Pros/Cons on Where to Host Stores for Ecommerce Solution Provider (subdomain vs. throwaway domain, etc)
-
Hello! Does anyone have any experience with the pros/cons for where to host storefronts as an ecommerce solution provider. I'm looking for a recommendation on where to house the stores/websites people create with our software (think of us like a shopify/squarespace).
What are the pros & cons of creating stores on the main domain name “brand.com” versus buying a new top level domain name who’s only purpose will be to hold all the subdomains, such as “mybrand.com”, or even “.my.brand.com”.
store.brand.com <— subdomain our our primary domain
store.my.brand.com <— subdomain of a subdomain
store.mybrand.com <— subdomain of a throw-away domainWeebly/Squarespace/Tictail go with the first option (store**.weebly.com** and store.squarespace.com). Shopify goes with the 3rd option (store.myshopify.com)
Are there any advantages or disadvantages to one or the other? Am I missing any other options? Thanks in advance!
-
Thanks for the help here Matt! We've had issues in the past with penalties from unnatural linking networks derived from subdomains, so that will certainly be a focus here. Appreciate it!
-
You should definitely start with an intense discussion we had on Inbound about subdirectories/subfolders. Not because you're asking the subfolder question but rather there's a LOT of really good info about subdomains for SEO.
In general, most people (but not all) agree that subdomains act as their own separate websites. Since all 3 of your options are basically the same (subdomains) then we can just jump ahead a bit.
Choice 2 seems ... redundant ... to me? I don't see the benefit.
Choice 1 vs 3 comes down to do you use your own domain or a throwaway. I would suggest that since you don't know how Google will treat them in the future, a throwaway is probably preferable. I know Wordpress uses a simple subdomain, as did a lot of older CMS' but I think the trend now is to not give Google hardly ANY chance to mess up your SEO by combining it with others. Even though that's not how it seems to currently work, that could change tomorrow. If it's on a separate, throw away domain it really can't be.
The only concern with that is to make sure you don't interlink all your client sites to yours through things like a footer link. You could very quickly and very artificially bank up tons of external links with a simple Theme by Our Company link. It's on a separate domain so those would add up very quickly as external links.
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
-
Considering Moving to New Domain and SEO
Hello, One of our sites has been using a domain since 2005 and is shown below. The domain is terrible for multiple reasons, hyphens and doesn't even reflect our actual company name. Not to mention its embarrassing when telling a customer to email us at support @ pro "dash, yes the hyphen" gift.... I wanted to change it long ago but feared it would hurt my SEO rankings. After taking Bruce Clay's training class back in 2004, we managed to rank top 10 for most targeted keywords. My ranking have slowly dropped over time due to neglect and decaying IBL's. We still rank for a few targeted keywords but it was just August of 2017 we were still top 10 but something happened and we dropped out of the top 100 right before our holiday season. We had to run Adwords and BingAds to supplement traffic this holiday season. So I am wondering before I restart my SEO efforts should I move the domain now before trying to build new content, IBL's, etc? I was always under the impression Google used domain trust a major factor which wasnt only IBL but also domain age. Our preferred domain I purchased from another owner and it has ZERO links to it. It was basically a parked domain with the "domain for sale" stuff. I am a little nervous about moving it over because Google didnt even have it in its index. I put up a coming soon page and hosted it on my server, same C Block, and requested a crawl from my webmaster console. I added some text to the new domain index page and it appears Google is showing results for our old domain! At first I thought it was duplicate content but its not Google obviously has deciphered current site is my old domain and is displaying the title and meta data from the old domain. I have never seen this before. Google cache shows the current domain the new domain url. A few questions: Will my site get sandboxed after 301 redirecting and going webmaster console move features etc? Does this reset the trust factors? I have read examples in my research where some people say it only took a few weeks and everything was back to normal and others that have said it took years. Any experience or insight is greatly appreciated. I am currently relearning SEO and going over the SEO tutorial articles provided on moz. Thanks again! New Domain - matches our company name, no hyphens, better branding http://www.giftbasketpros.com/ Google index https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awww.giftbasketpros.com Current Domain, since 2005, has ranked well for years until this summer http://www.pro-gift-baskets.com/
Branding | | DMAC441 -
International SEO - Domains or Folders?
