Blogs are best when hosted on domain, subdomain, or...?
-
I’ve heard the it is a best practice to host your blog within your site. I’ve also heard it’s best to put it on a subdomain. What do you believe is the best home for your blog and why?
-
Andrew while I agree with what you say, is there not a greater risk if your blog is hacked and then a hacker may gain access to the server where as on a sub-domain the blog can be on a different server?
-
Just because you have WordPress running your blog, doesn't mean WordPress has access to edit the files of the main eCommerce site. You can install a standalone WordPress blog in examples.com/blog and have regular HTML files serving example.com
You can also takes steps to secure your WordPress installation on top of this.
-
Agree that blogs are best in a sub folder BUT if you have an ecommerce site it is best practice to have your blog on a subdomain
This is purely for security reasons, if your wordpress blog gets hacked, the hackers will not gain access to your eCommerce site as it is on a different server
-
Rand agrees with this approach too - just check out http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites/
"Starting a blog? I almost always recommend yoursite.com/blog over blog.yoursite.com. Want to launch a new section of content? Use yoursite.com/newstuff rather than newstuff.yoursite.com."
There's also this: http://www.hyperarts.com/blog/blog-hosting-external-subdomain-subdirectory-best-seo/ which may help as well.
-
Thanks for the expanded explanation! Onward and upward then...
-
Subdomains are a dangerous choice unless you know exactly how to deal with them from a high level SEO perspective because it's too easy to miss all sorts of issues.
Just one example (and it goes way beyond "losing a very very small amount of link juice):
Even though you get the SEO value at the root domain level even in a subdomain scenario, since you use www for the main site, that itself is considered a subdomain. So the main site (the www subdomain) still doesn't get all the strength value from new content, inbound links, and social mentions for the blog subdomain.
Even then, if you were to switch to domain.com (and redirect all www.domain.com to that), the most value/strength/trust signal value comes from self-contained.
There ARE exceptions to this under very specific and narrow circumstances. For example, if you have an eCommerce site, and your blog is not focused on your products, but instead, is more informational in nature revolving around other topics (such as the manufacturing process in your industry, or how consumers use products (not just yours), etc.), having the blog on the main domain tree could potentially dilute the ecommerce value of the main site.
Again though, the need to get it "right" is just not worth the effort of splitting them out in most situations.
<colgroup><col width="605"></colgroup>
| http://uhealthsystem.com/doctors | -
Thanks for the quick reply...I have the book - and it certainly is meaty !
I have been going about the way you describe (www.domain.com/blog) just wanted to get some re-affirmation after hearing from (what I think) is a reputable source that subdomain is better.
Everyone on board with this approach or does anyone have a strong argument against?
-
Technically, you're loosing a very very small amount of link juice by hosting it on a subdomain. The optimal configuration is www.domain.com/blog.
Source - SEO Secrets (great book by the way)
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
-
Content on subdomain...
We recently moved our Wordpress site to a new host (WPEngine). We had forums on the old web host, which we need to migrate to a new forum platform (Xenforo) and integrate into the WP site. Since WPEngine only allows Wordpress on their servers, we need to install the forums at another web host, on one of our other domains. We might point to the forums through a subdomain, like this: forums.our-primary-domain.com The main reason we're re-installing the forums is for SEO value. HOWEVER, since our forum content will be on another domain, will we have an issue? If so, is there a workaround that would give us 'credit' for that content? Thanks much.
Technical SEO | | jmueller08230 -
Keyword domain usage
Hi I have a client who wants some advice on the following and I haven't come up with anything decent yet. So wanted to throw it out here. They own a domain like soccershoes.com which also houses their web site. They have now bought ussoccershoes.com because this US based search term is more popular than simply soccer shoes. How can they utilise this new domain effectively to drive traffic to their main web site? Thanks for any input.
Technical SEO | | yolkcreative0 -
Blog separate from Website
One of my clients has a well established website, and a well established blog - each with its own domain. Is there any way to move the blog to his website domain without losing the SEO and links that he has built up over time?
Technical SEO | | EchelonSEO0 -
I've consolidated other domains to a single one with 301 redirects, yet the new domain authority in MOZ is much less that the redirected ones. Is that right?
I'm trying to increase the domain authority of my main site, so decided to consolidate other sites. One of the other sites has a much higher domain authority, but I don't know why after a 301 redirect, the new site's domain authority hasn't changed on over a month. Does MOZ take account of thes types of things?
Technical SEO | | bytecgroup2 -
Will Links to one Sub-Domain on a Site hurt a different Sub-Domain on the same site by affecting the Quality of the Root Domain?
Hi, I work for a SaaS company which uses two different subdomains on our site. A public for our main site (which we want to rank in SERPs for), and a secure subdomain, which is the portal for our customers to access our services (which we don't want to rank for) . Recently I realized that by using our product, our customers are creating large amounts of low quality links to our secure subdomain and I'm concerned that this might affect our public subdomain by bringing down the overall Authority of our root domain. Is this a legitimate concern? Has anyone ever worked through a similar situation? any help is appreciated!
Technical SEO | | ifbyphone0 -
Redirect to new domain
We are moving our website from http://mysyncpad.com to http://syncpadapp.com The old site ranks pretty well for some specific keywords, will a 301 allow the new site to rank as well or will it be penalized by good for the transfer?
Technical SEO | | fifthlayer0 -
I was googling the word "best web hosting" and i notice the 1st and 3rd result were results with google plus. Does Google plus now play a role in improving ranking for the website?
I was googling the word "best web hosting" and i notice the 1st and 3rd result were results with google plus. Does Google plus now play a role in improving ranking for the website?I see a person's name next to the website too
Technical SEO | | mainguy0 -
Tutorial For Moving Blogger Blog From Sub-Domain to Sub-Directory
Does anyone know where I can find a tutorial for moving a blogger.com (blogspot) blog that's currently hosted on a subdomain (i.e. blog.mysite.com) to a subdirectory (i.e. mysite.com/blog) with the current version of blogger? I'm working on transferring my blogger blogs over to wordpress, and to do so without losing link juice or traffic, this is one of the steps I have to take. There's plenty of tutorials that address moving from blogspot.mysite.com to wordpress and I've even found a few that address moving from blog.mysite.com (hosted on blogger) to a root domain mysite.com. However, I need to move from blog.mysite.com (blogger) to mysite.com/blog/ - subdirectory (wordpress). Anyone who knows how to do this or can point me in the right direction?? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | ChaseH0