Subdomain Ranking Question
-
Hi All -
Quick question that I think I know the answer to, but I feel like I've been going around in circles a bit. My client is launching a new product and wants us to build a microsite for it (product.clientname.com). My client really dislikes their brand website, and wants to use paid media to push their audience to this new microsite. However, they also said want it to rank well organically. I feel uneasy about this, because of the subdomain vs. subfolder argument. I believe that the product will also be listed/featured on their main brand website.
What is the best way forward?
Thanks!
-
I understand the frustration of working with a big company where "because it is new" is a reason not to change the site. That is not a good way to run a business but inertia and people trying to protect their own positions often result in this type of situation. And there generally isn't much you can do to change this, sadly.
How terrible is the new site?
Does your client just not like it? Or did rankings/search volume/leads/sales plummet when it was introduced?
If it is the former, your client should just suck it up and stick with the current site design. It is the customers' preferences that matter and if the site is doing well, that is what counts.
If the latter then your client is right to want something different but I wouldn't count much on organic search traffic in that scenario. And I don't know that one working piece will drive company success, though perhaps your client hopes to use that smaller success to drive change for the rest of the site. Good luck with that.
Either way it solves your subdomain dilemma--in the first case you won't need one and in the second case it probably won't make a difference.
-
Thanks for your input, Linda. I couldn't agree more with your first point. It really comes down to a matter of budget and timing. Since their website is "new", getting the sign off from the execs would be near impossible.
You're right in that our client wants to distance this from the rest of the site. We're going to put a significant amount of paid media toward driving traffic here, and the client does not want to send anyone to their current site. Hence, why we're developing this new site.
As far as the subfolder, there are a few reasons. The CMS used on the main site is proprietary and managed by my client's parent company. We've worked with those folks in the past on other PPC landing pages and the results have been pretty bad. I think a subfolder for the most part is out of the question, unless our devs package it up in HTML and send it over.
-
Where does your client fall in the chain of command of the company? If s/he is at the very top, sunk costs should not dictate keeping a bad website, and if something different is better for this one product then it is better for all of the products.
Linda makes a really good point here. The website is not liked, then it should be fixed. This is an opportunity for the staff to learn what the "company" "thinks" the site should be or for the boss to admit that lax management allowed the project to jump the tracks. Learn, improve, move upwards.
We have redone lots of work here. Sometimes because it was my fault. Sometimes because we learned something. When those jobs were redone it was a really good day.
-
Where does your client fall in the chain of command of the company? If s/he is at the very top, sunk costs should not dictate keeping a bad website, and if something different is better for this one product then it is better for all of the products.
But assuming they can't have a total site redo, why not use a subfolder? Although Google's John Muller said subdomain or subfolder does not make a difference, there is enough evidence to the contrary that I'd go with a subfolder if at all possible.
Perhaps the subdomain is because the person wants to distance this part from the rest of the site.
But as we know, a big part of SEO is the way things are linked (including internally) and one robust, well-linked site is stronger than a string of independent microsites, which is partly why microsites are not popular anymore. And existing links to the overall domain will help boost this new section if it is correctly integrated. (Unless the rest of the site is really terrible, in which case this one section probably won't make much difference either way.)
I don't think subdomain/subfolder is the main issue here though. It seems that your client want this product separated--does that make the most sense for the overall business goals of the company (as opposed to the success of this one project)? That's the question that needs answering.
-
Sounds like the designers run the company.
-
Ha, that would be ideal. Unfortunately, their brand site is new (within the year) and is a result of their in-house team. We've discussed that, but probably out of the question.
-
My client really dislikes their brand website,
Make a new brand site that the client will love. Right now an ugly brand site is making the client run to a subdomain, which we know is not the best move.
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
-
302 Redirect Question
After running a site crawl. I found two 302 redirects. The two redirects go from: site.com to www.site.com & site.com/products to www.site.com/products How do I fix the 302 redirect and change it to a 301 redirect? I have no clue where to start. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Ryan_1320 -
Added Schema and Rankings Went Down
Hello - We launched a schema plugin for our WordPress site to make our blog seen as articles and main page as an organization. The day after, we saw a dramatic decrease in Keyword rankings but our website health improved with Google. Any thoughts on what could be causing this?
