Subdirectories vs subdomains
-
Hi SEO gurus
Anyone has input on what's better?
blog.domain.com vs domain.com/blog
store.domain.com vs domain.com/store
etc
I think the subdir (/xyz) will concentrate authority on the same subdomain so should be better? However sometimes it is tidier on the server to maintain online stores or blogs in a separate strucutre so subdomains work better in that sense. I just want to make sure that doesn't affect SEO?
Cheers!
-
Thanks for the responses Yumi, @oznappies & Aaron
-
Sub directories/folders used to be the definite way to go for the most SEO value however things have evened out for the most part. I think sub directories are more user friendly... we are used to the slash... extra periods can get tricky.
-
I've asked this one on here before and have some test sites trialling both ways and the sub-directory gains rank much faster from the root than the sub-domain.
-
in my opinion? definitely subdirectory. and in fact it will still be tidier on the server maintainability ..
For example please consider the following setup
you have your MYDOMAIN.com located at /var/www/html-mydomain
and by using a SUBDOMAIN.MYDOMAIN.COM, you will generally have them at /var/www/html-subdomain-mydomain
it looks tidier as you said it BUT you can achieve exactly the same thing using MOD_REWRITE
so perhaps right now your MYDOMAIN.com/SUB is located at /var/www/html-mydomain/SUB right? you can actually write a .htaccess that whenever user is going to MYDOMAIN.com/SUB it actually load the page under /var/www/html-subdomain-mydomain instead ! (so the server maintainability between using the subdirectory and subdomain will be exactly the same)
a much more technical example , put this inside your .htaccess of your root domain home directory
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^[www\.]*sub-domain-name.domain-name.com [NC] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/sub-domain-directory/.* RewriteRule ^(.*) /sub-domain-directory/$1 [L]
This will cause the following situation
when people go to http://sub-domain-name.domain-name.com/a.html AND http://domain-name.com/sub-domain-directory/a.html
both of them will open your /sub-domain-directory/a.html instead
hope this help
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
-
JSON-LD meta data: Do you have any rules/recommendations for using BlogPosting vs Article?
Dear Moz Community. I'm looking at moving from in-line Microdata in the HTML to JSON-LD on the web pages that I manage. Seems a far simpler solution having all the meta data in one place - especially for trouble shooting! With this in mind I've started to change the page templates on my personal site before I tackle the ones for my eCommerce site. I've made a start, and I'm still working on the templates producing some default values (like if a page doesn't have an associated image) but have been wondering if any of you have any rules/recommendations for using BlogPosting vs Article? I'd call this type of page an Article:
Technical SEO | | andystorey
https://cycling-jersey-collection.com/browse-collection/selle-italia-chinol-seb-bennotto-1982-team-jersey Whereas this page is from the /blog so that should probably be a BlogPosting:
https://cycling-jersey-collection.com/blog/2017-worldtour-team-jerseys I've used the following resources but it would be great to get a discussion on here.
https://yoast.com/structured-data-schema-ultimate-guide/
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/data-type-selector
https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/u/0/ I'm keen to get this 100% right as once this is done I'm going to drive through some further changes to get some progress on things like this: https://moz.com/blog/ranking-zero-seo-for-answers
https://moz.com/blog/what-we-learned-analyzing-featured-snippets Kind Regards andy moz-screenshot.jpg1 -
How much difference does .co.uk vs .com for SEO make?
My Website has a .com domain. However I have noticed that for local businesses all of them have a .co.uk (UK business) TLD (check plumbers southampton for example). I have also noticed that on checking my serp rankings, I'm on page 1 if searched on Google.com but page 2 if searched on google.co.uk. Now being UK based I would assume most of my customers will be redirected to google.co.uk so I'm wondering how much of an impact this actually makes? Would it be worth purchasing .co.uk domain and transferring my website to that? Or run them both at the same time and set up 301 direct on my .com to .co.uk? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Marvellous0 -
Https vs http two different domains?
If i visit mywebsite.com.au, www.mywebsite.com.au and http://www.mywebsite.com.au - i get one website BUT if I visit https://www.mywebsite.com.au I get a different website - I also get a untrusted website warning The logo in the bottom right of the https: website is the name of the webdesigner where the website is hosted. Is this a normal practice?
Technical SEO | | GardenBeet0 -
DNS vs IIS redirection
I'm working on a project where a site has gone through a rebrand and is therefore also moving to a new domain name. Some pages have been merged on the new site so it's not a lift and shift job and so I'm writing up a redirect plan. Their IT dept have asked if we want redirects done by DNS redirect or IIS redirect. Which one will allow us to have redirects on a page level and not a domain level? I think IIS may be the right route but would love your thoughts on this please.
Technical SEO | | Marketing_Today1 -
Wordpress Redirect Plugin Vs Manual .htaccess?
Hi everyone, I need to 301 redirect my old pages to new ones but i am confused between whether to choose plugin for this or i should manually rewrite the code on .htaccess file. Please give your suggestion and if you think i should use plugin then which one?
Technical SEO | | himanshu3019890 -
Will same language different region (US/UK) geotargeting via subdirectory (& GWT) cause dupe content or other issues ?
If a UK hosted site on a .com, needs to target US now too but for keywords that are spelt differently in US is creating duplicate version of uk hosted .com site and putting it on a subdirectory .com/us/ and geotargeting via webmaster tools (to usa) ok ? I take it in this scenario no dupe content issues (or other issues) so long as is geotargeted via GWT ? Or are there ? Comments from anyone with experience doing similar (same language, different region geo-targeting dupe content with kw spelling being only difference, via a subdirectory or other route) much appreciated ? Many Thanks 🙂
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Exact match subdomains
Hi, I have seen significant SEO benefits from owning exact match domains and was wondering whether exact match subdomains hold the same (or some) of these benefits? eg. halloweencostumes.co.uk vs. halloween [dot] costumes.co.uk Many thanks.
Technical SEO | | martyc0 -
Subdomain and Domain Rankings
I have read here that domain names with keywords might add a boost to your search rank For instance using a completely inane example monkey-fights.com might get a boost compared to mfl.com (monkey fighting league) when searching for "monkey fights" There seems to be a hot debate as to how much bonus the first domain might get over the second, but leaving that aside for the moment. Question 1. Would monkey-fights.mfl.com get the same kind of bonus as a root domain bonus? Question 2. If the answer to 1 above was yes would a 301 redirect from the suddomain URL to root domain URL retain that bonus I was just thinking on how hard it is to get root domains these days that are not either being squatted on etc. and if this might be a way to get the same bonus, or maybe subdomains are less bonus prone and so it would be a waste of time Thanks
Technical SEO | | bThere0