Subdomains & SEO
-
Exact match domains are great for ranking but what about domains which contain just half of the full phrase being targeted?
eg. If you owned the domain rentals.co.uk but wanted to target the search term "car rentals"
Regarding backlinks, would it be best to link back to your rentals.co.uk homepage (using anchor text "car rentals") or to one of the following:
a) www.rentals.co.uk/car-rentals
b) car.rentals.co.uk AND 301 redirect to www.rentals.co.uk
c) car.rentals.co.uk AND 301 redirect to www.rentals.co.uk/car-rentals
-
Definitely
-
let us know how you go
-
Great to hear first hand Alan. Likewise, I can say that exact match domains hold a significant advantage.
I think I'm going to give the matching subdomain a shot since I don't have the exact match domain.
-
i certianly have, i am woking on a job right now, where we have done just what you are contemplating, and they are ranking 2 on bing and 5 on google for chosen keyword phrase, that is only partial match to subdomain. it definatly has an affect.
-
That seems like a pretty good indication that it's better to go with the exact match domain rather than completing it with a sub domain.
A sensible URL structure and optimized Titles and Descriptions will also help.
-
Yes, good point about domain outranking path.
I am looking at a new site that should have a fair amount of content so definitely considering the exact match.
One concern is that I can't remember seeing an exact match subdomain rank at the top of search engine results.
-
A good answer.
-
I dont think so, domian and subdomain out rank path.
i would make that choice on the amount of content i had, if i only had one page i would not go for a subdomain.
-
Wouldn't rentals.co.uk/car-rentals be better than carrentals.rentals.co.uk if adding the whole phrase?
-
Yes it would.
Exact match domain is best
then i would say exact match sub-domain
then split sub + doamin
even if its in the path its all good.
why not have carrentals.rentals.co.uk to avoid the risk.
-
Thanks guys. Just one other thing to throw into the equation, if the domain was unused and only contained half the phrase but a sub domain would be an exact match would it be worth using the subdomain?
The reason I am so interested in exact match is that I have an exact domain which outranks sites which should ordinarily be above mine.
-
I agree with Kyle's comments. Better off concentrating on building good quality links, plus don't forget about the all important content of course, keep it unique, relevant and interesting
-
Sorry i may have worded that oddly in my reply. They would certainly count as a direct match if they are in subdomains. What i was trying to stress is that Google doesn't value direct match domains as much as they use too. However, Bing and Yahoo still do.
So my suggestion was to direct your focus to other important aspects of SEO. Go with a keyword match in your URL off your base domain, focus on those back links with great anchor text, and spend plenty of time on your on-page aspects.
With all of that you will out rank any exact match domain.
-
I am not sure how sub + domain ranks in comparison to purly having the keywords in thedomain name itself, but it certainly would help.
I noted that my grammar and spelling was not that good in my explaining above, so
may recap. If you 301 the subdomain, then it will not appear in searh engines
at all, it will show the final url, and there would be no benefit.As for splitting authority, I don’t think that is true. Looking a site links for
domainname.com shows links for sub.domainname.com, I thing this shows that
search engines can tell it is the same site. -
Thanks Kyle. So direct match subdomains don't come close to exact match domains?
-
V.interesting, thanks. My only hesistation about using subdomains would be splitting the authority between the two.
But wondering in my reply to Simon about whether there are any benefit of submain + domain = search phrase?
-
For every 301 redirect you do, you lose a little link juice.
Also, from my experiences with direct match domains... in google it barely helps. However yahoo and bing still place a lot of value in it. I would focus on building relevant links and on page optimizations for your site rather than trying to get keyword matches in your domain.
-
Many thanks for both responses. My thoughts about 301'ing subdomains were the same until I recently came across a site listing their subdomain (301 to homepage) in backlinks which completed the search phrase by joining both subdomain and domain together. They rank #1 for the search term in Google. However, I have also seen them using the same anchor text linking to their homepage so this could be a legacy strategy.
Do you think submain + domain = search phrase carries any advantage?
-
If you want to rank for car rentals, i would have a seperate page for it, i would not 301 back to homepage there would be on no use of having a different url in teh first place. it would be in fact leak a bit of link juice as 301's leak link juice.
If you havge a lot of content for car rentals i would go for the sub domain. I have always prefered sub domains to sub directories but 2 recent development have pushed me further that way.
1. google WMT now count links from sub directories to a root directories as internal links and assume ownership of sub domains simply if you own the root domain, unless the sub domain has been verified but somone else.2. Site links for a root domain include pages from sub domains.
In my expirences link juice flows freely from root to sub domains and back if you have stronng internal linking structure from sub domains to root domains and back..
-
Hi Marty
Rand did a Blog post on this back in October, check out http://www.seomoz.org/blog/exact-match-domains-are-far-too-powerful-is-their-time-limited
Historically, exact match domains appear to have proved great for rankings (high correlation, though not necessarily causation). It seems to be the general expectation, which I agree with, that recently and moving forwards, exact match domains won't have such a high weighting by the search engine algorithms, Google in particular.