Hi, We have been approached by a potential client. They are a UK company whose website is hosted on a .com domain (the .co.uk forwards to the .com). They also have a German website hosted on a .de domain. Both the .com and the .de are hosted in the UK. We believe that the .de website should be hosted in Germany. You agree? Anyway, they now need to target the US market. They are planning on duplicating the UK (.com) website and creating a US version of the site on a .us domain. They would rewrite the content for the US site to avoid duplications, and add Href Lang attributes etc. They are also debating whether the new US site should be hosted in the US or the UK. We don't think this is the best strategy. Would it not be better to host both the UK and US website on the .com domain. using reginal folders? i.e. example.com/uk, and example.com/us. Obviously we would setup Href Lang accordingly and change the Google Search Console geo targeting options for each of the sub-sites (/uk and /us). Or we could suggest hosting the UK site on the .co.uk domain, and the US on the .com domain. So, what is the best strategy to target the US audience, whilst maintaining UK rankings? Many thanks for your time, hope to hear from you soon 🙂 Lee.
Branding | | Webpresence1 -
Experience/suggestions in redirecting old URLs (from an existing site) to new URLs under a new domain
Please share your experiences/suggestions in redirecting a set of pages (10,000 or more pages/URLs) from an existing domain to new URLs under a new domain. Thanks in advance!
Branding | | esiow20130 -
Best use for a second domain?
Hi, I have a client who has a website with its brand name in its URL and this is not very keyword friendly as it is just numbers http://www.44-16.com/ -- the website has been up for a few months and is starting to see it traffic increase (mainly due to PPC). The client has told me that they also have another URL which is directly relevant to the industry they are in and they have asked me for advice on the best way to use the second domain. Would it be best to create a second website that has several links to the main site (although new content, not duplicated content) or would a blog be the best option for the new site? The existing site does have a blog that generates some good traffic so they'd have to be writing two blogs I assume? The client doesn't want to stop using the first site and I want to give them the best advice to make the best use of this second domain. Thanks!
Branding | | bendyman0 -
What is The Time/Cost For SEO In Rebranding A Large Site
From an SEO agency perspective. What would be the estimated man hours and hard cost to rebrand a large site (1000+pages)? And all that would go into it, like 301 redirects and etc.? I have a pretty good idea, of what it would take and how perilous it could be from an SEO perspective. Because of anchor text / 301 redirects / organic potential traffic loss and etc. I just don't know the man hours and hard cost would be.
Branding | | SMG-Texas1 -
Moving Blog from www.topic.domain.com to www.domain.com/blog
Hi Fellow Mozzers, Just started off here on seomoz.org and am super happy to have joined the community! I've recently started a new job as web optimization manager for an education company. There is a lot to do and one of my first tasks is to figure a better strategy for our current blog. I've convinced our management to move our blog from topic.domain.com to domain.com/blog. My research has shown that this is a better strategy so that our blog can receive the DA of our root domain, get more people to click through our site, and even receive more natural searches (PLEASE, someone correct me if I'm wrong on this). Anyway, our blog is currently hosted as a Wordpress blog and we're wondering if it's more worthwhile to build a blog platform ourselves or continue using Wordpress. I am not a technical guy and don't know the backend stuff to make it happen, but my concern is primarily for the optimum search capacity. Also, our bloggers frequently put links to different portions of our website - does this hold any negative SEO value in terms of too much internal linking? I personally wouldn't assume so, but then again I could be wrong. Finally, we also track our main website using Google Analytics- currently, the only tracking we have installed on our blogs is the default provided by Wordpress (yes yes I know, but that's why i'm here -- to fix these weaknesses). I'm assuming we will be able to better track using GA when the switch is made. So, I guess my questions are: (1) Is my research correct in that it's better to have our blog hosted as domain.com/blog over topic.domain.com (2) Are there any best practices in making this switch and/or any negative implications with continuing to use Wordpress or should we build our own platform (we have the internal resources to do so, but would prefer to take the easiest and best route in terms of SEO and community building). (3) Will it still be just as easy to track using GA. Thank you!! Pedram
Branding | | CSawatzky0 -
.us domain extension for US locales
I have a large US travel site and am looking to make targeted pages for specific locations, attractions etc around the United States. With many of the TLD's already purchased for these niches, I thought about using the .us extension as it seemed relevant to the topics. Does this hurt seo possibilities or does the .us extension come across as spammy?
Branding | | Millibit2 -
Which domain name should i choose for a air ticket search engine?
Hi, i am deciding to buy a domain name for a air ticket search engine. i want to target australia first and then worldwide in the future. most of the names with my keywords "cheap flights" are already been registered. I have tried many combination but could not find a proper name. One question is does keywords rich domains (not exact) helps a lot? also i was thinking if i can an keyword rich domain i could easily get links with the desired anchor text links. would it be a lot harder to get a domain name e.g. flightscomparision.com while targeting the term "cheap flights" or "cheap fares". Also i was thinking if i get a domain with "A" at the beginning i will be listed on top of directories. below are a list of domains i am able to register. amcheapflights.com aucheapflights.com abroadflights.com flightscomparision.com any other suggestions? thanks ray
Branding | | usaccess6080