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.
Subdomains for niche related keywords
-
I wanted to know how efficient using a subdomain is, taking in consideration all the updates Google has made lately.
I am looking to use a subdomain for a well branded website for a niche specific part of their website. The subdomain will end-up having more than 100 pages.
I'd like to see in what cases do you guys recommend using a subdomain? How to get the same benefit out of a subdomain as i am getting from the actual main domain?
-
I agree with you and thank you for your answer but at the same time i am more worried abt the structural standpoint - as i responded above to one of the replies - use the example with the hospital
A hospital may target very general related keywords but then it may offer very specific services and programs that are all indirectly related. Now those programs are very niche related and specific for certain types of surgeries and services offered, they contain a lot of information and can be expanded way above the 10 pages mentioned.
Now the question is what do you do in that case? You'd rather have 5 sub folders divided in other 20-30 categories and subcategories? Or you would rather have them structured in a better way on a sub-domain? What would be your choice in this case?
-
ok the main website targets 5 very competitive niches. They are different niches and they all offer different types of services.
as a good example would be a hospital that offers a couple of different programs and surgeries. Each program offers a different service, and targets different niche related keywords. But because the main site offers all of those its hard to categorize them in subfolders.
-
You will be doubling your workload, essentially starting a brand new website from scratch in the same niche. I feel I need to make that very clear.
You asked about efficiency and that's pretty much the core of what I'm talking about, subdomains are inefficient.
Niche subdirectories are by far the better option.
-
Cary,
In my opinion sub-domains should be used for completely different content. If your niche has anything to do with the current site then a sub-folder is the way to go. Can you provide more info on the current site and the new niche?
DD
-
Ok so my understanding is that if you don't mind doing the extra work for a sub-domain then you do recommended it being used. Do you see sub-domains as achieving better placements down the road if the necessary extra work will be put into these?
-
I can't speak for the Panda update, but I do agree with Daniel Deceuster, subdomains have been treat historically as separate sites. So unless things have changed dramatically you will essentially be starting from scratch link and work wise.
Subfolders may not be as neat or compartmentalised as sub-domains, but they are unambiguously under the ownership of the domain in question. Search engines can trust that.
Almost all of this work is about reducing ambiguity for the search engines, and sometimes that is at the cost of elegance.
-
how about from a category standpoint - on the main site if you are creating a subfolder you are limited to how deep u structure your categories as opposed to a subdomain you have more flexibility and are able to categorize those 100 pages much cleaner and user friendly
how about if you target a different geo location? wouldnt that be optimized better with a subdomain?
-
SEO rule #1: Never use subdomains. Ever. For any reason.
Ask yourself this, what's the difference between putting these 100 pages on a subdomain as opposed to a subdirectory? None? Then why bother? Make it a subdirectory!
99 times out of 100 you will say no difference to the question above. In the random instance that you do have some kind of reasoning for using a subdomain that will get you something different, then sure, why not, but I doubt you can find a reason. Subdomains are treated as separate domains by Google. Why would you hinder your SEO efforts for no reason? Just put your 100 pages in a subdirectory of the domain and link to it from your website internally. That's all I would do.
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
-
New Subdomain & Best Way To Index
We have an ecommerce site, we'll say at https://example.com. We have created a series of brand new landing pages, mainly for PPC and Social at https://sub.example.com, but would also like for these to get indexed. These are built on Unbounce so there is an easy option to simply uncheck the box that says "block page from search engines", however I am trying to speed up this process but also do this the best/correct way. I've read a lot about how we should build landing pages as a sub-directory, but one of the main issues we are dealing with is long page load time on https://example.com, so I wanted a kind of fresh start. I was thinking a potential solution to index these quickly/correctly was to make a redirect such as https://example.com/forward-1 -> https:sub.example.com/forward-1 then submit https://example.com/forward-1 to Search Console but I am not sure if that will even work. Another possible solution was to put some of the subdomain links accessed on the root domain say right on the pages or in the navigation. Also, will I definitely be hurt by 'starting over' with a new website? Even though my MozBar on my subdomain https://sub.example.com has the same domain authority (DA) as the root domain https://example.com? Recommendations and steps to be taken are welcome!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Markbwc0 -
Why does Moz recommend subdomains for language-specific websites?