If you can get hold of an exact match domain, then great, though not necessary if the website does it's job well and has all the usuals, such as great content and high quality relevant inbound links.
An example to build confidence; Google 'car rental insurance' you'll see that the 1st result is www.insurance4carhire.com which doesn't have the term 'rental' in the domain name.
Backlinks; naturally looking is usually the best policy. Certainly some to the homepage, some deep links too, usually to the main product pages. Depends on which pages you feel to be the most important to your visitors.
301'ing backlinks and subdomains; not advisable and usually some of that valuable link juice is lost. Best to have all or as many as possible pointing to the ultimate destination page.
Hope that helps,
Regards
Simon
-
I would go after backlinks with the anchor text of "car rentals" back to www.rentals.co.uk/car-rentals. It will increase your domain authority and page authority without the risk of splitting your links across domains.
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
-
Only fraction of the AMP pages are indexed
Back in June, we had seen a sharp drop in traffic on our website. We initially assumed that it was due to the Core Update that was rolled out in early June. We had switched from http to https in May, but thought that should have helped rather than cause a problem. Until early June the traffic was trending upwards. While investigating the issue, I noticed that only a fraction (25%) of the AMP pages have been indexed. The pages don't seem to be getting indexed even though they are valid. Accordingly to Google Analytics too, the percentage of AMP traffic has dropped from 67-70% to 40-45%. I wonder if it is due to the indexing issue. In terms of implementation it seems fine. We are pointing canonical to the AMP page from the desktop version and to the desktop version from the AMP page. Any tips on how to fix the AMP indexing issue. Should I be concerned that only a fraction of the AMP pages are indexed. I really hope you can help in resolving this issue.
Technical SEO | | Gautam1 -
Multiregional SEO - different website designs
Hello, when it comes to location & language targeting, is it possible to have different website page designs for their respective regions? So let's say we have one design for www.example.com/product-1 and a completely different design for www.example.com/us/product-1? Our branding is different for the US so would ideally like to use specific US designs for US pages. Thanks,
Technical SEO | | SEOCT0 -
Wordpress pagination and SEO
Hello Mozzers, We have incorporated Wordpress blog in our website. The blog has a fair share of what we believe is a valuable content both for the users and SEO. We have reached the point where our content is getting pushed out to pages 2, 3 and etc. 99% of the older content is still relevant and useful. However it does get less traffic from the users because it is not on the front page. I am dealing with it by showing "related posts" and get some traffic through that. I feel that the content that got pushed from the front page of the blog gets less love from search engines as well.The my permalink structure is /%postname%/ only, however when Wordpress adds page/1/ the SEO ranking appears to drop. Is it because Wordpress adds page/1/ to the address? What is a good way to optimize is? I have 15 posts showing on the front page should I increase it?
Technical SEO | | SirMax0 -
Anyone a Bing SEO Expert?
I have a website that is getting great long tail search positions in Google for a website.The site is not getting any Bing or Yahoo positions for these long tail terms. I'm trying to find someone has experience or can give advice on Bing rankings. Is their anything specific I should watch out for when trying to rank in Bing?
Technical SEO | | EngNet0 -
SEO value of an on-site hosted blog
We are in the process of upgrading our blogging capability. Our preference would be to host a Wordpress blog under our site url. However due to our technical set up we've found out that it isn't possible to put Wordpress onto our servers so we'll need to go with a hosted version. Does anyone have any idea or examples of how this could affect our SEO performance? Also - is Wordpress the best tool - seems to be the most popular! Thanks. Jon
Technical SEO | | TTS_Group0 -
Can subdomains boost the main domain?
HI I know that having a strong domain can help when creating sub domains, but can it also work the other way round? Can having a number of strong sub domains help the top level domain's quality and history? My reason for asking is that I have half a dozen domains which have been used for various projects, and still are, which have involved having a landing page on the root domain and running dozens of sub domains. These subdomains, across 6 root domains, have about 500,000 pages indexed. I have now decided I should do something with the root domain so am wondering if there are any benefits I would have gained from my initial approach. Thanks
Technical SEO | | Grumpy_Carl0 -
Subdirectories vs subdomains
Hi SEO gurus 🙂 Anyone has input on what's better? blog.domain.com vs domain.com/blog store.domain.com vs domain.com/store etc I think the subdir (/xyz) will concentrate authority on the same subdomain so should be better? However sometimes it is tidier on the server to maintain online stores or blogs in a separate strucutre so subdomains work better in that sense. I just want to make sure that doesn't affect SEO? Cheers!
Technical SEO | | hectorpn0 -
Help with SEO
Hello, I am brand new to SEO and I'm learning on the go everyday. I am having issues with Google and getting any sort of ranking or analysis or even just traffic reports. I understand the site has never really been optimized so it might really not have any reports. So basically my real question is what helpful tricks or hints do you guys have that I can implement? Anything and everything helps. So far I have run the crawl diagnostics and I'm working on fixing the errors. Thanks fr your help.
Technical SEO | | Future130