Microsite on subdomain vs. subdirectory
-
Based on this post from 2009, it's recommended in most situations to set up a microsite as a subdirectory as opposed to a subdomain. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites. The primary argument seems to be that the search engines view the subdomain as a separate entity from the domain and therefore, the subdomain doesn't benefit from any of the trust rank, quality scores, etc. Rand made a comment that seemed like the subdomain could SOMETIMES inherit some of these factors, but didn't expound on those instances.
What determines whether the search engine will view your subdomain hosted microsite as part of the main domain vs. a completely separate site? I read it has to do with the interlinking between the two.
-
I think the footer is the best way to interlink the websites in a non-obtrusive way for users. This should make your main corporate site your top linking site to each subdomain - and this is something you should be able to verify in a tool like Google Webmaster Tools. I do not have any specific examples to support this, but this is a common web practice.
This is not 100% related, but Google recently suggested using Footer links as one way to associate your web content with your Google profile account:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1408986
So you can figure if Google looks to footer links to associate authorship - they would likely do the same to relate sites together.
-
Hi Ryan,
Your question is quite interesting. I, myself, went through the article one more time. I have no facts to back up the following, but I hope that it will contribute. FIrst I would go and validate them on webmaster tools. If they are inteded to hit a certain market, I will select that geographical location. Also, I think you have litte to worry about. I imagine that google won't pass certain trust to subdomains, depending on the site. If the number of subdomains is considerable, I would say that they have pretty slim chances of getting some push from the main site. Take for example free webhosting services. They could rank and have decent page rank, if people show interest to the particular subdomain, but is highly unlikely taht to be caused by the authority of the main site.
I haven't seen free hosting subdomain rank well for a long time now. On the other hand you have student and academic accounts on university sites. They all go with subfolders and rank pretty well for highly specific topics. If I have to give a short answer, I would say that is the type of site that makes the difference for google. If your site is considers a casual business website and you are developing a new market then you might not have a problem. If you use sudbomains for specifying product, then you might be ok again.
Google use subdomain for all their major products. For Google pages they used a separate domain. They now redirects to a subdomain sites.google.com. However, they will never give subdomains for personal use. There might be something to that. They do a 301 redirect from a subdomain on googlepages.com to sites.google.com/site/. So what they offer is a 301 redirect to a sub-sub folder, located on a subdomain on Google.
-
Ok. That makes sense. The way our company would use it is having a microsite for specific, focused topics - large enough that warrant their own site. They are clearly part of our overall brand, unlike the Disney properties example. On each of these sites, there will almost always be a link back to the main/corporate website, usually in the footer.
Do you think having one or two links on every page pointing back to company.com would be sufficient to notify search engines that the two are associated, and ultimately give some search value to the subdomain hosted microsite from the main domain?
Are there any studies or evidence supporting any of this?
-
Interlinking is definitely a factor - but content is what matters.
Take the Disney brands that live on Go.com:
They all live on Go.com but Google surely knows they are really separate sites that cover different topics. Same for any blogspot.com, typepad.com, etc. hosted blog. The millions of blogs there cover a wide range of topics and search engines understand that they are not related just because they share the same host domain.
On the other end of the spectrum - if your site just has two subdomains - let's say www.website.com and blog.website.com ... which cover the same topics and link to one another, search engines would more likely associate those two addresses.
-
I don't have an answer to your question, but if you're looking for some more reading about subdomains vs. TLDs, here is a presentation given at MozCon: http://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/mozcon-international-seo/. The slideshow has some info about it, and a bunch of other good stuff.
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
-
Full Ecommerce vs seperate shop section
Just wondering is anyone had any thoughts on whats the easiest for SEO purposes. My main focus is to get people to buy our installation services. We could either a) Have a full ecommerce website and on every product we can advertise the fact that we install the products. As well as creatign additinal CMS pages OR b) Create a content driven site promoting our installation services and then having a separate tab at the top which can be very prominent called Shop or Buy online. The customer can then visit that page for DIY products. Would either option be a better option for SEO purposes/usability for the customer?
Technical SEO | | paulfoz16091 -
Robots.txt vs. meta noindex, follow
Hi guys, I wander what your opinion is concerning exclution via the robots.txt file.
