To subdomain or to subfolder, that is the question.
-
Hi All,
So I have a client that has two restaurants that they are wanting two sites for. Right now they have one site for their two locations that ranks pretty well for some bigger keywords for their style of food.
With them wanting two sites, i'm struggling on whether we should just build them all within one site and just use separate folders on that site restaurant.com/location1 & restaurant.com/location2 with a landing page sending you to each, or if we should split it into subdomains. The content will be roughly the same, the menus are identical, i think each branch is just owned by a different family member so they want their own site.
I keep leaning towards building it all into one site but i'm not sure. Any ideas?
-
I agree with this approach, but I also would be trying to dig into _why _they think they want a second site instead of just coming back with a recommendation. What do they think that will accomplish for them? Sometimes clients will ask you to do something that they think will solve a problem when really they should be asking you how to solve the problem, and the situation as he's described it totally feels like one of those times to me.
-
Hi Alex,
Since you're talking about subdomains rather than separate domains and you mention "their style of food", it sounds like they're basically the same restaurant, just in different locations and owned by different family members?
If that's the case, having a separate landing page for each location is the way to go. This means you've only got one lot of content to write rather than 2 full websites and you only have to worry about building a single link profile as well.
You wouldn't even need different subfolders to separate these two, just a landing page for each. The menus are the same, the About Us page probably doesn't need to be any different and the Contact Us page can just offer details and/or a form for each on the one page. Really, the pages you'd need would probably look something like this:-
- Home page
- Location 1
- Location 2
- Menu
- Contact Us
You may want to create other pages on there of course but these would be your basics. If you went down the subfolder route and had a location, menu and contact page for each, that's just adding complexity and redundancy that you could do without. At the very least, the simplistic approach is going to help your crawl budget since engines won't be crawling 2 of everything.
Think of it a bit more like a franchise - present one brand on the site and have a landing page for the locations.
Hope that helps!
-
There's a business I work with as a web dev that has 2 nearly identical sites - one for their E-commerce business and the other for their local business. I haven't done a full SEO analysis on the sites, but I can tell you it's not working out well SEO-wise - they're pretty buried, and I would bet quite a bit it's because of duplicate content.
If the two restaurants are truly different, each should have its own website, with its own content, on its own domain. If the only difference is the street address then there should be 1 website with a "locations" page showing how to get to each location. If they're a bit different but share a name, I would build single website, but have a page, or couple of pages about each location, (so, I would have location-specific info in a folder, eg. restaurant.com/location2/the-chef). Does that make sense?
-
Hi there.
It's quite confusing the way you asking this question - they want two websites, but you gonna make one website? I understand you can use subfolders or subdomains, but if they are exactly the same restaurant, will they have different content? Do they want different designs? If so, what is going to be on main domain?
My suggestion would be to do one website with two location pages. This way, since content is the same they won't have duplicate content issues and it won't be confusing to users in case of different websites with different designs for the same restaurants.
Hope this makes sense.
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
-
Migrating Subfolder content to New domain Safely
Hello everyone, I'm currently facing a challenging situation and would greatly appreciate your expertise and guidance. I own a website, maniflexa.com, primarily focused on the digital agency niche. About 3 months ago, I created a subfolder, maniflexa.com/emploi/, dedicated to job listings which is a completely different niche. The subfolder has around 120 posts and pages. Unfortunately, since I created the subfolder, the rankings of my main site have been negatively impacted. I was previously ranking #1 for all local digital services keywords, but now, only 2 out of 16 keywords have maintained their positions. Other pages have dropped to positions 30 and beyond. I'm considering a solution and would like your advice: I'm planning to purchase a new domain and migrate the content from maniflexa.com/emploi/ to newdomain.com. However, I want to ensure a smooth migration without affecting the main domain maniflexa.com rankings and losing backlinks from maniflexa.com/emploi/ pages. Is moving the subfolder content to a new domain a viable solution? And how can I effectively redirect all pages from the subfolder to the new domain while preserving page ranks and backlinks?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | davidifaso
I wish they did, but GSC doesn't offer a solution to migration content from subfolder to a new domain. 😢 Help a fellow Mozer. Thanks for giving a hand.0 -
A question related to domain authority and Page Authority.
