Archiving a festival website - subdomain or directory?
-
Hi guys
I look after a festival website whose program changes year in and year out. There are a handful of mainstay events in the festival which remain each year, but there are a bunch of other events which change each year around the mainstay programming.This often results in us redoing the website each year (a frustrating experience indeed!)
We don't archive our past festivals online, but I'd like to start doing so for a number of reasons
1. These past festivals have historical value - they happened, and they contribute to telling the story of the festival over the years. They can also be used as useful windows into the upcoming festival.
2. The old events (while no longer running) often get many social shares, high quality links and in some instances still drive traffic. We try out best to 301 redirect these high value pages to the new festival website, but it's not always possible to find a similar alternative (so these redirects often go to the homepage)
Anyway, I've noticed some festivals archive their content into a subdirectory - i.e. www.event.com/2012
However, I'm thinking it would actually be easier for my team to archive via a subdomain like 2012.event.com - and always use the www.event.com URL for the current year's event. I'm thinking universally redirecting the content would be easier, as would cloning the site / database etc.
My question is - is one approach (i.e. directory vs. subdomain) better than the other? Do I need to be mindful of using a subdomain for archival purposes?
Hope this all makes sense. Many thanks!
-
I work with a lot of arts events on a minimal budget and I normally move the old website to: www.website.com.au/2011, www.website.com.au/2012 and make the current year www.website.com
In this way you're still getting benefit from having a large website, the archive of the previous events is still there, artists still have a presence and people still find the website in the SERPs, navigate to the homepage which is the current event.
-
Cheers mate, much appreciated!
Could you kindly outline why it may be a bit more beneficial from a search perspective to use a directory? Just interested...
Cheers
-
From a search perspective, It may be a bit more beneficial to use the directory route but that is often difficult to organize when we are talking about multiple pages (ie a previous years entire website).
In my opinion, the subdomain route seems like the best option. It will allow for the previous pages and content to contribute to the current sites domain authority while also serving as an extremely organized presentation of the previous years events and attractions!
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
-
Redirecting M Dot Mobile Website to Responsive Design Website Questions
Hi amazing Moz community 🙂 Couldn't find this question anywhere, and knew this was the place to ask! We are helping a client redirect an M Dot website to a Responsive Design website. We want to retain our mobile rankings for keywords. Three questions - We should use 301 redirects from the M Dot website to the new website correct? (not 302s?) How long does it take for Google to understand that we have launched a responsive website? Can we remove the 301 redirects after a few days (if the M Dot website interferes/breaks the new Responsive website)? We have verified an account on Google Search Console for the M Dot website, along with a mobile sitemap that has been submitted and verified. What should we do with this M Dot GSC account? Just delete it? Or keep it and upload the NEW XML Sitemap with the new WWW links (because the website is responsive). THANK YOU!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | accpar0 -
To subdomain or to subfolder, that is the question.
Hi All, So I have a client that has two restaurants that they are wanting two sites for. Right now they have one site for their two locations that ranks pretty well for some bigger keywords for their style of food. With them wanting two sites, i'm struggling on whether we should just build them all within one site and just use separate folders on that site restaurant.com/location1 & restaurant.com/location2 with a landing page sending you to each, or if we should split it into subdomains. The content will be roughly the same, the menus are identical, i think each branch is just owned by a different family member so they want their own site. I keep leaning towards building it all into one site but i'm not sure. Any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | insitemoz10 -
Looking for help with my website
Hi does any one know of a good seo company that will get results, i.e., fix site issues and get the site improving in the serps.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Taiger0 -
Website completely delisted - reasons?
Hi, I got a request from a potential client as he do not understand why his website cannot be found on Google. I've checked that and found out that the complete website is not listed (complete delist) at all - expect just one pdf file.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheHecksler
I've checked his robots.txt - but this is ok. I've checked the META Robots - but they are on index,follow ... ok so far. I've checked his backlinks but could not found any massive linking from bad pages - just 6 backlinks and only four of them from designdomains.com which looks like a linklist or so. I've requested access to their GWT account if available in hope to find more infos, but does anyone of you may have a quick idea what els it could be? What could be the issue? I think that they got delisted due to any bad reason ... Let me know your Ideas 🙂 THANX 🙂 Sebi0 -
Website Structured data in Google
Can anyone help me to show website structure data in Google when someone search my website in Google. I already added my website in Google and Google webmaster tool. Thanks in adv.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | talkinnetventure0 -
SEO Implications of Moving Blog to Subdomain
Hello, We are having some issues upgrading our stack and maintaining Wordpress for our blog. So we are thinking about splitting them up. What are the SEO implications of moving our blog to a subdomain? Our blog URL structure is currently something like https://www.aplossoftware.com/blog/p/2470/fund-accounting/yearend-closing-checklist/. We would like to change to something like https://blog.aplossoftware.com/p/2470/fund-accounting/yearend-closing-checklist/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stageagent0 -
Rel=canonical an iframed version of the same website?
My issue is that we have two websites with the same content. For the sake of an example lets say they are: jackson.com jacksonboats.com When you go to jacksonboats.com, the website is an iframed version of jackson.com. However all of the companies email addresses are example@jacksonboats.com so a 301 is not possible. What would be the best way to forward over the link juice from jacksonboats.com to jackson.com? I'm thinking a rel=canonical tag, but I wanted to ask first. Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BenGMKT0 -
Export Website into XML File
Hi, I am having an agency optimize the content on my sites. I need to create XML Schema before I export the content into XML. What is best way to export content including meta tags for an entire site along with the steps on how to?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Melia0