New my domain.com/blog option vs. my blog.mydomain.com option
-
Our e-commerce site has been on Big Commerce for about a year now. One thing many SEO folks had told us is that having a blog located at /blog was going to help more than a subdomain blog. option.
BC has never had the option to have a blog hosted on their platform (/blog) until now.
I am now wondering, since we have lost traffic in the past and are trying everything we can to regain it, if we should purchase the Wordpress Site Redirect upgrade and move the subdomain blog (blog.) to the new site option /blog.
Any help or feedback from you is very much appreciated. I have attached a screenshot of our main website vs. our blog from Open Site Explorer in case it helps anything.
-
You made complete sense. Is there no way of updating the old blog to your site design?
A few questions you could ask yourself to figure out if it's worth moving to the subfolder and leaving the subdomain where it is:
Does the old blog get much traffic?
Does it have many links and shares?
How old is it and how many posts are there?Despite that, if you do move to /blog the best case scenario is still to 301 redirect old posts to a new unique URL for each post if you can.
From what you say I'd also think the new design will look more professional and therefore, potentially lead to more sales.
-
Thanks Alex. I will have to look at how big of an undertaking it will be I suppose.
I guess I am trying to figure out if all new posts should go to the new /blog area and leave the old blog where it is. Another concern of mine is that our blog is simply the free generic template whereas the new /blog area looks like our site because it is part of our site. Not sure if I relayed that well or not.
-
Bump for truth.
-
Google now class a subdomain as pretty much the same website as the main domain: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MswMYk05tk - so backlinks to the existing blog subdomain will also benefit the overall domain.
I didn't know this until last year either - it'd be useful if Google updated their help pages!
If I was you josh330, I'd only move to www.example.com/blog if the cost and hassle isn't much for you. Although a subdomain and subfolder are considered roughly equivalent to Google, I'm not sure how other search engines see it.
-
Thanks Jennifer! The only thing I am not sure about is how to do that. Our blog is hosted by Wordpress on their servers so I don't know if I can upgrade or something and then redirect. I know there is also a WP Site Redirect upgrade I can purchase from WP for $13/year. Maybe that's the way to go?
-
Yeah, I would 301 redirect all of the old blog articles to the new blog articles.
-
So that begs the question, do we switch this existing blog to the /blog address now and redirect old posts? I am assuming all new posts should go to the new /blog area.
-
The big difference, as far as SEO is concerned, for a subdomain blog (blog.) versus a directory (/blog) is how the link credit is attributed. Search engines see a subdomain as a completely separate site. Any backlinks you get to your blog content will only benefit your subdomain blog. When the blog is a directory it is an extension of your main domain. When you have it set up that way and build content the backlinks received for the content can help build the domain authority. I personally prefer to setup blogs as /blog and would recommend that method although I have also seen people successfully have subdomain blog setups as well.
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
-
Is it worth keeping a decades-old domain that's merely 301 redirecting to the main domain?
Hi fellow Moz SEOs, We have a bigger client who we just did an SEO Site Audit for, and it was discovered that they have several domain names that are simply 301 redirecting to their main domain name. One of their domains in particular is decades old, and the client is asking if there is any value in keeping it (and the others), or simply leaving them as-is. Considering the domain age, does anyone have any recommendations? Much appreciated, Zack Barton
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Zack
Barton Interactive
(833) 442.6853 // office
(408) 910.7750 // mobile
https://bartoninteractive.com0 -
Cleaning up a Spammy Domain VS Starting Fresh with a New Domain
Hi- Can you give me your opinion please... if you look at murrayroofing.com and see the high SPAM score- and the fact that our domain has been put on some spammy sites over the years- Is it better and faster to place higher in google SERP if we create a fresh new domain? My theory is we will spin our wheels trying to get unlisted from alot of those spammy linking sites. And that it would be faster to see results using a fresh new domain rather than trying to clean up the current spammy doamin. Thanks in advance - You guys have been awesome!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | murraycustomhomescom0 -
Ranking after redirecting two URLs to a new domain
I run two websites which operate in similar business sectors. Each has a calculator tool that offers the same functionality. The pages rank 2nd and 5th for the key search term. I'd like to improve the functionality of this and have thought about setting up a new domain for this calculator to move it away from the main sites. If I did this and 301 redirected both pages to the new domain do you think I'd maintain a strong ranking position for this search term on the new domain? Thanks for any advice.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | craigramsay0 -
How does Googlebot evaluate performance/page speed on Isomorphic/Single Page Applications?