Technical SEO | | Erin_IAN0 -
Eligible To Rank For Few Queries
I can't figure out why this site (www.liveathomeseniors.com) is eligible for so few search queries on Google Webmaster Tools. I know there is a lot of work to be done, but this is my biggest puzzle right now. What am I not seeing? 379 pages are indexed and yet the site is has only been deemed eligible to rank for 3 queries over the past 3 months. Is it all the repetition in the way the content has been structured? I'd appreciate people's thoughts on this. I can't see the forest for the trees. Donna
Technical SEO | | DonnaDuncan0 -
Duplicate content question...
I have a high duplicate content issue on my website. However, I'm not sure how to handle or fix this issue. I have 2 different URLs landing to the same page content. http://www.myfitstation.com/tag/vegan/ and http://www.myfitstation.com/tag/raw-food/ .In this situation, I cannot redirect one URL to the other since in the future I will probably be adding additional posts to either the "vegan" tag or the "raw food tag". What is the solution in this case? Thank you
Technical SEO | | myfitstation0 -
Site Ranking Ahead of Us - Why?
I don't want to give details, but a competitor's site ranks ahead of us by a spot or 2 for some of our major keywords, and we can't figure out why. We have more content indexed, we have better content (my opinion), we're better optimized, we have significantly better MozRank and Majestic rankings, we have more links, we have better links. They have a plain Jane Wordpress blog, and their pages don't even have 300 characters. They don't have any awesome links. There are plenty of other sites besides ours that should outrank them. When I am using the various tools at my disposal, I can see why a competitor outranks us. I'm not obsessing, but this one, I just don't understand. Has anyone had this experience?
Technical SEO | | CsmBill0 -
Unstable ranking
Hello, I own a website wich lately (since like few months ago) have a unstable ranking, I mean that one day I get 800 organic visits (good sells) and then a week when organic visits fall to 700,600,500,400.. then up again Why does this happen? I am lossing ranking :S site : todorepuestoselectro(dot)com Thank you very much im learning a lot here!
Technical SEO | | matiw0 -
Varicose Veins Just Not Ranking
Buonjourno from 6 degrees C damn cold wetherby UK 🙂 This page http://www.varicoseveinsurgery.com/varicose-veins/what-are-they/ has remained stubbornly out of the Google rankings for target term "Varicose Veins" Heres what Ive done so far:
Technical SEO | | Nightwing
1. Made sure the HTML is optimised for the target term
2. Linked from the home page via a scrolling footer Now i'm not looking for a page 1 result but I'm curious to know why the term hasnt even touched the unexplored backwaters of even page 3. p.s If there is a canonical problem please tell me how you diagnosed that 🙂 Thanks in advance, David NB - Just spotted this page can be access via 2 different URLS (Uppercase W being the difference) http://www.varicoseveinsurgery.com/varicose-veins/what-are-they/
http://www.varicoseveinsurgery.com/varicose-veins/What-are-they/0 -
Questions about root domain setup
Hi There, I'm a recent addition to SEOmoz and over the past few weeks I've been trying to figure things out. This whole SEO process has been a bit of a brain burner but its slowly becoming a little more clearer. For awhile I noticed that I was unable to get Open Site Explorer to display information about my site. It mentioned that that there was not enough data for the URL. Too recent of a site, no links, etc. Eventually I changed the the URL to include "www." and it pulled up results. I also noticed that a few of my page warnings are because of duplicate page content. One page will be listed as http://enbphotos.com. The other will be listed as http://www.enbphotos.com. I guess I'm not sure what this all means and how to change it. I'm also not really sure what the terminology even is and something regarding root domain seemed appropriate but I'm not sure if it is accurate. Any help/suggestions/links would be appreciated! Thanks, Chris
Technical SEO | | enbphotos0