Passing value in a subdomain
-
Hi guys,
I am planning of setting up a blog within a client's website, due to limitations to their server environment, I can only setup the blog in a subdomain, I have read in some articles saying subdomains don't pass value as well as subfolders. My questions are:
- Is it true that subdomains can't pass SEO value? For example, if I set up a blog (say blog.mydomain.com), will that improve long tail searches for my website (mydomain.com)?
- What are some recommendations for subdomains so that it passes more value back to the root domain (for example, internal linking from subdomain back to root domain)
Thanks guys.
-
Clement, did this answer your question, or do you still need some more help? We'd be happy to help, just drop a note here.
-
Based on the version you have on your server, these documents would be helpful:
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_rewrite.html
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/mod_rewrite.html
Please note: this is not something you would like to do unless you know Apache confuration yourself and you know the codes and its logic.
-
Thanks for your response,
I haven't try apache based redirect and url rewriting, care to elaborate more on these?
-
Subdomains do not pass on good link juice to your domain. As Alan rightly pointed out the value is undermined due to the fact that Google sees them as separate domains.
Have you tried apache based redirection and URL rewriting?
-
Lets say you had a domain xyz.com, and you had 3 peole tbhat had their own blogs
tom.xyz.com
dick.xyz.com
harry.xyz.comwel then search engines may see this as non related sites
but if you had a site clothing.com
and had shirts.clothing.com
and shorts.clothing.com
and pants.clothing.com
then search engines proobably will see them as the sameto help to make sure you are seem as one in the same site, do planty of linking betwen sites, haveing all your images and stayle sheets in teh parent domain will also help search engines see that you are one large site.
try to make the links both ways,i have done this on a few sites and i have had good results
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
-
Schema.org usage when there is no specific value available
Hi, I have a question on the usage of schema structure for reviews and especially for the “description” part. Most of the reviews have feedback included, which is used as “description” in the schema. But what should be done if there is no feedback thus no “description” available? Leave “description” in the schema, without value ("description": "",) or remove “description” from the schema? André
On-Page Optimization | | ConclusionDigital0 -
Value of URL Changes
Hi Guys, I have a question. Each product listed on my webstie has product number like /product.php?id=3624. After I spent many hours with MOZ, I figured out that this approach is wrong and I should use the product name as URL to achieve better SEO performance. Now I am planing to change the URL generating algoritm but should I do it for existing products. Some of them have already been linked to external websites. I am thinking to create mirror URLs but this may cause rather damage on my website. Do you know what is the right answer? Best, Tony
On-Page Optimization | | Threeding.com0 -
Subdomain vs subdirectory for store
Hello, The following services site nlpca.com has a store at shop.nlpca.com Would the store be stronger if it was at nlpca.com/store (in a subfolder) and included in the main navigation? The moz bar suggests not but I just want to make sure. Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | BobGW1 -
Blocking Subdomain from Google Crawl and Index
Hey everybody, how is it going? I have a simple question, that i need answered. I have a main domain, lets call it domain.com. Recently our company will launch a series of promotions for which we will use cname subdomains, i.e try.domain.com, or buy.domain.com. They will serve a commercial objective, nothing more. What is the best way to block such domains from being indexed in Google, also from counting as a subdomain from the domain.com. Robots.txt, No-follow, etc? Hope to hear from you, Best Regards,
On-Page Optimization | | JesusD3 -
Large Site - Advice on Subdomaining
I have a large news site - over 1 million pages (have already deleted 1.5 million) Google buries many of our pages, I'm ready to try subdomaining http://bit.ly/dczF5y There are two types of content - news from our contributors, and press releases. We have had contracts with the big press release companies going back to 2004/5. They push releases to us by FTP or we pull from their server. These are then processed and published. It has taken me almost 18 months, but I have found and deleted or fixed all the duplicates I can find. There are now two duplicate checking systems in place. One runs at the time the release comes in and handles most of them. The other one runs every night after midnight and finds a few, which are then handled manually. This helps fine-tune the real-time checker. Businesses often link to their release on the site because they like us. Sometimes google likes this, sometimes not. The news we process is reviews by 1,2 or 3 editors before publishing. Some of the stories are 100% unique to us. Some are from contributors who also contribute to other news sites. Our search traffic is down by 80%. This has almost destroyed us, but I don't give up easily. As I said, I've done a lot of projects to try to fix this. Not one of them has done any good, so there is something google doesn't like and I haven't yet worked it out. A lot of people have looked and given me their ideas, and I've tried