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.
Blog on Subdomain vs. Subdirectory - Best Practices
-
Hi,
I have recently been told that it no longer impacts authority or rankings if a blog is set up on a subdomain (blog.domain.com) rather than a subdirectory (/blog). However, I am reluctant to do so because I remember learning how blog subdomains did not adhere to SEO best practices.
Would anyone be able to shed some light on the latest SEO best practices regarding this topic?
Many thanks,
Erin
-
Can Moz weigh in on this please? There is a lot of really good discussion on this particular topic across multiple threads but no clear direction. What does Moz recommend and why? The why is important and here's why.
If I have a client with an established blog that uses the blog.domain versus domain/blog structure, should I be recommending they migrate to a different structure?
-
Thanks Greg,
Super helpful video.
I have a Blogger blog and it is much harder to host it on a subdirectory and extremely easy to host it on a Subdomain. That video was extremely helpful in making a decision as to which one to use. It just saved me lots of hours of toil and pulling my hair out getting a subdirectory set up and configured, when from the horses mouth, it looks like a subdomain is just fine.
-
An interesting discussing. This is something I have been looking into recently for a blog of mine.
Thanks
-
Interesting point. Thanks for sharing this video!
-
Does the advice still hold true given this video?
-
Thanks everyone for your responses!
-
Hi Erin,
Sub directories are the preferred method. This has been asked many times on SEOmoz so I'll post a few links so you can have a look at some of the responses and exactly why they are preferred:
http://www.seomoz.org/q/blog-vs-blog
http://www.seomoz.org/q/best-place-for-a-blog-blog-mydomain-com-or-mydomain-com-blog
http://www.seomoz.org/q/subdomains-vs-subfolders
Hope that helps!
Brad
-
Well there is a very old debate and many SEO will recommend you using sub directory instead of sub domain.
Reasons why you should use Sub directory instead of sub-domain:
- Search engine still counts sub domain as another website so if the blog is in sub directory it will be considered as the part of the website
- Your over all SEO efforts will impact on sub directory which is not the case in terms of sub domain.
- Its way easier to rank for long tail keywords with sub directory instead of sub domain.
If SEO is not a problem for you are you are more interested in branding then i think subdomain goes well as its easier to remember and write directly in the URL bar.
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
-
Are Wildcard Subdomain Hurting my SEO?
I have some sites with a lot of categories (category, sub-category, sub-subcategory) and locations (country, state/territory, city). To avoid listing pages really deep in my hierarchy I used wildcard subdomains for the locations, but lately I have been told that might be hurting my overall SEO efforts. I have a lot of URLs like https://city-state-country.example.com on one side of the domain and example.com/category/subcategory/subsubcategory on the other. In the middle you see stuff like city-state-country.example.com/category/subcategory/subsubcategory and everything in between. Would I be better off moving the locations to the right side of the domain name? Then you might find stuff like example.com/country/state/city/category/subcategory/subsubcategory and everything in between. I think I could do the new rewrite rules fairly easily since every country slug is just two characters long.
On-Page Optimization | | PostAlmostAnything0 -
301 vs 410
Hello everyone! I'm going through a large list of old 404 links that search console has given me and a lot of these links need to be 301'd. My question is, should I 410 some of these links if I can't find a good place to 301 to? Or is there another thing I should do that is better practice. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | KathleenDC0 -
Phone number formatting - Periods vs Dashes
Are there any best practices on phone number formatting regarding using periods XXX.XXX.XXXX vs dashes XXX-XXX-XXXX? What about using parentheses on the area code (XXX)XXX-XXX? This is regarding a phone number on a contact apge...
On-Page Optimization | | WorkhorseMKT0 -
Best practice for footer in ecommerce - Shall I add Top Category links?
What would you recommend regarding links to "Top Products" and "Top Categories" in footer? Would you add them to give extra link juice to top categories? would you try to avoid category links in footer that are already in the header navigationor in the main content area to avoid linking twice from all pages? would you vary these top category links in footer according to main category
On-Page Optimization | | lcourse0 -
Best way to nofollow affiliate links?
I don't "nofollow" affiliate links but I have quite a few. Doing them one by one would just be an impossible job. Would it be best to get a plugin that nofollows EVERYTHING? What would google prefer? I need to DOFOLLOW some links because those sites deserve it.
On-Page Optimization | | 2bloggers0 -
Should I use my blog posts in a sub folder
Ok I did a search and didn't see an answer to this exact question. Most of them were about if a blog should be in a sub folder and not the blog posts themselves... so here it goes. I have a blog on my website the blog itself is in /blog/ but the blog posts themselves are situated in the root folder so it looks something like mydomain.com/cool-seo-blog-post/ Is there any reason I should change this and make it read mydomain.com/blog/cool-seo-blog-post/
On-Page Optimization | | jaybrn10 -
Best practice for franchise sites with duplicated content
I know that duplicated content is a touchy subject but I work with multiple franchise groups and each franchisee wants their own site, however, almost all of the sites use the same content. I want to make sure that Google sees each one of these sites as unique sites and does not penalize them for the following issues. All sites are hosted on the same server therefor the same IP address All sites use generally the same content across their product pages (which are very very important pages) *templated content approved by corporate Almost all sites have the same design (A few of the groups we work with have multiple design options) Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Again Aaron
On-Page Optimization | | Shipyard_Agency0 -
Avoiding "Duplicate Page Title" and "Duplicate Page Content" - Best Practices?
We have a website with a searchable database of recipes. You can search the database using an online form with dropdown options for: Course (starter, main, salad, etc)
On-Page Optimization | | smaavie
Cooking Method (fry, bake, boil, steam, etc)
Preparation Time (Under 30 min, 30min to 1 hour, Over 1 hour) Here are some examples of how URLs may look when searching for a recipe: find-a-recipe.php?course=starter
find-a-recipe.php?course=main&preperation-time=30min+to+1+hour
find-a-recipe.php?cooking-method=fry&preperation-time=over+1+hour There is also pagination of search results, so the URL could also have the variable "start", e.g. find-a-recipe.php?course=salad&start=30 There can be any combination of these variables, meaning there are hundreds of possible search results URL variations. This all works well on the site, however it gives multiple "Duplicate Page Title" and "Duplicate Page Content" errors when crawled by SEOmoz. I've seached online and found several possible solutions for this, such as: Setting canonical tag Adding these URL variables to Google Webmasters to tell Google to ignore them Change the Title tag in the head dynamically based on what URL variables are present However I am not sure which of these would be best. As far as I can tell the canonical tag should be used when you have the same page available at two seperate URLs, but this isn't the case here as the search results are always different. Adding these URL variables to Google webmasters won't fix the problem in other search engines, and will presumably continue to get these errors in our SEOmoz crawl reports. Changing the title tag each time can lead to very long title tags, and it doesn't address the problem of duplicate page content. I had hoped there would be a standard solution for problems like this, as I imagine others will have come across this before, but I cannot find the ideal solution. Any help would be much appreciated. Kind Regards5