Subdomain or directory path?
-
Hi Mozzers,
Client: Important carpet cleaner player in the carpet cleaning industry
Main Goal: Creating good content to Get more organic traffic to our main site
Structure of the extra content: It will act like a blog but will be differentiated from the regular site by not selling anything but just creating good content. The look and design will be different from the client's site.
SEO Question: Which option is more beneficial, creating a subdomain or adding a regular page within the website following a directory path URL?
If possible, please state what are the advantages and disadvantages of these 2 options in terms of SEO.
Thank you and have a great weekend everyone,
-
Thank you Joseph
-
Search engines generally treat subdomains more like a separate site then if it was in a subfolder. The downside to the subdomain is that your link juice from the main domain may not transfer to the subdomain and vice-versa. Here's a good article from Rand, a little old but still a lot of info.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites
-
Thanks for that but why is number one the best SEO practice?
-
Hi there,
Your best bet is to set the URL structure like this www.site.com/page-name rather than pagename.site.com. The first method is SEO best practice, the second way makes it seem like each subdomain is its own site.
Good luck.
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
-
If I redirect a subdomain, does this affect the parent domain?
Hi I have a company for example: abc.com and they have a subdomain def.abc.com with a lot of errors. These errors i believe affect the parent domain abc.com. So my company would like to redirect the subdomain to another domain altogther ex: xyz.com Can i redirect the subdomain def.abc.com to another website domain? Would this affect the parent domain in a good or bad way? Or should i be using an external links to point to a new domain for the subdomain? Trying to think what's best for SEO and the parent domain. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | crodriguez890 -
Subdomains vs. Subfolders vs. New Site
Hello geniuses!!! Here's my Friday puzzle: We have a plastic surgery client who already has a website that's performing fairly well and is driving in leads. She is going to be offering a highly specialized skincare program for cancer patients, and wants a new logo, new website and new promo materials all for this new skincare program. So here's the thing - my gut reaction says NO NEW WEBSITE! NO SUBDOMAIN! because of everything I've read about moving things on and off subdomains, etc (I just studied this: http://moz.com/blog/subdomains-vs-subfolders-rel-canonical-vs-301-how-to-structure-links-optimally-for-seo-whiteboard-friday). And, why wouldn't we want to use the authority of her current site, right? While she doesn't necessarily have a high authority domain - we're not talking WebMD, here - she does have some authority that we've built over time. But, because this is a pretty separate product from her general plastic surgery practice, what would you guys do? Since we'll be creating a logo and skincare "look and feel" for this product, and there will likely be a lot of information involved with it, I don't think we'll be able to just create one page. Is it smart to: a) build a separate site in a subfolder of her current site? (plasticsurgerypractice.com/skincare) b) build a subdomain? (skincare.plasticsurgerypractice.com) c) build her a new site (plasticsurgeryskincare.com)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RachelEm0 -
SEO Implications of Moving Blog to Subdomain
Hello, We are having some issues upgrading our stack and maintaining Wordpress for our blog. So we are thinking about splitting them up. What are the SEO implications of moving our blog to a subdomain? Our blog URL structure is currently something like https://www.aplossoftware.com/blog/p/2470/fund-accounting/yearend-closing-checklist/. We would like to change to something like https://blog.aplossoftware.com/p/2470/fund-accounting/yearend-closing-checklist/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stageagent0 -
Disavowin a sitewide link that has Thousands of subdomains. What do we tell Google?
Hello, I have a hosting company that partnered up with a blogger template developer that allowed users to download blog templates and have my footer links placed sitewide on their website. Sitewides i know are frowned upon and that's why i went through the rigorous Link Audit months ago and emailed every webmaster who made "WEBSITENAME.Blogspot.com" 3 times each to remove the links. I'm at a point where i have 1000 sub users left that use the domain name of "blogspot.com". I used to have 3,000! Question: When i disavow these links in Webmaster tools for Google and Bing, should i upload all 1000 subdomains of "blogspot.com" individually and show Google proof that i emailed all of them individually, or is it wise to just include just 1 domain name (www.blogspot.com) so Google sees just ONE big mistake instead of 1000. This has been on my mind for a year now and I'm open to hearing your intelligent responses.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shawn1240 -
Adding a Directory to Successful Article Website
We are considering adding roughly 1,300 pages to a 2,300 page website within the drug rehab niche. Our website is generating roughly 10,000 uniques from Search / month. **Is there a way to estimate the change in traffic to the existing content on the site when we add 30-40% pages in the form of a directory? ** **Is there a way to estimate the effect of the existing traffic and links to our newly added part of the site (the directory)? **
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alltreatment0 -
Links from a website or a subdomain, which would generate more benefits in terms of SEO?
I have a customer who just bought a domain (and the full website) of a competitor and decided that they will no longer update the website purchased. The website of my client has a Domain Authority = 50 and DA of the website purchased is 45. Each of them was registered by different companies and are on different servers too.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | marciofelias
The reason for my message is that by being registered by different companies and are in differrent servers I can use the site purchased as a way to make link building to the main website (one way link buiding only from the website purchased to the main website), but I can put the website purchased as a subdomain of the main website and agregate content to the main website.
In your opinion which would generate more benefits in terms of SEO to the main website? Links from the website purchased or put this website as a subdomain to the main website?0 -
Directories
Hi All, Some saying getting listed in hundreds of directories has no real SEO benefit. Some saying opposite. Some saying there are only one directory to concerned with, the Yahoo Directory. What are your opinions on this question after all Google's Pandas and Penguins ? Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Webdeal0 -
Free Directories - Yes or No?
Clearly, we see that high authority directories like Dmoz.Org are effective, even if this big monster is practically dead because of how unresponsive it is. What about other free directories? Is it worth obtaining as many listings as possible in the free directories? what about the paid ones? Is this still good SEO strategy if the directories have at least a PR3-4 or many cases higher? I'm asking this for an established site, so I understand that it won't help for deep-linking and anchor text, but will it help anyway to get links from these? If you like this post, help me out by giving me a Big Thumbs Up!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | applesofgold0