What are the factors that matter to increase domain or page authority because we know domain authority is crucial, it's the best and easy way to tell someone about your website that how worthy your site is.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hfameraya198
Is backlinks only the metric to increase domain authority?0 -
Subfolder cannibalization
Hello, I looked through the forum but couldn't find an answer so here is my question: A client have 2 subfolders that are selling the same things for example Furnitures, Office Furniture, Bedroom Furniture, etc. The website looks like this : www.website.com/subfolder1/ www.website.com/subfolder2/ But it's like 2 diferents brand, just that it sells the same kind of product. The company wants to put evereything in subfolder1 and stop the subfolder2, which mean stop the second brand. But the thing is that right now the subfolder2 have better positions in SEO than subfolder1 for most of the Keywords. How could I make all the internet traffic goes from the subfolder2 to the subfolder1 ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sodimaccl
A 301 redirection could do the trick ? In addition of improving the SEO (Title, H1, Meta, etc) of the subfolder1 ? Thanks for your help.0 -
Subdomain replaced domain in Google SERP
Good morning, This is my first post. I found many Q&As here that mostly answer my question, but just to be sure we do this right I'm hoping the community can take a peak at my thinking below: Problem: We are relevant rank #1 for "custom poker chips" for example. We have this development website on a subdomain (http://dev.chiplab.com). On Saturday our live 'chiplab.com' main domain was replaced by 'dev.chiplab.com' in the SERP. Expected Cause: We did not add NOFOLLOW to the header tag. We also did not DISALLOW the subdomain in the robots.txt. We could have also put the 'dev.chiplab.com' subdomain behind a password wall. Solution: Add NOFOLLOW header, update robots.txt on subdomain and disallow crawl/index. Question: If we remove the subdomain from Google using WMT, will this drop us completely from the SERP? In other words, we would ideally like our root chiplab.com domain to replace the subdomain to get us back to where we were before Saturday. If the removal tool in WMT just removes the link completely, then is the only solution to wait until the site is recrawled and reindexed and hope the root chiplab.com domain ranks in place of the subdomain again? Thank you for your time, Chase
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chiplab0 -
Subdomain or folder for a section not focused on my core business
Hello there, I'm installing your analytics tool and it seems really great. I'm gonna use it for sure but I've a question that is more strategic and it's something the tool can't help me with 😛 I've a website active from 2008 and really well known in my country as a service website... we're like your "advisor" for utilities and insurances. The reason why is "savings" but really focused on utilities (broadband, gas, electricity) and check accounts or insurances. I’ve always used folders in my URLs instead of subdomains (for example www.site.com/section1 or www.site.com/section2 ). In this period I’m planning to open a new website section related to saving but not really close with what we really do in the rest of the website. This section is about coupons, vouchers and little offers. The problem is that with that section I’m going to write really a lot (a lot) of content trying to gain a lot of external links. It’s obvious that I already have a lot of contents about my core business and I’m going to write contents for original categories too. This section is anyway secondary for my business and my worry is that Google can identify me in the future as a website mainly focused on this new product. I’m really well indexed so I don’t want this decision to have any effect on my original situation. Finally the question 😛 Is it better to maintain for this section the same website structure with folders or indentify it as a subdomain to remark that it’s going to be like a totally different site with his dedicated news and all the rest? That’s why I’m evaluating a subdomain but I’m not really convinced cause subdomains can be considered as a different approach compared to original structure and of course using folder can be useful to gain root’s site rank. On the other hand, what can Google think about my core business? Thanks a lot for your help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Uby850 -
Domain Name Redirect Question
My agency just built a new website for a client who is a franchisee. It's not launched yet - it's currently under an IP address. I suggested to client that he buy a keyword-rich domain name for it, which he did. Then he found out that the franchisor will not allow it to be his main domain name. They want him to use a domain name with the franchisor name in it. But they WILL allow him to put a 301 redirect on that franchisor-approved domain name, and redirect it to his keyword-rich domain name. He is interested in having my agency perform an SEO Campaign for this new website. But would SEO and link marketing work for a website that has a new non-keyword domain name that 301 redirects to a new keyword-rich domain name?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | netsites0 -
Changing a subdomain to a full domain to rank for a keyword
We have been attempting to get our blogsite to rank for our business name(Instabill). We are now considering changing the url from blog.instabill.com to something like instabillblog.com. I have following concerns about the change; Will changing the domain really be that helpful (i.e. will the change get our blog on page one for the term instabill) We have over 350 pages of content on our blog. Will changing the domain have possible negative effects ( I was thinking of using url updater in webmaster tools and creating a permanent 301 redirect from the older url to the new) Having never changed a url for a site with this much content and seo value for my company I would like to know the following from someone who has made mistakes here before; what not to do what steps you would take to make the transition easier Any help here will be greatly appreciated. cheers, Instabill
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Instabill0 -
"Too many links" - PageRank question
This question seems to come up a lot. 70 flat page site. For ease of navigation, I want to link every page to one-another. Pure CSS Dropdown menu with categories - each expanding to each of the subpage. Made, implemented, remade smartphone friendly. Hurray. I thought this was an SEO principle - ensuring good site navigation and good internal linking. Not forcing your users to hit "back". Not forcing your users to jump through hoops. But unless I've misread http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-many-links-is-too-many then this is something that's indirectly penalised by Google because a site with 70 links from its homepage only lets each sub-page inherit 1/80th of its PageRank. Good site navigation vs your subpages are invisible on Google.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JamesFx0