Do sub-domains help overall domain ranking?
-
If I have a blog at (for example) blog.mywebsite.co.uk (hosted on Wordpress), does this confer rankings to the top level domain (e.g. www.mywebsite.co.uk which we host ourselves)? Contained within the blog are many links to the main website (which is an eCommerce website) for all our key phrases, but it seemed like a good idea to keep the blog and the store separate.
Alternatively, would it be better to use something like www.mywebsite.co.uk/news?
Thanks!
Alex
-
Revisiting this - check out this Quora thread with some additional insight. http://www.quora.com/Search-Engine-Optimization-SEO/Do-sub-domains-hurt-SEO
-
You are right in that you would be better off having your blog in sub-directory rather than in a sub-domain.
Sub-domains are very close to being considered the equivalent of a new root domain. For example, Wordpress.com and Blogspot.com blogs come automatically registered with a new subdomain. There are hundreds of thousands of these blogs, but only a few actually have any authority despite the authority of their root domain.
When you create content on your blog in a sub-directory, your inbound links to those posts will help the authority of the domain you are on. So links to www.example.com/blog will help you out much more than blog.example.com.
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
-
Need Help with Link Building Outreach Program
Hello Follks, We are a B2B company, and we are planning for a link building outreach program with Tier-2 and Tier-3 tech publication sites. Are there any SEO agencies who can help us only with the Link Building service? Please let me know. I can provide more details once we catch up. Thanks!
Link Building | | Rajesh.Nair0 -
Root-Domain vs Subdomain Linkbuilding
Hello Mozzers! Couple of days ago I received a request to start optimizing a wordpress website, the domain itself has been around for around 10-12 years so it's it can be considered as one that has real history behind it. The page has been moved from HTML/FLASH to wordpress about 3 - 4 years ago and hasn't been any SEO maintenance on it. The site used to rank for first position with several keywords, but now understandably, it has greatly decreased. My main question would be, that when I've checked the root domain's and the subdomain's metrics with MOZ Open Site Explorer, the sub domain (with "www.") showed a PA 40 and 90 external links while the root domain (without "www.") only has 27 PA and 6 External links. I know that the 301 or server redirects only transfers about 90% of the link juice to the targeted URL but the difference between the 2 results seem way too big for me. What do you think? Is this normal?
Link Building | | adamdankhazi
During future link building is it more beneficial to target the root domain so the page won't lose that "10%" by redirecting the new link from sub-domain to root domain?
Is it possible to get more juice transferred? Thank you very much,
Adam0 -
Educational and Governmental ref. backlinks/domains
I have two question in my mind, decided to first time post and ask the community for better information. 1-How important Educational and Govermental Ref Domains/backlinks are? Shell we try to gain them? Or they are just like the others backlinks/domains? 2-When we break down the backlinks to Images-textlinks. What percent of backlinks should be images? (for info my website has 97 percent textlink and 3 percent image backlinks)
Link Building | | FRUTIKO0 -
Duplicate Website.. Please Help!
Hi, My Client's Website has been duplicated, exactly the same website theme and etc. It's like a mirror site and my client couldn't figure out who duplicated his website. Actually, it has been hit by Penguin update last May and didn't fully recover yet, because of unnatural links but there's a little improvement with its ranking. I have already fix the keyword stuffed from his homepage with a link to it and the footer links. After fixing it about a week, its ranking is moving up a bit from page 14 to page 8 but it's not stable. Sometimes it go back to page 10 then back to 8. But there still a lot of unnatural links pointing to his website using its targeted keywords to much. I guess the main issue here are the duplicate site and unnatural links pointing to his website. By the way, here's the original site of my client www.apparelus.com and here's the duplicate one www.fs-biz.info/ Thanks!
Link Building | | arlenea2z0 -
Content Calendar Help
Hey guys, I am about to start creating a content calendar that I will be using to pitch blogs and news websites with the goal of gaining a link and driving traffic to my site. Do you guys have some bookmarked links that can help me follow a step by step process on how to develop a content calendar? I'm looking at something like what tools to use, how to figure out what's hot in a particular niche, social media topics, etc. Thanks in advance!
Link Building | | Workaholic0 -
Domain Autorithy drop from 18 to 14!!
Hello, I was surprised today by my domain autorithy drop from 18 to 14 in one single day. A couple of days ago I started to use Hubspot demo and for some strange reoson yesterday I had a huge ammount of visits yesterday. My domain autorithy was 18 yesterday and today is 14 and the links to my site increased almost 1500. Whats is happening? Tks in advance! Pedro Pereira
Link Building | | PedroM0 -
How to improve (ASAP) the linking root domain, the followed linking root domains and the linking C-Blocks? Linkbuilding (or whatever) techniques.
I have a small site (.com) like any website in my sector. 30-90 pages. I have no crawls errors. Everythings is fine, just I need to improve my linking root domain, the followed linking root domain and the linking C-Blocks. Example: my competitors have 300 (one of them have 1300) of total links. I have 30. Anyone know some good strategies? techniques? tips? I just dont want to be in a farm directory, I want free links. I'm already running two strategies but it works so slowly. I want something faster at this moment. Also, any recommendation will be thankful.
Link Building | | NicoDavila0 -
Photography Site ranking!
Hi I am working on a photography site: www.daffodilwaves.co.uk now there isn't many pages nor is the that much text. However you will see that they have a blog (poorly designed one which we are addressing) Now blog posts I feel can be really good as there is generally alot of naturally written text which I don't feel I need to influence. Also generally people will comment so I also believe that is good for rankings too. However I find that the blog ranks higher than the actual website and I dont want that to occur the website is the one that generates the bookings. So can you give me some ideas to transfer the ranking from the blog to the website? I was thinking that within the article I could simply link back to the homepage - would you think that is a good idea? If so would you suggest I use particular anchor text? such as "Wedding Photographer" or "Comtemporary wedding Photographer" Thanks
Link Building | | Springnik0