them - zero effect. Here is an interesting and possibly important piece of information: Most of our pages are "buried" by google. If I dear, even for a headline, even if it is unique to us, quite often the page containing that will not appear in the SERP. The front page may show up, an index page may show up, another strong page pay show up, if that headline is in the top 10 stories for the day, but the page itself may not show up at all - UNTIL I go to the end of the results and redo the search with the "duplicates" included. Then it will usually show up, on the front page, often in position #2 or #3 According to google, there are no manual actions against us. There are also no notices in WMT that say there is a problem that we haven't fixed. You may tell me just delete all of the PRs - but those are there for business readers, as they always have been. Google supposedly wants us to build websites for readers, which we have always done, What they really mean is - build it the way we want you to do it, because we know best. What really peeves me is that there are other sites, that they consistently rank above us, that have all the same content as us, and seem to be 100% aggregators, with ads, with nothing really redeeming them as being different, so this is (I think) inconsistent, confusing and it doesn't help me work out what to do next. Another thing we have is about 7,000+ US military stories, all the way back to 2005. We were one of the few news sites supporting the troops when it wasn't fashionable to do so. They were emailing the stories to us directly, most with photos. We published every one of them, and we still do. I'm not going to throw them under the bus, no matter what happens. There were some duplicates, some due to screwups because we had multiple editors who didn't see that a story was already published. Also at one time, a system code race condition - entirely my fault, I am the programmer as well as the editor-in-chief. I believe I have fixed them all with redirects. I haven't sent in a reconsideration for 14 months, since they said "No manual spam actions found" - I don't see any point, unless you know something I don't. So, having exhausted all of the things I can think of, I'm down to my last two ideas. 1. Split all of the PRs off into subdomains (I'm ready to pull the trigger later this week) 2. Do what the other sites do, that I believe create little value, which is show only a headline and snippet and some related info and link back to the original page on the PR provider website. (I really don't want to do this) 3. Give up on the PRs and delete them all and lose another 50% of the income, which means releasing our remaining staff and upsetting all of the companies and people who linked to us. (Or find them all and rewrite them as stories - tens of thousands of them) and also throw all our alliances under the bus (I really don't want to do this) There is no guarantee this is the problem, but google won't tell me, the google forums are crap, and nobody else has given me an idea that has helped. My thought is that splitting them off into subdomains will have a number of effects. 1. Take most of the syndicated content onto subdomains, so its not on the main domain. 2. Shake up the Domain Authority 3. Create a million 301 redirects. 4. Make it obvious to the crawlers what is our news and what is PRs 5. make it easier for Google News to understand Here is what I plan to do 1. redirect all PRs to their own subdomain. pn.domain.com for PRNewswire releases bw.domain.com for Businesswire releases etc 2. Fix all references so they use the new subdomain Here are my questions - and I hope you may see something I haven't considered. 1. Do you have any experience of doing this? 2. What was the result 3. Any tips? 4. Should I put PR index pages on the subdomains too? I was originally planning to keep them on the main domain, with the individual page links pointing to the actual release on the subdomain. Obviously, I want them only in one place, but there are two types of these index pages. a) all of the releases for a particular PR company - these certainly could be on the subdomain and not on the main domain b) Various category index pages - agriculture, supermarkets, mining etc These would have to stay on the main domain because they are a mixture of different PR providers. 5. Is this a bad idea? I'm almost out of ideas. Should I add a condensed list of everything I've done already? If you are still reading, thanks for hanging in.
On-Page Optimization | | loopyal0 -
Does concatenating two words make them lose their SEO value
I'm working with a client whose product titles are things like "InternetSecurity" and for branding purposes has thus far required any reference to the products be concatenated in this fashion (on page, links, URL, title tags). It seems to me that would greatly reduce their SEO relevance. Any thoughts? Thanks, Mark
On-Page Optimization | | DenverKelly0 -
Does having a "+" in a URL hurt SEO? Would much value be gained changing it to a hyphen?
There's a site that contains "+" signs in the URL in order to call different information for the content on the page. Would it be better to change those to hyphens (-), or not that much value will be gained, so leave them as is? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | MitchellStoker0 -
SEO Domain Values
I always thought that there was no difference in value between a .com and .net, also that hyphens have the same value as the keyphrase without the hyphen. But I have heard Rand lately saying hyphens are spammy - whats the go? Is CarParts.com better than Car-Parts.com or Car-Parts.net etc?
On-Page Optimization | | Ventura0