Getting the SEO right for blog on different server
-
Hi There
This must be a common scenario but there's very little help on it. Right now I have:
www.domain.com hosted on a Windows dedicated server.
I have blog.domain.com hosted on a separate hosted Wordpress server and I use an A Record at the DNS level to make sure the sub domain works. Easy peasy!
However we want to move our blog so its at www.domain.com/blog as we're definitely seeing an issue with the sub domain hosting of the blog in terms of SEO.
My problem is that I cannot install WP onto the windows server, its' just not feasible as too much is going on with it, so i can;t simply redirect my blog.subdomain.com to www.domain.com/blog as it won't exist.
How do I do this and maintain the SEO/link juice?
Any help much appreciated!
-
Alright, well my advice runs counter to common wisdom: don't worry so much about whether it's on a sub-domain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MswMYk05tk
https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/subdomains-and-subdirectories/
My feeling is that you should worry a lot more about what the blog is linking to.
I've personally had access to look into 2 of the most-cited subdomain examples. In one of them the company moved into a subdomain, but broke a massive document up into about 7 pieces - and each piece started getting organic traffic. This happened at the same time, so I don't think it can be attributed to the sub-domain movement. In another case the blog logo linked back to the blog home, and there were almost no links to the sales pages. Changing the header resulted in more links to the root domain, so yes - rankings improved.
I've heard other anecdotes of people moving to sub-folders and seeing big boosts in their non-blog rankings due to the links from the blog. For the last 5 years, though, I've seen no credible evidence. I've been in a good position to see the opposite. One more story: a friend of mine just moved a MASSIVELY-cited blog (blog PA 75) off the sub-domain, but his nav was already mirroring the www version (which has 1/15th the links). Impact on rankings: absolutely none.
I'd still install on the same server if I could, just for the sake of maintenance, but if you can't find a technical solution just make sure you link architecture makes sense.
-
I really don't know because I know the square root of nothing about IIS I'm afraid.
Sorry, not an awful lot else I can help with on this one.
-Andy
-
Cheers for the reply.
The trouble is that we have a lot of mission critical services running on this server, add to that we have limited PHP, mySQL etc skills as we're Microsoft bods here. Installing all of this onto our server is not really an option, more a recipe for complete disaster!
One idea we had was creating some kind of folder in IIS on the main server www.domain.com that then redirected/re-wrote to blog.domain.com. THe principle is that same as people visiting friendly URLs that actually map to .aspx pages but on a domain level, not page level. My head's exploded a bit so i'm not sure if that would work at all with correct link juice being passed.
-
Hi,
Have you had a look at installing Wordpress under Windows? There are also alternatives to Wordpress if you wish to look at these.
I'm not aware of a workaround otherwise - it isn't something I have ever had to do, but someone else might chip in with ideas.
-Andy
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
-
Keyword SEO
Hi everyone! I am pretty new to SEO so all the help would be great. Does every webpage on our website need a focus keyword for example like tructiepbongda Just to note that I am using Yoast on Wordpress. Many thanks,
Technical SEO | | yenu0 -
Wordpress SEO for ecommerce store
I have been working on a wordpress ecommerce website and want to check that I am doing something correctly so hope someone can help. The Wordpress theme did not allow for an introductory content so the developer built a content page Instead to work as a front end category page so there was more flexibility. I have set the product categories to follow- no index and set the content page as the canonical version and optimised the content page.. question is - is that the right thing to do?
Technical SEO | | musthavemarketing0 -
Moving Blog Question
Site A is my primary site. I created a blog on site B and wrote good content and gave links back to site A. I think this is causing a penalty to occur. I no longer want to update site B and want to move the entire blog and it's content to sitea.com/blog. Is this a good idea or should I just start a fresh/new sitea/blog and just remove the links from site B to site A?
Technical SEO | | CLTMichael0 -
SEO Ultimate Plug in problems for SEO MOZ
Hi Newbee here! SEO ultimate seems to work ok for other url I have on this problem. http://www.pureescapism.co.uk and performing the on page grader for hair salon broadstairsI have canonicalizer on for the plug in and I have made it the rel=canonical targetIt tells me I haven't.Further down I don't get a tick also and am told : Remove all but a single canonical URL tag.Not aware I have more than one.I am also told : No More Than One Meta Description Element ( Cant see how I can do that either as I havent changed any code)Help please
Technical SEO | | Agentmorris0 -
The difference between an noindex and nofollow?
What is really the difference between an noindex and nofollow and why/when do you want to use them? Built my first wordpress site and the blog "posts" that make up my home page confuse me....as far as passing link juice to my home url...not sure what I am asking here! How do I use nofollow/noindex or is the issue I should be looking at is 301/canonical. Or neither?
Technical SEO | | cschwartzel0 -
Is it better for our Blog to be blog.domain.tld or domain.tld/blog ?
I'd dread the answer being the latter rather than the former as we've spent two years building it blog.domain... However I noticed SEOmoz are domian.tld/blog and it got me thinking.... Cheers. R.
Technical SEO | | RobertChapman0 -
Getting on to page 1 again
I have recently set up a website, and as soon as it got indexed by google, I ranked on the first page at number 10... However, Ever since I have started trying to backlink.. the more I seem to do, the more I seem to drop down the rankings! The same for both Bing and Yahoo... I am really not sure what the problem is. My site is www.arilinegamesatc.com, and the ranking words are airline games and airline game. Any help woudl be greatly appreciated!
Technical SEO | | rolls1230 -
Will moving a well established Blog to a different URL (on the same domain) affect the SERPs?
Hi SEOmoz experts, We will shortly be launching a new product range (B-Events) on our Events website and I was wondering if moving our current A-Events specific blog will impact the SERPs at all? Quite a few of our blog posts rank well for longtail A-Events terms, so we're a little reluctant to move it. But for the long term it makes more sense than creating & maintaining 2 separate blogs. Current Blog URL: domain.com/a-events/blog New Blog URL: domain.com/news New A-Events Category: domain.com/news/a-events New B-Events Category: domain.com/news/b-events I intend to 301 redirect all of the old URLs (200+) to their new blog category equivalent, will this be enough to keep their positions in the SERPs? Can you recommend / think of anything else, that we might not have considered. Any help would be much appreciated!
Technical SEO | | RobertHill0