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
      • MozCon
      • 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.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • 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

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
      Moz API

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

      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. Subdomains for niche related keywords

    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

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4
    9
    2929
    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.
    • CMTM
      CMTM last edited by

      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?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • CMTM
        CMTM @CMTM last edited by

        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?

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • CMTM
          CMTM @krissy-cca last edited by

          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.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Tompt
            Tompt @CMTM last edited by

            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.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
            • krissy-cca
              krissy-cca last edited by

              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

              CMTM 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • CMTM
                CMTM @Tompt last edited by

                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?

                Tompt CMTM 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • Tompt
                  Tompt last edited by

                  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.

                  CMTM 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • CMTM
                    CMTM @DanDeceuster last edited by

                    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?

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • DanDeceuster
                      DanDeceuster last edited by

                      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.

                      CMTM 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

                      • Mat_C

                        Topical keywords for product pages and blogs

                        Hi all, I have a question regarding keywords. Of course we all know that keyword research should be focused on a certain topic and on user intent (and thus on answering specific questions) instead of trying to put keywords in a page to make it rank. However, duplicate content is of course still an issue. So here's my question: A client that sells floor heating systems that you can install yourself, has a product page for this topic and blog pages for questions regarding this topic. So following pages are on the website: Product page about the floor heating systems the client sells Blog article with tips how to install a floor heating system yourself Blog article about how to choose the right floor heating system These pages all answer different questions and are written about different topics. However, inevatibly all these pages also talk about different aspects of floor heating systems so this broad term comes up on all pages naturally. You could say that a solution is to merge pages and redirect the blogs to the product page, so the product page would answer all questions. But that is not what a customer is looking for. The goal of a product page is to trigger a conversion: let a customer contact the company or ask for a price offer. If the content on a product page is not comprehensive enough, the goal gets lost. Moreover, it doesn't make sense to talk about tips and tricks on a product page. So how do you tackle this problem without creating duplicate content? In search results, the blog pages rank for the specific questions, but the product page doesn't rank for the generic term 'floor heating'. The internal link structure is ok: the product page has obviously more incoming links than the blogs. All on page SEO factors are taken care of as well. Any ideas on this? Thanks!

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mat_C
                        0
                      • ecerbone

                        Blog On Subdomain - Do backlinks to the blog posts on Subdomain count as links for main site?

                        I want to put blog on my site.  The IT department is asking that I use a subdomain (myblog.mysite.com) instead of a subfolder (mysite.com/myblog).  I am worried b/c it was my understanding that any links I get to my blog posts (if on subdomain) will not count toward the main site (search engines would view almost as other website).   The main purpose of this blog is to attract backlinks.  That is why I prefer the subfolder location for the Blog. Can anyone tell me if I am thinking about this right? Another solution I am being offered is to use a reverse proxy. Thoughts? Thank you for your time.

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ecerbone
                        0
                      • djlaidler

                        How do I list the subdomains of a domain?

                        Hi Mozers, I am trying to find what subdomains are currently active on a particular domain. Is there a way to get a list of this information? The only way I could think of doing it is to run a google search on; site:example.com -site:www.example.com The only issues with this approach is that a majority of the indexed pages exist on the non-www domain and I still have thousands of pages in the results (mainly from the non-www). Is there another way to do it in Google? OR is there a server admin online tool that will tell me this information? Cheers, Dan

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | djlaidler
                        0
                      • Carlos-R

                        Disavow Subdomain?

                        Hi all, I've been checking and it seems like there are only 2 options when disavowing links with Google's tool. Disavow the link: http://spam.example.com/stuff/content.htm Disavow the domain: domain: example.com What can I do if I want do disavow a subdomain? i.e. spam.site.com I'm also assuming that if I were to disavow the domain it would include all subdomains? Thanks.

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Carlos-R
                        0
                      • 7decode

                        Google and keywords with and without accents. How to approach optimization for both?

                        This is more of a problem for people optimizing for keywords in spanish, french, german and such. It is well known that SERPs for keywords with and without accents are different. However, I haven't been able to discover how do I make the incorrectly misspelled keywords rank without messing up the site's content. Another fact to take into account is that more than half the searches made in these languages are done without accents because, let's face it, it's just too much work. An example of my specific problem: The misspelled keyword "cursos de ingles" is currently ranking higher than the correctly spelled keyword "cursos de inglés". However, the misspelled keyword "clases de ingles" is not ranking at all and the correctly spelled keyword "clases de inglés" is on the first page. How is this possible? Now, how can I optimize the misspelled keywords to rank higher without misspelling the content on my site? Thank you! Capture.PNG

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 7decode
                        0
                      • Ryan-Ricketts

                        Should we stream videos from a subdomain or subfolder?

                        This is causing some hand-wrangling and I need some help. Let's say we were developing rich video content for our products and our agency is hosting the content on a new external server. There are already plans to link to these videos from product detail pages, category pages, and landing pages on our main website: www.example.com. Would it be better to create a new subdomain or to use a subfolder with a reverse proxy technique for this video content? It's not truly a microsite and will not have a gallery page to navigate the various videos. For example, would it be better to use this: video.example.com/ ...or this (executed with a reverse proxy😞 www.example.com/video/ Of course, regardless of whether this new content will live on a subdomain or within a subfolder, we plan on creating a video Sitemap using guidance from Justin Hammack in this terrific post.

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ryan-Ricketts
                        1
                      • Netboost

                        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 | | Netboost
                        0
                      • arching

                        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 | | arching
                        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
                      • Digital Marketers
                      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.