In Moz's domain recommendations, they recommend subdirectories instead of subdomains (which agrees with my experience), but make an exception for language-specific websites: Since search engines keep different metrics for domains than they do subdomains, it is recommended that webmasters place link-worthy content like blogs in subfolders rather than subdomains. (i.e. www.example.com/blog/ rather than blog.example.com) The notable exceptions to this are language-specific websites. (i.e., en.example.com for the English version of the website). Why are language-specific websites excepted from this advice? Why are subdomains preferable for language-specific websites? Google's advice says subdirectories are fine for language-specific websites, and GSC allows geographic settings at the subdirectory level (which may or may not even be needed, since language-specific sites may not be geographic-specific), so I'm unsure why Moz would suggest using subdirectories in this case.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdamThompson0 -
Subpage ranking for homepage keyword
Hi all, May seem like a simple scenario and I might be missing something, but my subpage seems to be ranking for my main homepage keyword. The subpage PR is 28 and my domain authority is 17, how can I get my main home page to rank instead of the sub page (product page)? I want to stay away from exact match anchor text links, any suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SO_UK0 -
Sitemap on a Subdomain
Hi, For various reasons I placed my sitemaps on a subdomain where I keep images and other large files (static.example.com). I then submitted this to Google as a separate site in Webmaster tools. Is this a problem? All of the URLs are for the actual site (www.example.com), the only issue on my end is not being able to look at it all at the same time. But I'm wondering if this would cause any problems on Google's end.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | enotes0 -
How to Target Keyword Permutations
I have a client that wants to rank for a keyword phrase that has many permutations.. ex. "Alaska Hill Country Resort", "Hill Country Resort Alaska", "Hill Country Alaska Resort" But I'm wondering if I should target these all on the same page or not. I'm assuming all of these permutations are actually valid searches because I did my keyword research for 'exact match' keywords and got results like this.. (let me know if I'm missing something here, or if this sounds right) [Alaska Hill Country Resort] - 230 Local Searches [Hill Country Resort Alaska] - 140 Local Searches [Hill Country Alaska Resort] - 30 Local Searches The phrase we're targeting is their main keyword phrase, so I've chosen their home-page as the page to rank for this phrase. My thought is to optimize for the most popular phrase (ex. "Alaska Hill Country Resort"), and sprinkle in the other phrases throughout the copy. Next I would run a link-building campaign targeting the main phrase first.. then the next phrase, and so on, so that my anchor text is more heavily focused on the more popular terms, but I would also make sure to include the less popular terms. Do you think this is the best way to go about this? Do I really need to make individual pages for each of the permutations, or is it okay to target them all on one page since they are essentially the same keyword?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ATMOSMarketing560 -
Block an entire subdomain with robots.txt?
Is it possible to block an entire subdomain with robots.txt? I write for a blog that has their root domain as well as a subdomain pointing to the exact same IP. Getting rid of the option is not an option so I'd like to explore other options to avoid duplicate content. Any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kylesuss12 -
Sudden rank drop for 1 keyword
A page of mine (http://loginhelper.com/networks/facebook-login/) was ranking in the top 10 for keyword (facebook login) and has been for at least 2 months, moving between 5th and 10th. Suddenly in the last 3 days the rank for the keyword dropped from 7th to 46th, yet none of the other keywords have been affected (they target other pages) and their ranks have continued to improve. I am trying to figure out what caused this sudden drop in the ranking of 1 page (the page has quality mainly text based content and isn't in the least bit shallow or spammy) I have been thinking perhaps a crawl or server error may be to cause leaving the page temporarily unavailable or with a big load time... Otherwise what could cause one page to drop so much so quickly whilst other pages improved their rank?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Netboost0 -
Multiple Keyword Research Questions, Help
Hello , I've been trying for several days to understand how keyword research works for a multi purpose website,I've read guides, articles even some chapters from the book" The Art of Seo" by O'Reilly and still no luck. It seems i can't wrap my head around keyword research,lets say I have a social gaming community website and I'm trying to rank it first on some low competition keywords + some long tail keywords.The website has functions like leaderboards, profiles,events, competitions,etc so it's not actually a news related website but it will have a blog. My website being on the games niche It would imply that I should target words that contain the word "Games" but this word generates millions of searches globally so ranking first its nearly impossible if the website is brand new. This made me pursue generic keywords formed with 2 / 3 words like fresh games, new games, mmorpg games, fps games,etc which still generate lets say 30.000 searches globally each. Due to the different areas of the website like latest game events,latest games competitions,etc I'm confused If i should pursue website specific keywords like latest games events, fresh games events, latest games competitions, upcoming games competitions but these too generate 30.000 global searches each,so... 0.should i use generic keywords or keywords that include site features? So let's say I decide to pursue generic "games" keywords,due to a high competition based on the keyword I decide to go a layer deeper and for the keyword "fresh games" I obtain keywords like** "fresh games 2011,top fresh games 2011, upcoming fresh games** " and thus building a list of 30 keywords that contain " fresh games".If i do this for the rest of the keywords: ** new games, mmorpg games, fps games,etc** I end up with a list of 10.000 keywords or more since each keyword generates other keywords. Is this the correct approach ? since generating 10.000 keywords sounds a lot and I'm getting the feeling that It's not how it supposed to be done,like were would I insert 10.000 keywords? So how do I know which keywords to pick and aim in order to try to get no.1 ranking? and why those? How many keywords should I use? and where should i put them? since it's not a news website so writing a lot of articles isn't an option. Should I focus on 2 words keywords with around 10.000-30.000 seaches or 2 words keywords + long tail keywords with less traffic like 100 - 5000? Is there a guide for the Keyword Analysis Tool since if i enter "fresh new games" i get a 39% keyword difficulty,is that hard to rank? and I don't know what all those color mean since some of them have higher numbers then others that are found at the top and how can i get beat a website that has has rank 10. So hopefully with your help & by some miracle I will finally be able to build a keyword list. Thank you !
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | arching0