Sub domain? Micro site? What's the best solution?
-
My client currently has two websites to promote their art galleries in different parts of the country.
They have bought a new domain (let's call it buyart.com) which they would eventually like to use as an e-commerce platform.
They are wondering whether they keep their existing two gallery websites (non e-commerce) separate as they always have been, or somehow combine these into the new domain and have one overarching brand (buyart.com).
I've read a bit on subdomains and microsites but am unsure at this stage what the best option would be, and what the pros and cons are. My feeling is to bring it all together under buyart.com so everything is in one place and creates a better user journey for anyone who would like to visit.
Thoughts?
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
-
Different IP's in one Server
Hi, I just want to ask if there is no bad effect in SEO if we do have different websites that has different IP address but has shared in only 1 server? Thank you
Technical SEO | | TirewebMarketing0 -
Does a CMS inhibit a site's crawlability?
I smell baloney but I could use a little backup from the community! My client was recently told by an SEO that search engines have a hard time getting to their site because using a CMS (like WordPress) doesn't allow "direct access to the html". Here is what they emailed my client: "Word Press (like your site is built with) and other similar “do it yourself” web builder programs and websites are not good for search engine optimization since they do not allow direct access to the HTML. Direct HTML access is needed to input important items to enhance your websites search engine visibility, performance and creditability in order to gain higher search engine rankings." Bots are blind to CMSs and html is html, correct? What do you think about the information given by the other SEO?
Technical SEO | | Adpearance0 -
H2's are already ranking well. Should I rock the boat?
I recently began work for a company and discovered that they are not using h1's (using h2's) and rank in the top 5 for ~90% of their keywords. The site is one of the original players in their industry, has massive amounts of domain authority and tens of thousands of linking root domains. However, they are currently being beaten on some of their top keywords by a few of their younger competitors. Moving their current h2 text into h1 tags could be helpful. But to what extent? Since they already rank well for so many competitive keywords, Is it worth it to rock the boat by moving their h2 text into h1 tags and risk affecting their current rankings?
Technical SEO | | 5outhpaw0 -
Multiple Domains for One Site
We are building a site for a new miniature golf course. They have a long name, which they don't want me to mention, but it's equivalent to a name like Golden State Golf and Putt. They also have a restaurant with its own name and brand that will be a part of the mini golf course and its website, much how Hotel websites have their restaurants on their sites. Before becoming our client they purchased golfandputt.com and want to go with this domain for simplicity sake. In addition to this domain name they purchased 7 others that contain the bussiness' full name in some way, such as: goldenstategolfandputt.com goldenstategolfandputt.net, goldenstategolf-guitar.com etc., As well as: 3 variations of the golfandputt.com domain 3 variations of the restaurants name They wish to have all of these redirect to the main website or the restaurant page to "help with SEO," as they told me. From what I have researched on SEOmoz it seems better to simply optimize the website for Golden State Golf and Putt and the restaurant page for the restaurant's name. Additionally, I'm worried that redirecting the domains to the site will actually hurt them in rankings. If someone can shed some light on what the best practices for this sort of situation are I'd be much appreciative. Apologies in advance for the lengthy explanation but its a bit of a unique situation.
Technical SEO | | TVI0 -
Cantags within links affect Google's perception of them?
Hi, All! This might be really obvious, but I have little coding experience, so when in doubt - ask... One of our client site's has navigation that looks (in part) like this: <a <span="">href</a><a <span="">="http://www.mysite.com/section1"></a> <a <span="">src="images/arrow6.gif" width="13" height="7" alt="Section 1">Section 1</a><a <span=""></a> WC3 told us the tags invalidate, and while I ignored most of their comments because I didn't think it would impact on what search engines saw, because thesetags are right in the links, it raised a question. Anyone know if this is for sure a problem/not a problem? Thanks in advance! Aviva B
Technical SEO | | debi_zyx0 -
Best SEO strategy for a site that has been down
Because of hosting problems we're trying to work out, our domain was down all weekend, and we have lost all of our rankings. Doe anyone have any experience with this kind of thing in terms of how long it takes to figure out where you stand once you have the site back up? what the best SEO strategy is for immediately addressing this problem? Besides just plugging away at getting links like normal, is there anything specific we should do right away when the site goes back up? Resubmit a site map, etc? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | OneClickVentures0 -
Canonicalization isn't consistent across site!?!
I started managing a fairly small site that consists of a home page, flash portfolio, and a wordpress blog. The home page ( main index ) is canonicalized as: The wordpress blog is canonicalized as Does canonicalization need to be consistent across the site? Could the difference in canonicalization cause any ranking problems, and or indexing problems for the blog / entire site? Any thoughts are appreciated!
Technical SEO | | SEOProPhoto0 -
Switching ecommerce CMS's - Best Way to write URL 301's and sub pages?
Hey guys, What a headache i've been going through the last few days trying to make sure my upcoming move is near-perfect. Right now all my urls are written like this /page-name (all lowercase, exact, no forward slash at end). In the new CMS they will be written like this: /Page-Name/ (with the forward slash at the end). When I generate an XML sitemap in the new ecomm CMS internally it lists the category pages with a forward slash at the end, just like they show up through out the CMS. This seems sloppy to me, but I have no control over it. Is this OK for SEO? I'm worried my PR 4, well built ecommerce website is going to lose value to small (but potentially large) errors like this. If this is indeed not good practice, is there a resource about not using the forward slash at the end of URLS in sitemaps i can present to the community at the platform? They are usually real quick to make fixes if something is not up to standards. Thanks in advance, -First Time Ecommerce Platform Transition Guy
Technical SEO | | Hyrule0