Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Impact of Medium blog hosted on my subdomain
-
I am using the Medium blogging platform to blog, but it is pointed to my site and appears at blog.mysite.com.
Since the content is hosted on Medium and pointed to my subdomain via an A Record / CNAME / etc...
1. Will my domain get credit for backlinks to the blog content?
2. If Medium changes in the future and no longer points to my subdomain, will I lose all of the backlinks I've built up?
-
Thanks John,
The right decision is clear to me now.
-Dave
-
David,
Everything John just said in Point 2 is exactly what was running through my mind as I read your question. As the person responsible for the SEO strength of your website, you should have full control over as much of your SEO activity as possible. If your blogging platform is concerning as described, you really need to reevaluate whether that's the best thing for your site.
-
David -
Thanks for your question, and it's one I see often. I would say this is a much bigger question than "subdomain v subfolder", but really the ability to affect your own SEO.
In direct answer to your questions:
- Since it's on your subdomain, yes. Make sure you have that subdomain verified in Search Console and sitemaps submitted, parameters controlled, etc as well. Also link between your main domain and your subdomain to pass link equity back and forth.
- If they change in the future and no longer point to your subdomain with no way for you to reclaim your content and republish it on a blog you host yourself, then yes. However, I don't really see this happening anytime soon.
Point 2 brings up the bigger question of if you should host your blog on Medium. While it is indeed a beautiful platform and writing on it is a joy (I actually do a lot of blog drafting in their editor), you don't have control over a lot of things such as:
- Internal linking within sidebars/top navs to other important places on your own website
- Full branding. I do recognize that you can add a top banner and branding at the top of blogs hosted on Medium, but it still overall looks like a Medium blog (their typeface, their styles, etc) not like your own brand
If you are concerned about the SEO implications (as you seem to be and should be), I'd definitely recommend investigating a self-hosted blog platform like WordPress instead of Medium.
Good luck!
-
1. Yes your domain gets credit for the backlinks.
2. If they change in the future and just have everything on Medium and not your subdomain you would lose the backlinks. I don't see that happening though.
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
-
# Tag - opacity and SEO impact
Hello,
Technical SEO | | Tiffany_Barn
I have a query animation 'fade-in-up' on my website: tiffanybarnard.com which moves the H1 tag slightly and fades it in from zero opacity to 1. Will this affect the SEO value of the H1 tag?
Thank you!0 -
Exclude local host traffic from google analytics
I'm getting a lot of local host referral traffic from an unknown source.I want to get rid of this from my google analytics reports. I've tried this filter - but the traffic still appears. Filtername = local host Filtertype= custom Exclude = filter field referral Filter pattern (.?localhost.?) Any ideas ? thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | ThomasErb0 -
Blocked jquery in Robots.txt, Any SEO impact?
I've heard that Google is now indexing links and stuff available in javascript and jquery. My webmastertools is showing that some links are blocked in robots.txt of jquery. Sorry I'm not a developer or designer. I want to know is there any impact of this on my SEO? and also how can I unblock it for the robots? Check this screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/3VDWikC.png
Technical SEO | | hammadrafique0 -
Why is my blog disappearing from Google index?
My Google blogger blog is about 10 months old. In that time i have worked really hard with adding unique content, building relationships with other bloggers in the same niche, and done some inbound marketing. 2 weeks ago I updated the template to something cleaner, with a little more "wordpress" feel to it. This means i've messed about with the code a lot in these weeks, adding social buttons etc. The problem is that from some point late last week thurs/fri my pages started disappearing from Googles index. I have checked webmaster tools and have no manual actions. My link profile is pretty clean as its a new site, and i have manually checked every piece of content published for plagiarism etc. So what is going on? Did i break my blog? Or is something else amiss? Impressions are down 96% comparing Nov 1-5th to previous 5 days. site is here: http://bit.ly/174beVm Thanks for any help in advance.
Technical SEO | | Silkstream0 -
Hosting sitemap on another server
I was looking into XML sitemap generators and one that seems to be recommended quite a bit on the forums is the xml-sitemaps.com They have a few versions though. I'll need more than 500 pages indexed, so it is just a case of whether I go for their paid for version and install on our server or go for their pro-sitemaps.com offering. For the pro-sitemaps.com they say: "We host your sitemap files on our server and ping search engines automatically" My question is will this be less effective than my installing it on our server from an SEO perspective because it is no longer on our root domain?
Technical SEO | | design_man0 -
Keep the blog separate or incorporate into main domain?
So my organization currently has both a main site and on a separate domain and separate host a wordpress blog. (our own domain not a wordpress.com) the content posted on this blog is local, community driven, and related to our business but it is not used in anyway as a "sales" tool. It's more for interaction purposes with members and employees. This blog has a lot of content and is updated with new posts very often. (generate traffic from a pretty wide variety of searches some related some not) My plan has been to 301 the old domain and move the wordpress blog over to our root domain in a subdirectory such as oursite.com/blog. Does anyone have tips for moving a blog over like this? I'm concerned about any link juice it has dropping off and since it does provide some links to our root site currently (since it's basically a separate site). Basically i'm wondering if it'll be worth the effort or if i should just keep it separate and focus on other content gen strategies.
Technical SEO | | SCFederal0 -
Exact match subdomains
Hi, I have seen significant SEO benefits from owning exact match domains and was wondering whether exact match subdomains hold the same (or some) of these benefits? eg. halloweencostumes.co.uk vs. halloween [dot] costumes.co.uk Many thanks.
Technical SEO | | martyc0 -
Subdomain and Domain Rankings
I have read here that domain names with keywords might add a boost to your search rank For instance using a completely inane example monkey-fights.com might get a boost compared to mfl.com (monkey fighting league) when searching for "monkey fights" There seems to be a hot debate as to how much bonus the first domain might get over the second, but leaving that aside for the moment. Question 1. Would monkey-fights.mfl.com get the same kind of bonus as a root domain bonus? Question 2. If the answer to 1 above was yes would a 301 redirect from the suddomain URL to root domain URL retain that bonus I was just thinking on how hard it is to get root domains these days that are not either being squatted on etc. and if this might be a way to get the same bonus, or maybe subdomains are less bonus prone and so it would be a waste of time Thanks
Technical SEO | | bThere0