I'm curious how Google evaluates pagespeed for SPAs. Initial payloads are inherently large (resulting in 5+ second load times), but subsequent requests are lightning fast, as these requests are handled by JS fetching data from the backend. Does Google evaluate pages on a URL-by-URL basis, looking at the initial payload (and "slow"-ish load time) for each? Or do they load the initial JS+HTML and then continue to crawl from there? Another way of putting it: is Googlebot essentially "refreshing" for each page and therefore associating each URL with a higher load time? Or will pages that are crawled after the initial payload benefit from the speedier load time? Any insight (or speculation) would be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mothner1 -
6 months Later - 0 Domain Authority/Page Authority and losing Rankings
Hi Moz, Sorry if this comes across as a "Do My Job For Me" type of post but we are an E-Commerce store that have been live since January but have not seen any increase in performance on our site and over the past month, have even seen our rankings decrease. We have 1300 products on site and about 1500 pages in total. 1. As for on-site optimization, we have got 2 reviews and follow up reviews with a highly reputable reviewer from People Per Hour and solved any issues she has found. 2. Updated the Meta Data for products and Alt Descriptions for images focusing on the keywords we wish to rank for. We post weekly blogposts linking back to our products. 3. Social Media Campaigns with regular campaigns on FaceBook, Pinterest, Google+ and Twitter. 4. Attempted to build FOLLOW backlinks to articles relating to products on our site. We have also considered purchasing backlinks to improve our situation as we have yet to see any of these pages be crawled by Google over a month later. I have read a guides on Moz and other sites on how to improve our authority and improve rankings but none have offered much by way of practical solution. My question being, is this just a matter of patience or should I be worried/improving anything given we have 0 Domain Authority and Page Authority on all pages? Thanking you in advance, SEO Novice.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | csworkwear0 -
Domain Name
Hello everyone Please advice what to do in a situation when searching for a domain: www.domain.com google is recommending domain.org ? when these are completely 2 different sites? Does it has to do with trust rank? Please advice.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FusionMediaLimited0 -
Revert to old domain w/ better DA/PA or stick with new one?
I switched from one domain to another because I wanted a domain that had our company name so it was more brand-y. However, the old domain had better DA/PA. Originally I set up a global 301 from the old to the new, but now I'm finding that I actually need to set up individual 301's from each URL of the old site, or at least from each page. The new domain is http://www.bohmkalish.com and the old domain was http://www.ssdlawcalifornia.com. However, I am using Wix so it looks like I can't always do URL-URL 301's, although I can redirect any URL to a page on the new website. The problem is that, in some cases, the content on the new site is different (or, for example, I can only link a particular blog post on the old site back to the new site's blog's main page). How closely do URLS/pages need to resemble each other for link juice to be transferred? Also, should I try to set up all these redirects manually or bite the bullet and go back to using the old domain? The problem is that I did a lot of beginner SEO junk for the new domain, like submitting to a few higher-quality directories, and getting our website on various industry resource sites, etc. I'd need to re-do this entirely if I go back to the old page. What do you think?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BohmKalish1230 -
Could a HTML <select>with large numbers of <option value="<url>">'s affect my organic rankings</option></select>
Hi there, I'm currently redesigning my website, and one particular pages lists hotels in New York. Some functionality I'm thinking of adding in is to let the user find hotels close to specific concert venues in New York. My current thinking is to provide the following select element on the page - selecting any one of the options will automatically redirect to my page for that concert venue. The purpose of this isn't to affect the organic traffic - I'm simply introducing this as a tool to help customers find the right hotel, but I certainly don't want it to have an adverse effect on my organic traffic. I'd love to know your thoughts on this. I must add that in certain cities, such as New York, there could be up to 450 different options in this select element. | <select onchange="location=options[selectedIndex].value;"> <option value="">Show convenient hotels for:</option> <option value="http://url1..">1492 New York</option> <option value="http://url2..">Abrons Arts Center</option> <option value="http://url3..">Ace of Clubs New York</option> <option value="http://url4..">Affairs Afloat</option> <option value="http://url5..">Affirmation Arts New York</option> <option value="http://url6..">Al Hirschfeld Theatre</option> <option value="http://url7..">Alice Tully Hall</option> .. .. ..</select> Many thanks Mike |
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mjk260