Adding academic content for a school in a sub folder, sub domain, or different site?
-
I manage the website for a school and we are planning to put our academic policies/student handbook online. I’m curious if there is any SEO value to including this content in our main website?
This isn’t stuff that anyone is going to link to externally (student orientation procedures, how to enroll/drop credits, academic warning policies etc) and there would be limited internal linking as well (someone looking for course information doesn’t want to see this type of stuff).
I’m not interested in SERPs for this content, but I’m wondering if the additional content could help the site’s SEO overall? It is naturally rich with ‘academic’ keywords and the only websites that use this type of content are universities.
On a similar note, I need to put up student profiles for potential employers to view. Like the policies, this is not priority content for someone visiting our website, but it is still keyword-rich content, which would add to the overall 'size' of the site.
Should this stuff go in a folder, a subdomain, or in a different location altogether?
-
The more content that ends up ranking for it's own topical focus, the better the whole site does - it all gets a lift. The critical key though is topical relationships. If the content becomes too diverse across a site, it can weaken the site's topical consistency. The exception to this concept is if the site is intended to be a "general information" site covering a vast range of topics. However even in that case, when a site gets too diverse, it becomes increasingly more difficult to get individual topics to rank because only so much time and energy can go into supporting any individual topic.
-
Thanks - great answers.
Beyond the technical considerations, is there an SEO benefit to having a larger site with more content, especially if the content is keyword-rich?
Again, I'm not looking for this additional content to rank in search results (students who want it can navigate from the home page themselves) but does the additional content help the overall domain credibility/authority?
-
If the information contained in the academic policies is not needing to be kept confidential, and if that information is valuable to students (or even perhaps people considering becoming students, or parents of existing or potential students), then for those reasons, it would be legitimate to make it accessible from the main site without them having to go hunt for it.
Given those reasons, I believe it would be perfectly valid to have it be crawlable and indexable by search engines.
I would also group it all together in a dedicated location (such as a sub-folder hierarchically) with it's own sectional sub-navigation because it's no different than any other quality content - grouping topically focused similar content is proper for user experience.
As for the student profiles that's a completely different issue. This one involves the reality that it is most likely most student profiles are going to have very little depth of unique content. I assume students will fill out the content themselves. That leaves the door open for all sorts of good, bad and ugly.
Further, if there is some reason for students, faculty or other staff to be able to access it without having to sign in to a secure area, that is not a reason to have it found in search engines.
There are privacy concerns (so a secure area is then in fact, the best option if that's the case).
Most likely being "thin" or even some low quality or perceived duplicate content, if it's not hidden behind a log-int, it really should be blocked from search engines in a robots.txt file or use noindex,nofollow meta tags. (no valid reason to do noindex,follow).
Having said all that, I would suggest it could just as well go in a sub-folder of the main site or a separate sub-domain. Since it will be blocked from indexation/crawling, either would work.
One final reason it shouldn't be indexed or followed is as students come and go, that way you don't need to worry about a "301" redirect system to deal with them.
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
-
'duplicate content' on several different pages
Hi, I've a website with 6 pages identified as 'duplicate content' because they are very similar. This pages looks similar because are the same but it show some pictures, a few, about the product category that's why every page look alike each to each other but they are not 'exactly' the same. So, it's any way to indicate to Google that the content is not duplicated? I guess it's been marked as duplicate because the code is 90% or more the same on 6 pages. I've been reviewing the 'canonical' method but I think is not appropriated here as the content is not the same. Any advice (that is not add more content)?
Technical SEO | | jcobo0 -
Is repurposing an old sub domain better than creating a new sub domain?
We have a good sub domain like** art.ourwebsite.com** which currently sells custom canvas art. We have owned the domain since 2013 but it has only been live for the past few weeks. We want to redesign & repurpose the page to continue to sell custom canvas art but will eventually include other merchandise like mugs, tshirts, etc which wouldn't be custom. Would it be best to keep art.ourwebsite.com since is a shorter/more memorible & older sub domain or would it be best to update the name to something that encompasses our new products? Our marketing team has suggested yourart.ourwebsite.com
Technical SEO | | sb10301 -
Migrating domains from a domain that will have new content.
