Which one is better?
-
I am working on creating new blog. I already had one. I want to add this new topics as subdomain. Now i am confused. Which one will be better for SEO?
subdomain.maysite.com or mysite.com/subdomain
Thanks in advance
-
This quote is from Moz's domain setup guide:
"Since search engines keep different metrics for domains than they do subdomains, it is recommended that webmasters place link-worthy content like blogs in subfolders rather than subdomains. (i.e. www.example.com/blog/ rather than blog.example.com) The notable exceptions to this are language-specific websites. (i.e., en.example.com for the English version of the website)."
I think that quote is pretty compelling towards the idea of subdirectories. But I think the value of subfolders versus directories certainly makes sense especially from a linking, age, and juice perspective. Ultimately, it comes down to you and what you want for the website.
-
I agree with Tim Holmes, here is a detailed explanation why sub-folder are better than sub-domain now.
- Sub-domains are treated as a separate entity now, and they don't add to SEO value of the main domain.
- Any links within the subdomain to the main domain are treated as external links.
- Since links are coming from an external domain but the same IP, this may be treated a low-quality backlink for the main domain, though people are divided over this but it can neutral to negative impact instead of being positive. As search engines would consider this as unnatural linking.
- Sub-Folders are treated as part of the domain and pass all the SEO value when connecting internally.
Here is a response from Rand Fishkin to a similar question
Subfolders are the way to go, but they're hard to do for a lot of organizations. Many CMS' (like Hubspot) make it quite challenging to host a Wordpress installation on a subfolder, but subdomains are pretty easy. Hence, when choosing where to host a blog or a separate content section, many folks go with the easier route rather than the one that requires a lot of technical effort and webdev/engineering time.
However, that doesn't mean that they're not losing out - I'd wager that all of those companies would see a bump if they moved their blogs to a subfolder of the same domain. We see this in example after example when sites invest in it, and you can see plenty of folks discussing their own experiences in the comments of the Moz post you linked to.
I hope this helps, feel free to ask further questions and respond to answer.
Regards,
Vijay
-
This has been banded around so many times, in general I would advocate a sub folder as opposed to sub domain. purely due to the value it adds to your sites main chosen domain, if it were on a sub domain this is where the value would sit and it would not pass any value around as well as it could a sub folder. It is only potentially a small benefit, but a benefit none the less.
A good recent on it was had back on Jan https://moz.com/community/q/the-great-subdomain-vs-subfolder-debate-what-is-the-best-answer
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
-
Assigning WooCommerce products to more than one category - Correct methodology?
I manage a store selling prescription glasses, many of which are unisex or apply to more than one category. I have already assigned the canonical URL for each category, but my question is, if a product appears in more than one category, do I need to set the canonical URL in each product to reflect the category I want it to index under? Therefore, any additional categories that product appears in simply refers the link value back to the canonical URL. I note that in Yoast, under each product, there's note in the canonical setting to leave it empty to default to permalink, so this has confused me a little. I'm just concerned that by applying a product to multiple categories, it may be causing duplicate content, as I have a lot of duplicate issues which I'll raise in another question. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | SushiUK1 -
Several personal websites moving to one domain - 301 or 302?
I feel like I've thought about this so much that now I'm thinking in circles and can't figure this out, so I hope someone can help! We have a group of physicians who currently practice privately, but are going to become one entity with one website. However, they are going to look like sub-entities, if this makes sense - instead of every practice being "One Practice Medical Group" they'll be "Lakeside Primary Care - A One Practice Medical Group Company," and then the other guy will be "Red Mountain Primary Care - A One Practice Medical Group Company" and so on for about a half dozen practices. They all have personal sites already, and many are concerned that they will lose any history for their personal sites and will not rank as well in Google as they do right now. One doctor really wants to keep his own site, and then just have a link on his profile page of the new entity's website. Isn't this counterproductive? Also, if we do redirect all the personal websites to the new entity's domain, it will pass any page rank they already have, correct? Should these be 301 redirects, or 302 redirects? None of the current sites really have a lot of "link juice" but we're working with several strong personalities who want the benefits of the big entity but the autonomy of a private practice.
Technical SEO | | RachelEm0 -
Cant find internal links on one of my pages.
When I run open site explorer for www.kingremodeling.com/ss.php?pid=5 it says there are 40 links to it on my site. However, I cannot find these links on any of the pages that open site explorer lists such as my homepage www.KingRemodeling.com. Totally confused!
Technical SEO | | allb830 -
Redirect to get better ranking
I have three pages of my website ranking for a keyword: landing page and two blogposts. They all rank on top of page 2 (positions 11-13).If I redirect these articles to the landing page, will it help to bring it up in rankings?
Technical SEO | | imoney0 -
Isnt it better to have headlines in H1 and H2 tags instead of p tags?
I am working with a simple site http://http://lightsigns.com/Uniko_Manufacturing_Limited.html They seek more SEO traffic. However, the two big headlines that read "Wholesale Supply to the Sign and Display Industries" which is on line 241 and 242 of the source code, its in a p tag, i.e. <p <span class="webkit-html-tag">style</p <span>="padding-top: 0pt; " class="paragraph_style_1">Wholesale Supply to the and <p <span class="webkit-html-tag">style</p <span>="padding-bottom: 0pt; " class="paragraph_style_1">Sign and Display Industries Likewise, the product titles are in p tags, also. For example, on the Slide-in Light Box product page, http://lightsigns.com/Slide_In_light_box.html , I have done keyword research and no one is using the words slide in light box.Plus, it is also a p tag, ie. line 43 reads style="padding-bottom: 0pt; padding-top: 0pt; " class="paragraph_style">Slide-in Light Box If I suggest that they make an H2 tag with SEO-optimized keywords such as Display Light Box - Slide-In LIght Box, would this indeed help SEO? In summary, is it correct to say that H1 and H2 tags are stronger signals to the search bots of what the page is about?
Technical SEO | | BridgetGibbons1 -
I physically changed my URL and now I have two...How do I get rid of the old one?
Hi, I physically changed my URL as something else and now Google thinks I have two duplicate pages (I know not to do this in the future). e.g. I had www.example.com/i-like-seo.aspx and changed it to: www.example.com/i-love-seo.aspx Google sees this as two pages now and my CMS system is only showing one page (The new page) Also, SEOMOZ is seeing two pages and further more sees them both as having two different amounts of inbound links? When I change content on the new url page, the old url page also updates. I'm really confused as to what has happened here and don't know how to get rid of the old url so that Google doesn't think that I have duplicate content. Any help to what has happened or how to fix it would be so helpful and appreciated. Many thanks.
Technical SEO | | CoGri0 -
If multiple links on a page point to the same URL, and one of them is no-followed, does that impact the one that isn't?
Page A has two links on it that both point to Page B. Link 1 isn't no-follow, but Link 2 is. Will Page A pass any juice to Page B?
Technical SEO | | Jay.Neely0 -
Google WMT shows sitemap.xml highest ranked for one main keyword
Hello, I am seeing my sitemap.xml show up in Google webmaster tools at the top for one of the main keywords for my site. This is in the Your Site on the Web - Keywords section. The URLs of my site contain this keyword, which is why I figure it showed up. I'm curious if this should be a concern to me? I find it odd that the sitemap would show up in this way. Thanks
Technical SEO | | nux0