Technical SEO | | AdenaSEO
Do you advise to keep using this? For example: User-agent: *
Disallow: /sale/*
Disallow: /cart/*
Disallow: /search/
Disallow: /account/
Disallow: /wishlist/* Or do you prefer using the meta tag 'noindex, follow' instead?
I keep hearing different suggestions.
I'm just curious what your opinion / suggestion is. Regards,
Tom Vledder0 -
Why use noindex, follow vs rel next/prev
Look at what www.shutterstock.com/cat-26p3-Abstract.html does with their search results page 3 for 'Abstract' - same for page 2-N in the paginated series. | name="robots" content="NOINDEX, FOLLOW"> |
Technical SEO | | jrjames83
| | Why is this a better alternative then using the next/prev, per Google's official statement on pagination? http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1663744 Which doesn't even mention this as an option. Any ideas? Does this improve the odds of the first page in the paginated series ranking for the target term? There can't be a 'view all page' because there are simply too many items. Jeff0 -
SEOMoz Crawler vs Googlebot Question
I read somewhere that SEOMoz’s crawler marks a page in its Crawl Diagnostics as duplicate content if it doesn’t have more than 5% unique content.(I can’t find that statistic anywhere on SEOMoz to confirm though). We are an eCommerce site, so many of our pages share the same sidebar, header, and footer links. The pages flagged by SEOMoz as duplicates have these same links, but they have unique URLs and category names. Because they’re not actual duplicates of each other, canonical tags aren’t the answer. Also because inventory might automatically come back in stock, we can’t use 301 redirects on these “duplicate” pages. It seems like it’s the sidebar, header, and footer links that are what’s causing these pages to be flagged as duplicates. Does the SEOMoz crawler mimic the way Googlebot works? Also, is Googlebot smart enough not to count the sidebar and header/footer links when looking for duplicate content?
Technical SEO | | ElDude0 -
Old domain vs. New keyword domain - Thoughts?
Okay. I'd like to get opinions as to what everyone thinks about domains lately. Here is any example: The current domain is general in nature, in fact, it's a persons name because they are a real estate agent. So the domain is something like JohnDoe.com. Current stats: Has approx. 130 linking domains pointing to it. Has over 300 incoming links from these linking domains. The link profile is clean and not spammy (not to say there are not a few that might be here and there) Was bough in 1994 The new domain would have very little value except it would be keyword rich such as PortlandHomesForSale.com (just an example). What are your thoughts. Thank you.
Technical SEO | | JordanRussell0 -
Backlink: External blog Vs. Internal blog. Which is the best?
Hi, some weeks ago a created a blog: mykeyword.wordpress.com Some one told me that it has got more trust that a "normal" www.mykeyword.com
Technical SEO | | Greenman
Is it true? So, i wrote some articles and dropped a guide (linking inside to mysite.com) to blog. My question is:
Right now i'm writing a lot of article ad i'm looking for the best channel where publish my content (post with link inside). My focus is improving quantity and quality of backlinks. Which way must i use? 1. Use my mykeyword.wordpress.com (give freshness to blog and new backlink)
2. Create ad internal blog mysite.com/blog and add article (without link?)
3. "Don't lose time" - Put new article only in external blog that will link to my site. I must manage a lot of new sites and i should increase SERP position. So, i have to choose the right way right now. Thanks 😉0 -
Internal vs external blog and best way to set up
I have a client that has two domians registered - one uses www.keywordaustralia.com the other uses www.keywordaelaide.com He had already bought and used the first domain when he came to me I suggested the second as being worth buying as going for a more local keyword would be more appropriate. Now I have suggested to him that a blog would be a worthy use of the second domain and a way to build links to his site - however I am reading that as all links will be from the same site it wont be worth much in the long run and an internal blog is better as it means updated content on his site. should i use the second domain for blog, or just 301 the second domain to his first domain. Or is it viable to use the second domain as the blog and just set up an rss feed on his page ? Is there a way to have the second domain somehow 'linked' to his first domain with the blog so that google sees them as connected ? NOOBIE o_0
Technical SEO | | mamacassi0 -
Blog on a subdomain vs subfolder?
Hi, Does anyone have data to show that a subfolder is better than a subdomain for a blog? From what I've read, it sounds like both are a viable option but you choose subdomain if you want to build your blog as a distinct entity. Do you get ranked more quickly with a subfolder? Do you see X% more lift? Has anyone tested or seen tests around this subject? Any input is appreciated! Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | sportstvjobs0