We have a new url. The old url is being taken over by someone else. Is it possible to still have a successful redirect/migration strategy if we are redirect from our old domain, which is now being used by someone else. I see a big mess, but I'm being told we can redirect all the links to our old content (which is now used by someone else) to our new url. Thoughts? craziness? insanity? Or I'm just not getting it:)
Technical SEO | | CC_Dallas0 -
Do bad links to a sub-domain which redirects to our primary domain pass link juice and hurt rankings?
Sometime in the distant past there existed a blog.domain.com for domain.com. This was before we started work for domain.com. During the process of optimizing domain.com we decided to 301 blog.domain.com to www.domain.com. Recently, we discovered that blog.domain.com actually has a lot of bad links pointing towards it. By a lot I mean, 5000+. I am curious to hear people's opinions on the following: 1. Are they passing bad link juice? 2. does Google consider links to a sub-domain being passed through a 301 to be bad links to our primary domain? 3. The best approach to having these links removed?
Technical SEO | | Shredward0 -
Linking out to authoritive sites from my ecommerce site
Good afternoon SEOmoz community. I was looking for a specific answer or advice or opinion about linking out to other sites. My Site www.tacticalbootstore.com has been undergoing a complete content rewrite. In the process we have been told and read where it can be good to link out to other authoritive sites. One of the pages we have rewritten is here. http://www.tacticalbootstore.com/belleville-boots-sizing-chart-a-97.html We have not added the graphics yet as they are being built now. This is just an informational page about sizing of a particular manufacturers boots. Once you get to the bottom of the text we have added a link to the actual manufacturers page. Is this helpful for us in the SERPS or not? Thank you for your time. Chris
Technical SEO | | scamper0 -
Multiple (different) domains and canonicalisation
Hello, We've had experience with canonical tags for various domains before, such as tidying up product categories etc... However, can anyone point me to any guidelines about different domains using canonicalisation. For example: If I had the following sites, all with identical content - exampledomain.com completelydifferentdomain.net anothertotallydifferentdomain.com With canonical tags pointing to the first one (exampledomain.com), could this be harmful? Is it better to 301 redirect the other sites? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Sarbs0 -
Would you move the site to a different host or change packages at a significant expense in order to eliminate the meta refresh
When I began working with a site (http://www.visix.com) , I discovered a number of hosting constraints that hampered some SEO related changes I wanted to make. A year later, the site was teetering on the 1st page for a particular keyword of choice and when the Panda & Penguin updates happened, the site got passed by 3M & Amazon, both much bigger sites. (was #11, now #13) Now I'm thinking I should try and use the homepage to rank for keyword "digital signage software", where originally I was making progress with an inner page. Now I am revisting the homepage meta refresh and need to decide if it is enough of an issue to warrant a hosting change. http://www.visix.com has a meta-refresh "0" seconds to http://www.visix.com/index.aspx I know sites can rank well with these, although I don't know the level of handicap that it has. In an article here, http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection there is a statement saying that a meta-refresh will not pass as much link juice as a 301 redirect. I have read about every opinion I can find, and would appreciate other's opinions on the matter. The host is Network Solutions and the hosting package does not allow 301 redirects, among other things. Would you move the site to a different host or change packages at a significant expense in order to eliminate the meta refresh or is it not a big deal on a well established site? Thanks very much for your feedback!
Technical SEO | | IntegralOCR30 -
Htaccess 301s to 3 different sites
Hi, I'm an htaccess newbie, and I have to redirect and split traffic to three new domains from site A. The original home page has most of the inbound links so I've set up a 301 that goes to site B, the new corporate domain. Options +FollowSymLinks
Technical SEO | | ellenru
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L] Brand websites C and D need 301s for their folders in site A but I have no idea how to write that in relationship to the first redirect, which really is about the home page, contact and only a few other pages. The urls are duplicates except for the new domain names. They're all on Linux..Site A is about 150 pages, should I write it by page, or can I do some kind of catch all (the first 301) plus the two folders? I'd really appreciate any insight you have and especially if you can show me how to write it. Thanks 🙂0