Microsite Subfolder URL vs Redirected TLD for best SEO
-
We have a healthcare microsite that is in a subfolder off a hospital site.They wanted to keep their TLD and redirect from the subfolder URL. Even with good on-page SEO, link building, etc., they're not organically ranking as well as we think they should be.
ie. They have http://our-business-name.com vs. http://hospital.org/our-business-name/
For best SEO value, are they better off having only their homepage as TLD and not redirect any interior pages but display as subfolder URL?
ie. Keep homepage as http://our-business-name.com but use hospital urls for interior pages http://hospital.org/our-business-name/about/
Or is there some better way to handle this?
-
Thanks so much for taking the time to help! I really appreciate it!
-
In that case, I would ask the hospital.org to canonical to the new site, not redirect.
Recently had a similar case but in reverse... microsite was ranking really well for a term that they wanted ranking for their main website. We set up canonicals from microsite to main site and the main site started ranking for the term within a week.
-
The goal with adding as a subdirectory off the hospital site rather than as a stand-alone site was to gain the benefit of the weight of the hospital seo which ranks on the 1st page of search for more than 1,500 keywords.
The healthcare site has stiff competition with a similarly named local business that one of the drs previously worked for. He has now created this new business, which is affiliated with the local hospital. When his name is typed in search, the hospital site which has a bio page on him comes up first, then his previous business which, at least by site search, no longer has his name on their site (rather than his business), and his site doesn't even show on the 1st page.
The content is one and the same. The hospital.com/businessname/ redirects to the businessname.com
If you mean how are the URLs structured, they are friendly.
-
What is your goal here? What is on the businessname.com? What is in hospital.com/businessname/?
Off the bat, I think canonicals will be involved.
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
-
I am temporarily moving a site to a new domain. Which redirect is best?
A client is having their site redeveloped on a new platform in sections and are moving the sections that are on the new platform to a temporary subdomain until the entire site is migrated. This is happening over the course of 2-3 months. During this time, is it best for the site to use 302 temporary redirects during this time (URL path not changing), or is it best to 301 to the temp. domain, then 301 back to the original once the new platform is completely migrated? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Matt3120 -
Best Practice Approaches to Canonicals vs. Indexing in Google Sitemap vs. No Follow Tags
Hi There, I am working on the following website: https://wave.com.au/ I have become aware that there are different pages that are competing for the same keywords. For example, I just started to update a core, category page - Anaesthetics (https://wave.com.au/job-specialties/anaesthetics/) to focus mainly around the keywords ‘Anaesthetist Jobs’. But I have recognized that there are ongoing landing pages that contain pretty similar content: https://wave.com.au/anaesthetists/ https://wave.com.au/asa/ We want to direct organic traffic to our core pages e.g. (https://wave.com.au/job-specialties/anaesthetics/). This then leads me to have to deal with the duplicate pages with either a canonical link (content manageable) or maybe alternatively adding a no-follow tag or updating the robots.txt. Our resident developer also suggested that it might be good to use Google Index in the sitemap to tell Google that these are of less value? What is the best approach? Should I add a canonical link to the landing pages pointing it to the category page? Or alternatively, should I use the Google Index? Or even another approach? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Wavelength_International0 -
Does having active urls with and without trailing .html impact SEO?
A recent update resulted in duplication of urls on our site due to inconsistent url structure: Example: /category2.html and /category2 both active on the site as the same page Will this hurt and should we create redirects using only one version of the url? /category2.html redirect to /category2
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Karri_Parks0 -
YOAST Premium extensions vs Yoast SEO Free?
Considering buying the Yoast Premium extensions (or perhaps whole bundle) but trying to weigh up if its worth it or if the free version is comprehensive enough to do the job? Obviously paid has more features but is it worth the price tag? (I have 4 different websites) If anyone has a paid version of Yoast Premium pack and seen improvements with rankings, mark ups in google etc I would appreciate hearing your story! Thank you in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IsaCleanse0 -
Redirect Plugin: Redirecting or Rewriting?
Hey everybody! It's been a while since off the boards! I am reworking a site and I have been looking into their Redirection Plugin. I personally tend to lean towards just using the .htaccess because, well, why not. However, when looking deeper into the plugin I found myself a little confused with their redirection wording. RewriteRule ^/products/landing-page-october-2015/$ /products/special-education-news-october-2015/ [R=301,L] Is that the same thing as a classic Redirect 301?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HashtagHustler0 -
Weird 404 URL Problem - domain name being placed at end of urls
Hey there. For some reason when doing crawl tests I'm finding pages with the domain name being tacked on the end and causing 404 errors.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jay328
For example: http://domainname.com/page-name/http://domainname.com This is happening to all pages, posts and even category type 1. Site is in Wordpress
2. Using Yoast SEO plugin Any suggestions? Thanks!0 -
Link-building best SEO practice (one-off VS periodic blogging)
Hi all, Generally, what would be best when building a website's ranking through link building? Having the same links from the same bloggers or receiving new links from different bloggers every time? A lot of the SEO services offer 4-8 blog backlinks per month. Would it be best if these links came from different sources every time or most from the same sources each month? I know there's a lot of factors but I hope this question is clear. Happy holidays and thank you for your insightful feedback. Carlos
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 90miLLA0 -
What is the Proper Use of 301 redirects for SEO purposes?
I heard and read from different sources that 301 redirects from aged domains with healthy link profiles is great to boost a sites rank as oppose to building a site around the page and linking it to the domain you want to rank. Whats is the best practice for this strategy? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | junkcars0