Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • SEO Q&A
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. WordPress Sub-directory for SEO

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    WordPress Sub-directory for SEO

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    wordpress subdirectory domain authority
    5
    7
    5243
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • HimalayanInstitute
      HimalayanInstitute Subscriber last edited by

      Hi There,

      I'm working on a WordPress site that includes a premium content blog with approx 900 posts.

      As part of the project, those 900 posts and other membership functionality will be moved from the main site to another site built specifically for content/membership.

      Ideally, we want the existing posts to remain on the root domain to avoid a loss in link juice/domain authority.

      We initially began setting up a WordPress Multisite using the sub-directory option. This allows for the main site to be at www.website.com and the secondary site to be at www.website.com/secondary.

      Unfortunately, the themes and plugins we need for the platform do not play nicely with WordPress Multisite, so we started seeking a new solution, and, discovered that a second instance of WordPress can be installed in a subdirectory on the server. This would give us the same subdirectory structure while bypassing WordPress Multisite and instead, having two separate single-site installs.

      Do you foresee any issues with this WordPress subdirectory install? Does Google care/know these are two separate WordPress installs and do we risk losing any link juice/domain authority?

      nmiletic 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • BlueprintMarketing
        BlueprintMarketing last edited by

        @himalayaninstitute said in WordPress Sub-directory for SEO:

        WordPress can be installed in a subdirectory

        I have done this a lot and I mean a lot what you want to do is set up a reverse proxy on your subdomain and this will allow you to not only bypass having to use multisite for subfolder but if you want to power it separately you can you do not have to it all. You should probably use your same server and power through Fastly our CloudFlare

        alt text
        alt text

        once you set this up it is super easy to keep it running in your entire site will be much faster as a result as well

        my response to someone else that needed a subfolder
        https://moz.com/community/q/topic/69528/using-a-reverse-proxy-and-301-redirect-to-appear-sub-domain-as-sub-directory-what-are-the-seo-risks

        please also look at it explained by these hosting companies is unbelievable easy to implement compared to how it looks and you can do so with Fastly or cloudflare in a matter of minutes

        • https://servebolt.com/help/article/cloudflare-workers-reverse-proxy/

        • https://kinsta.com/blog/reverse-proxy/

        • https://support.pagely.com/hc/en-us/articles/213148558-Reverse-Proxy-Setup

        • https://pantheon.io/product/advanced-global-cdn

        • https://wpengine.com/support/using-a-reverse-proxy-with-wp-engine/

        • https://thoughtbot.com/blog/host-your-blog-under-blog-on-your-www-domain

        • https://crate.io/blog/fastly_traffic_spike
          *https://support.fastly.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/4407427792397-Set-a-request-condition-to-redirect-URL

        • https://coda.io/@matt-varughese/guide-how-to-reverse-proxy-with-cloudflare-workers

        • https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/cdn/glossary/reverse-proxy/

        • https://gist.github.com/LimeCuda/18b88f7ad9cdf1dccb01b4a6bbe398a6
          I hope this was of help
          tom

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • HimalayanInstitute
          HimalayanInstitute Subscriber @nmiletic last edited by

          @nmiletic The content section of the site requires a unique UI Design and other robust functionality, so having a separate theme/plugins in its own directory is going to be the way we go here. Thanks for your assistance!

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • nmiletic
            nmiletic @HimalayanInstitute last edited by

            @himalayaninstitute Have you thought about adding a page and making all of this new content a subpage? Or changing your permalink structure to include a category in the URL? You can then add all of these posts under that category and have the URL show up as www.example.com/category/page-or-post-name

            HimalayanInstitute 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • HimalayanInstitute
              HimalayanInstitute Subscriber @Danny_Exxa last edited by

              @danny_exxa @amitydigital

              The website at the subdirectory will be an online learning platform with a blog, online courses, memberships, gated content, etc. The content currently lives on the main site, so, it's great that we can move it into the subdirectory without taking a hit from Google.

              Since these are fundamentally two separate websites, we're not concerned about needing to manage them independently.

              Thanks again for your input and advice, we greatly appreciate it!

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • Danny_Exxa
                Danny_Exxa @amitydigital last edited by

                @amitydigital said in WordPress Sub-directory for SEO:

                Google will view it as one site so you shouldn't have any issues from that perspective. The Google bot is just looking at pages and won't know/care that the underlying CMS that is running some pages is a different install than other pages. The downside is you now have two websites to maintain, two themes, two sets of files, etc... That may result in a bit of a headache in the future.

                As @amitydigital put it, the issue with your approach would be repetitive tasks. You will not loose any DA nor PA (being that you implement a correct 301 redirection). What is going to be on the subdirectory?

