Moving popular blog from root to subdomain. Considerations & impact?
-
I'd like to move the popular company blog from /ecommerce-blog to blog.bigcommerce.com.WordPress application is currently living inside the application that runs the .com and is adding a large amount of files to the parent app, which results in longer deployment times than we'd like. We would use HTTP redirection to handle future requests (e.g. HTTP status code 301). How can this be handled from a WP point of view? What is the impact of SEO, rankings, links, authority?
Thanks.
-
Mike, there is a technical solution specifically for this situation that will give you the best of both worlds!
You're only considering moving the blog to a subdomain because you need to make management of the backend code more efficient and you're wondering how much of an SEO hit you'll have to accept in order to accomplish that. As EGOL says (and I fully concur), moving to a subdomain is going to do serious damage to the value of the both the primary site and the blog.
What you really want is to have the WordPress install elsewhere, but still have it show to visitors (and search engines) like it lives in the /ecommerce-blog subdirectory.
This is exactly what a reverse proxy is designed to do. It allows you to have the WordPress code installed on a subdomain, but still serve the pages to the visitor from the subdirectory as you have been doing. So to the user, the blog looks and works just as it does now, but the code is actually running off a subdomain.
This can be a little tricky to set up, but as long as you have reasonable control over your server, and an experienced server administrator, it's not all that difficult. Especially in your case as you're replicating an existing structure so you won't need a whole slew of redirects. In fact, a reverse proxy could even be used to house the WP install on a completely separate server if you really want to separate the code from the ecomm code.
If your site runs under the Apache webserver, reverse proxy is available as a fairly simple Apache module (it's the config that's tricky.) It's also doable under Windows/IIS but harder. (Note this typically can't be done on shared hosting, but as an ecomm site, I assume you're running on at least your own VPS server?) Here's a post from here on SEOMoz by PointBlankSeo for a little more background on reverse proxies.
Hoe that gives you a second option to consider?
Paul
-
If you have a kickass blog that attracts readers, links, likes, shares, etc., moving it to a subdomain will decrease the SEO value of the blog to your ecommerce rankings. Why? It will be on the subdomain where the link value is only partially shared with the root domain. So, rankings for both the blog and the store might fall. A couple years ago, I redirected all of my subdomains to folders in the root and the results were immediately kickass.
If you don't have a kickass blog it might not matter what you do since the blog really isn't an asset to the site that attracts readers, links, likes shares, etc. In that case maybe you should dump the blog or kick it in gear if you want to spend your time in a worthwhile way.
I value my blogs highly enough that I would dump an ecommerce system if it was stinking up my blog.
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
-
Unrelated subdomain hurts domain rankins?
Hi All, One of our subdomains has lot of content created by different users and mostly they are outgoing links from landing pages. Moreover the top ranking content is about "cigarettes" which is nowhere related to our niche. Will this hurt our domain rankings?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Domain Change Of Address & Sale
Hi Moz community Let's say I have two domains www.domain1.com www.domain2.com domain1 is my main website. Domain 2 was a peripheral side project I was working on. I recently decided to shut it down. So I hooked up the proper 301s and filed a change of address request with Google Webmaster tools. I have had an offer for someone to purchase domain2 - I have absolutely no use for it and would like to sell it. I just want first to figure out that: I can do this without losing any ranking to my main site. I can disassociate this domain from myself and my Company completely. I don't want any of the work we put into it to transfer to the new owner. How can I do this? thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shop-Sq0 -
Implementing AMP pages on WordPress blog
Hey Moz Users, Has anyone tried using the WordPress plugin for AMP pages on their blog yet? Here's the link to it: https://wordpress.org/plugins/amp/. The implementation seems pretty straightforward but since there will be an AMP and a mobile friendly version of the posts on my blog I'm worried it will create a lot of duplicate content issues. I've seen a lot of articles pointing to a rel canonical tag that can be used to fix this situation. Not sure if I'm going to have an AMP version of all the posts on my blog, so this seems like it would be a pain to place the tag manually on specific pages with the AMP version only. Has anyone tried this plugin and what have you done to fix this duplicate content issue? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | znotes0 -
Dev Subdomain Pages Indexed - How to Remove
I own a website (domain.com) and used the subdomain "dev.domain.com" while adding a new section to the site (as a development link). I forgot to block the dev.domain.com in my robots file, and google indexed all of the dev pages (around 100 of them). I blocked the site (dev.domain.com) in robots, and then proceeded to just delete the entire subdomain altogether. It's been about a week now and I still see the subdomain pages indexed on Google. How do I get these pages removed from Google? Are they causing duplicate content/title issues, or does Google know that it's a development subdomain and it's just taking time for them to recognize that I deleted it already?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
Archiving a festival website - subdomain or directory?
Hi guys I look after a festival website whose program changes year in and year out. There are a handful of mainstay events in the festival which remain each year, but there are a bunch of other events which change each year around the mainstay programming.This often results in us redoing the website each year (a frustrating experience indeed!) We don't archive our past festivals online, but I'd like to start doing so for a number of reasons 1. These past festivals have historical value - they happened, and they contribute to telling the story of the festival over the years. They can also be used as useful windows into the upcoming festival. 2. The old events (while no longer running) often get many social shares, high quality links and in some instances still drive traffic. We try out best to 301 redirect these high value pages to the new festival website, but it's not always possible to find a similar alternative (so these redirects often go to the homepage) Anyway, I've noticed some festivals archive their content into a subdirectory - i.e. www.event.com/2012 However, I'm thinking it would actually be easier for my team to archive via a subdomain like 2012.event.com - and always use the www.event.com URL for the current year's event. I'm thinking universally redirecting the content would be easier, as would cloning the site / database etc. My question is - is one approach (i.e. directory vs. subdomain) better than the other? Do I need to be mindful of using a subdomain for archival purposes? Hope this all makes sense. Many thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cos20300 -
301 redirect subdomain to path and 301 for popular pages
We have very popular pages that have many backlinks. www.chezmaya.com/jeux/game33.htm have so many backlinks and it's very popular. Now If i'm moving this page to a new path like : http://www.chezmaya.com/jeux/component/mtree/Défouloir/Game33/details.html with a 301. Your SEOmoz toolbar is now giving a very low PA:1 and mR:0.00 for this new page. My question is after you crawl my site again would you change the values to what /jeux/game33.htm got before ? We used to have jeux.chezmaya.com and moved to www.chezmaya.com/jeux/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SocialGeekMedia
Same here PA:1 and mR:0.00 for this page. Also Matt Cutts say that Google does transfer the juice from the old page to the new one. I already saw one url changed in a search for puzzle, it's at the same position it was before, but it say's 6 days ago beside. So I wonder if this is temporary and it will move with time? Thanks0 -
Company Blog Vs External Blog
Hi there, We write articles for our blog on a regular basis, maybe two times per week. One of those articles I usually place on an external blog first getting some external links pointing into my product pages and using a rel canonical on that article on my blog pointing to the external post, so that the external post get's all the credit. The reason I put this on my blog is I use this to point to from my email marketing activities. The question is, do you think this makes best practice? trying to get more out of this blog post.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul780 -
Blog posts, blog archives and duplication
Just reviewed a blog integrated with my website, and have noticed duplicate content - the blog homepage includes blogpost summaries (not a major issue as now set up so only put in opening paragraphy then anchor text to full blog post). Then that's a full blog blog post if you click for more - then that's carbon copied over in the archive. So one near exact duplicate. Is this something worth taking action on with nocrawl tags, etc., on archive duplicates of blog posts, or shouldn't I be to hung-up on this? I'm a scientist by training, so tend to go further and further once I get going...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0