Impact of Medium blog hosted on my subdomain
-
I am using the Medium blogging platform to blog, but it is pointed to my site and appears at blog.mysite.com.
Since the content is hosted on Medium and pointed to my subdomain via an A Record / CNAME / etc...
1. Will my domain get credit for backlinks to the blog content?
2. If Medium changes in the future and no longer points to my subdomain, will I lose all of the backlinks I've built up?
-
Thanks John,
The right decision is clear to me now.
-Dave
-
David,
Everything John just said in Point 2 is exactly what was running through my mind as I read your question. As the person responsible for the SEO strength of your website, you should have full control over as much of your SEO activity as possible. If your blogging platform is concerning as described, you really need to reevaluate whether that's the best thing for your site.
-
David -
Thanks for your question, and it's one I see often. I would say this is a much bigger question than "subdomain v subfolder", but really the ability to affect your own SEO.
In direct answer to your questions:
- Since it's on your subdomain, yes. Make sure you have that subdomain verified in Search Console and sitemaps submitted, parameters controlled, etc as well. Also link between your main domain and your subdomain to pass link equity back and forth.
- If they change in the future and no longer point to your subdomain with no way for you to reclaim your content and republish it on a blog you host yourself, then yes. However, I don't really see this happening anytime soon.
Point 2 brings up the bigger question of if you should host your blog on Medium. While it is indeed a beautiful platform and writing on it is a joy (I actually do a lot of blog drafting in their editor), you don't have control over a lot of things such as:
- Internal linking within sidebars/top navs to other important places on your own website
- Full branding. I do recognize that you can add a top banner and branding at the top of blogs hosted on Medium, but it still overall looks like a Medium blog (their typeface, their styles, etc) not like your own brand
If you are concerned about the SEO implications (as you seem to be and should be), I'd definitely recommend investigating a self-hosted blog platform like WordPress instead of Medium.
Good luck!
-
1. Yes your domain gets credit for the backlinks.
2. If they change in the future and just have everything on Medium and not your subdomain you would lose the backlinks. I don't see that happening though.
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 Homepage to Subdomain Bad or Good Idea??
I have a very old forum that still gets a lot of traffic, but when migrating over to another software that is cloud based we cannot redirect using same domain, SO the only option would to be to change the cname on a subdomain and then REDIRECT all the traffic from the ROOT domain permanently - would this be a bad move as the root domain wouldnt be used anymore as now its just setup to be redirected in order to use the software we need to use? Domain is 17 years old.
Technical SEO | | vbsk0 -
Why is the Page Authority for posts in my blog so low
I have noticed that the Page Authority for my posts in my blog are all hovering around 1 and the rest of the pages on my website are around 20. The Domain Authority for my website is 16 and I think the page authority of my posts are negatively affecting my Domain Authority as I write more content. Any suggestions or recommendations as to why posts have such low Page Authority compared to similar pages. I have images, links, and great content in my posts, but they are considerably lower in Page Authority*
Technical SEO | | JoeyGedgaud0 -
Paid links that are passing link equity from a blog?
We have a well-known blogger in our industry with whom we've had a long-standing relationship. We've had inbound links from his blog for many, many years. Today I noticed that we are running a banner ad listed on all pages of his blog under a heading that says "Sponsors." He has dedicated an entire page of his site giving full disclosure of all advertising. However, all of the links on his site pointing to us are passing link equity. To my knowledge they've been this way ever since they were first established years ago. I am fairly certain this fellow, with whom we have an excellent relationship, neither knows nor cares what a "nofollow" attribute is. I am afraid that if I contact him with a request that he add "nofollow" attributes to all of our links that it will damage our relationship by creating friction. To someone who knows nothing and cares nothing about SEO, asking them to put a "nofollow" on a link could either seem like a technical request they don't know how to handle, or something even potentially "shady" on our part. My question is this: Considering how long these links have been there, is this even worth worrying about? Should I just forget about it and move on to bigger fish, or, is this a potentially serious enough violation of Google Webmaster guidelines that we should pursue getting those links "nofollow" attributes added? I should add that we haven't received any "unnatural" link notifications from Google, ever, and haven't ever engaged in any questionable link-building tactics.
Technical SEO | | danatanseo1 -
Wordpress: Should your blog posts be noindex?
Wordpress defaults all blog posts to no index/nofollow Is this how it should be handled? I understand the nofollow from the page.com/blog to the page.com/blog/blogtitle But why noindex? We have Yoast installed and this is the default.
Technical SEO | | cschwartzel0 -
Guest Blog Posts (Originally Seen on . .)
We are making a push to get our blog posts featured on other blogs, and bring in guest bloggers. We figured we could just repost a blog post on our blog, and link back to the original post. Obviously this provides some link juice, but do you think it's a bad idea because of duplicate content? Specifically, I'm also a Huffington Post blogger, so I have the option of writing an article, posting it on our site and HuffPo, and linking back to the original to give us links. Any advice?
Technical SEO | | moziodavid0 -
Blog post summary pages
I'm wondering post-panda if its wise to block access to blog post summary pages like this one: http://www.howtotradestocks.org/blog/page/15/ Any thoughts?
Technical SEO | | PeterM220 -
Duplicate Content Caused By Blog Filters
We are getting some duplicate content warnings based on our blog. Canonical URL's can work for some of the pages, but most of the duplicate content is caused by blog posts appearing on more than 1 URL. What is the best way to fix this?
Technical SEO | | Marketpath0 -
How to fix 404 (Client Error) errors in wordpress blog?
hey A very quick question...after analyzed my wp blog I've found "34" 404 (Client Error) Errors and I don't know how to fix it, do you know how?? *I renew html code of 404 of my wordpress blog.
Technical SEO | | akitmane1