                HimalayanInstitute 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • amitydigital
                  amitydigital last edited by

                  Google will view it as one site so you shouldn't have any issues from that perspective. The Google bot is just looking at pages and won't know/care that the underlying CMS that is running some pages is a different install than other pages. The downside is you now have two websites to maintain, two themes, two sets of files, etc... That may result in a bit of a headache in the future.

                  Danny_Exxa 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • 1 / 1
                  • First post
                    Last post

                  Got a burning SEO question?

                  Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                  Start my free trial


                  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.

                  • See all categories

                  Related Questions

                  • Arek_W

                    Unsolved Why Did My Site's DA Go Down After Adding New Links?

                    domain authority link building website optimization

                    Hi Moz Community, I've noticed my website's DA https://clean4u.org fell from 12 to 11 after adding a few links. I thought these were quality links, so I'm puzzled about the drop. Has anyone experienced something similar or knows why this could happen? Any advice or insight would be great! Thanks!

                    Link Building | | Arek_W
                    0
                  • getnoticedlocally

                    PA and DA for Homepage

                    page authority domain authority internal linking homepage

                    I've been looking at the PA and DA scores for the homepage of websites we have built and have been comparing this to competitors. What I'm finding is that the PA score is always higher than the DA, however on competitors sites the PA is much higher in relation to the DA. What could be the reason for this? For example, some of our website homepages may have PA / DA scores such as the following: Website #1: PA37 DA25 (PA:DA = 1.48)
                    Website #2: PA31 DA21 (PA:DA = 1.47) However competitors often have figures like this: Website #3: PA40 DA21 (PA:DA 1.9)
                    Website #4: PA 25 DA 11 (PA:DA 2.27) I even saw one website with the following scores: Website #5: PA36 DA5 (PA:DA 7.2) How do you explain such a high Page Authority in relation to the domain authority for that site? When I look at the scores for our websites I often feel that the DA is at a good level, but the PA for the homepage doesn't seem as high as it could be compared to competitors. My initial thought was that maybe we had a lot of backlinks to other pages on the website (not the homepage) but this is not the case at all - pretty much all our backlinks are to the homepage. Could it be to do with internal linking structure? Any other ideas? Many thanks in advance for any help with this.

                    Link Building | | getnoticedlocally
                    0
                  • Nobody1616542228134

                    Why is pagination SEO such a mystery in 2021?

                    Hi folks. I would like to discuss pagination. I use WordPress (Genesis, specifically). I ran my site through a site scan and it flagged an error which told me that my blog was producing duplicate meta descriptions because the  blog is paginated - the same meta description from the blog page is being used on Page 2, Page 3 etc. I looked into this and the Internet is awash with many other people scratching around for a solution. My understanding is that using a canonical link on the first page is not a good idea, because it says to Google that only Page 1 of the blog is important. I also read an article that states Google no longer reads the Rel=Prev/Next code that could be used to tell Google to ignore the issue. So, what's the solution? Do I even need one? As a side-thought, it seems to me that pagination is, well, pretty useless. I mean, if my blog has 20 pages and I've worked hard to create content, who is going to click through to anywhere near page 20? Nobody. There has to be a smarter way for people on-site to access content. I would love your thoughts on all of this. Cheers.

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nobody1616542228134
                    0
                  • joshibhargav_20

                    Using a Reverse Proxy and 301 redirect to appear Sub Domain as Sub Directory - what are the SEO Risks?

                    We’re in process to move WordPress blog URLs from subdomains to sub-directory. We aren’t moving blog physically, but using reverse proxy and 301 redirection to do this. Blog subdomain URL is https://blog.example.com/ and destination sub-directory URL is https://www.example.com/blog/ Our main website is e-commerce marketplace which is YMYL site. This is on Windows server. Due to technical reasons, we can’t physically move our WordPress blog to the main website. Following is our Technical Setup Setup a reverse proxy at https://www.example.com/blog/ pointing to https://blog.example.com/ Use a 301 redirection from https://blog.example.com/ to https://www.example.com/blog/ with an exception if a traffic is coming from main WWW domain then it won’t redirect. Thus, we can eliminate infinite loop. Change all absolute URLs to relative URLs on blog Change the sitemap URL from https://blog.example.com/sitemap.xml to https://www.example.com/blog/sitemap.xml and update all URLs mentioned within the sitemap. SEO Risk Evaluation We have individual GA Tracking ID and individual Google Search Console Properties for main website and blog. We will not merge them. Keep them separate as they are. Keeping this in mind, I am evaluating SEO Risks factors Right now when we receive traffic from main website to blog (or vice versa) then it is considered as referral traffic and new cookies are set for Google Analytics. What’s going to happen when its on the same domain? Which type of settings change should I do in Blog’s Google Search Console? (A). Do I need to request “Change of Address” in the Blog’s search console property? (B). Should I re-submit the sitemap? Do I need to re-submit the blog sitemap from the https://www.example.com/ Google Search Console Property? Main website is e-commerce marketplace which is YMYL website, and blog is all about content. So does that impact SEO? Will this dilute SEO link juice or impact on the main website ranking because following are the key SEO Metrices. (A). Main website’s Avg Session Duration is about 10 minutes and bounce rate is around 30% (B). Blog’s Avg Session Duration is 33 seconds and bounce rate is over 92%

