followed? It seems like some are and some are not.
Link Building | | BostonWright0 -
SEOs and web developers frequently leave links to their site in the footer of their clients' sites. Does this negatively impact the site with the links?
Does this provide any SEO value to the receiving site? Has anyone experienced problems doing this?
Link Building | | KatMouse2