Using rel cannonical to host a blog as a path on our e-commerce website
-
There has been recent suggestion (from Rand) that hosting your blog as a folder rather than a subdomain is much better from an SEO point of view.
Unfortunately, our blog is hosted on a subdomain with a different technology stack to the main e-commerce site. We are finding it quite tricky to migrate to a folder given the different technologies. Is the following a suitable solution?
- 301 redirect from mysite.com/blog/cool-blog-post to blog.mysite.com/cool-blog-post
- And then put mysite.com/blog/cool-blog-post" /> on blog.mysite.com/cool-blog-post
Would be great to have your thoughts on this guys - I can't figure out if it will work or be an SEO fail.
-
LindaLV, we were actually going to 301 from the path to the subdomain (no content at the path). Could you explain a bit more about how subdomain-to-path 301-redirects would work? Would they not just end up somewhere where there is no content?
Lesley, we use IIS so not htaccess issues as such but, yes, we were having problems in that area.
Thank you both!
-
The original question was about moving a blog from a subdomain to a subfolder (hosting your blog as a folder rather than a subdomain) and using the newly created subfolder as the canonical, which would be accessible.
I do see that in the example the question refers to a 301 from the subfolder to the subdomain, but I think that was just a little mix-up in writing up the example, and it should say that the 301 would be from the old subdomain to the new subfolder. Otherwise yes, that would be circular.
There is also the question of whether you'd need a canonical as well as a 301 (since that would be redundant) but I would probably do it anyway as a sort of belts-and suspenders approach, in case something went wrong. (But I worry too much.)
-
I don't think that will work. The reason being if I am understanding correctly, is that the canonical url will never be accessible. I don't know all of the specifics about what Google does on an internal level (like most SEO people) but I don't think it would fly just for the fact that the canonical is never able to be accessed.
Are redirections and htaccess issues the reason you cannot move over to using a sub directory?
-
We are going to do a very similar changeover in the near future and that is how we plan to go about it. I have been looking into it and I don't see any major drawbacks. (But if anyone else has other information--I too would love to hear about it before starting this...)
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
-
SEO - Use pages on main site or set up outside keyword rich domains and websites
I have a client who is wanting to target searches for competitors products. His idea was to purchase domains related to the searches he's targeting (for example, people looking for another company's app) and to build out one page websites addressing the search query and why a customer would choose his app solution over a competitor. I know he'd have to build a handful of links to each site for any chance of success but I wanted to ask the following.. Would doing this be better than just building pages addressing the searches on his main website domain? Is there an SEO risk to doing this? Potential for a penalty? Anything we need to do to structure these in a way that won't violate Google's SEO guidelines? Any other thoughts on pros and cons of each strategy? Thank you! Ricky
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RickyShockley0 -
How should I manage duplicate content caused by a guided navigation for my e-commerce site?
I am working with a company which uses Endeca to power the guided navigation for our e-commerce site. I am concerned that the duplicate content generated by having the same products served under numerous refinement levels is damaging the sites ability to rank well, and was hoping the Moz community could help me understand how much of an impact this type of duplicate content could be having. I also would love to know if there are any best practices for how to manage this type of navigation. Should I nofollow all of the URLs which have more than 1 refinement used on a category, or should I allow the search engines to go deeper than that to preserve the long tail? Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FireMountainGems0 -
International Image SEO - one host vs multiple hosts
I've got 3 sites (same name) located in Australia, US and UK. Currently these sites are all pulling images (I own) from 1 location. I'd like to create image XML sitemaps for each of these sites. As I see it, my options are: 1. Keeping the images hosted in the 1 place and creating image XML sitemaps for each of the 3 sites (which seems to be technically ok because https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/178636?hl=en&ref_topic=20986 states that if the image URL isn't on the same domain, both domains need to be verified in Webmaster Tools). However, is there a risk here that the sitemaps will conflict because they are pulling from images on the same host? 2. Hosting the images locally (ie. the same images will be hosted in 3 locations) and applying hreflang in the sitemap. Does anyone know which of these options are best (obviously #1 would be more convenient), or whether there are any other options for attacking this issue? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | oline1230 -
First Website
Hi Everyone, I have just published my first website and was wondering if anybody would like to help me with some hints and tips. This is my first time branching into SEO and could really do with some help. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. The site address is www.theremovalistsguide.com.au which targets the furniture removal industry in Australia. Thanks for your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobSchofield0 -
To "Guest Blog" or "Ghost Blog"?
To "Guest Blog" or "Ghost Blog"? I've been wondering which would be better given G's "authorship" tracking program. "Onreact.Com" indirectly raised this issue in a recent blog post "Google Authorship Markup Disadvantages Everybody Ignores" as : "Google might dismiss your guest articles. Your great guest blogging campaign on dozens of other blogs might fail because Google will count the links all as one as the same author has written all the posts and linked to himself. So maybe the links won't count at all." Assuming all other things are equal, would you use "Guest Author" with G Authorship attribution (if allowed) or just ghost the article and include an in-text link without attribution to you as the author?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JustDucky1 -
Wordpress Blogs and SEO
So far we have been creating separate blogs on wordpress.com for our sites, and writing there. Today I was told that there was better SEO hosting the blog on the actual domain. i.e. www.widgets.com/blog instead of widget.wordpress.com Is this true? Oddly I have had my WP beat my own URL on one account. So I am not sure if this is valid. Can someone tell me pros and cons of both? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | greenhornet770 -
Use rel=canonical to save otherwise squandered link juice?
Oftentimes my site has content which I'm not really interested in having included in search engine results. Examples might be a "view cart" or "checkout" page, or old products in the catalog that are no longer available in our system. In the past, I'd blocked those pages from being indexed by using robots.txt or nofollowed links. However, it seems like there is potential link juice that's being lost by removing these from search engine indexes. What if, instead of keeping these pages out of the index completely, I use to reference the home page (http://www.mydomain.com) of the business? That way, even if the pages I don't care about accumulate a few links around the Internet, I'll be capturing the link juice behind the scenes without impacting the customer experience as they browse our site. Is there any downside of doing this, or am I missing any potential reasons why this wouldn't work as expected?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cadenzajon1 -
Website rebranding, what should I worry about?
Hey guys, A client of mine will be doing a rebranding exercise, this include changing their brand name and their domain name. They are considered a well known brand within their industry (Their brand name shows up in Google's "Search Related to..." section) My question is: Apart from making sure all 301 are put in place,changing all the links to point to the new domain and doing PR exercise, is there anything else I should keep in mind / be aware of to ensure a smooth transition? Also can anyone come up with possible issues we might encounter during the move? Apart from having a significant drop in traffic and rankings? Thanks, Clement
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NextDigital510