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | joshibhargav_20
                    0
                  • vtmoz

                    What are best page titles for sub-folders or sub-directories? Same as website?

                    Hi all, We always mention "brand & keyword" in every page title along with topic in the website, like "Topic | vertigo tiles". Let's say there is a sub-directory with hundreds of pages...what will be the best page title practice in mentioning "brand & keyword" across all pages of sub-directory to benefit in-terms if SEO? Can we add "vertigo tiles" to all pages of sub-directory? Or we must not give same phrase? Thanks,

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz
                    0
                  • webbmason

                    Domain Forwarding - SEO Impacts?

                    I have a site that has been active for years - thinkbiglearnsmart.com. Awhile ago I had purchased about 50 domain names that were relevant to my company. I still have those urls and would like to use them to point to different pages on my site - just because they have good key words in the URLs. For example - one is dreamweavertrainingclassesonlinelive.com.  Currently they are all redirecting to my homepage. A. is that hurting me? B. I would like to redirect to the more relevant page. ie the page dedicated to Dreamweaver training (http://thinkbiglearnsmart.com/dreamweaver-creative-cloud-training-course/ ) Will this hurt my Dreamweaver keyword for example because there is already a 301 redirect on that page from a very old Dreamweaver link which was something like thinkbiglearnsmart.com/dreamweaver C. On my hosting account where I can select where the URL forwards to - it has an option for "Location forwarding" and "Frame forwarding" - currently they are set to Frame forwarding - which one is best? Any help is much appreciated!!! Thank you!

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | webbmason
                    0
                  • unibiz

                    Domain Alias SEO

                    We have 5 domain alias of our existing sites
                    All 5 domain alias are domain alias of our main site. It means, all domain alias will have exactly same site and contents
                    Like Main domain: www.mywebsite.com
                    DomainAlias: www.myproduct.com,  www.myproduct2.com,  www.myproduc3.com
                    And if anybody will open our site www.myproduct.com, it will open same website which I have in primary site what can i do to rank all website without any penalty....i s there any way? This is domain alias of in hosting industry Thanks

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | unibiz
                    0
                  • alextanner

                    Duplicate page titles Wordpress SEO/Yoast

                    Hi I have a Wordpress site using the Wordpress SEO plugin by Yoast. Everything appears to be fine except that on 1 Feb SEOMoz crawl suddenly picked up a bunch of errors. The errors are duplicate page titles, and these exist only for the mysite.com/page/X pages. I can't find any setting in Yoast that looks wrong or tells me how to fix this. The pages are also dynamically canonicalizing to themselves - not sure if this makes any difference although I don't know how this is happening. Does anyone know how to fix this duplicate title error? Alex

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alextanner
                    0

                  Get started with Moz Pro!

                  Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                  Start my free trial
                  Products
                  • Moz Pro
                  • Moz Local
                  • Moz API
                  • Moz Data
                  • STAT
                  • Product Updates
                  Moz Solutions
                  • SMB Solutions
                  • Agency Solutions
                  • Enterprise Solutions
                  Free SEO Tools
                  • Domain Authority Checker
                  • Link Explorer
                  • Keyword Explorer
                  • Competitive Research
                  • Brand Authority Checker
                  • Local Citation Checker
                  • MozBar Extension
                  • MozCast
                  Resources
                  • Blog
                  • SEO Learning Center
                  • Help Hub
                  • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                  • How-to Guides
                  • Moz Academy
                  • API Docs
                  About Moz
                  • About
                  • Team
                  • Careers
                  • Contact
                  Why Moz
                  • Case Studies
                  • Testimonials
                  Get Involved
                  • Become an Affiliate
                  • MozCon
                  • Webinars
                  • Practical Marketer Series
                  • MozPod
                  Connect with us

                  Contact the Help team

                  Join our newsletter
                  Moz logo
                  © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                  • Accessibility
                  • Terms of Use
                  • Privacy

                  Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.