Subdomains & CDNs
-
I've set up a CDN to speed up my domain. I've set up a CNAME to map the subdomain cdn.example.com to the URL where the CDN hosts my static content (images, CSS and JS files, and PDFs).
www.example.com and cdn.example.com are now two different IP addresses.
Internal links to my PDF files (white papers and articles) used to be www.example.com/downloads but now they are cdn.example.com/downloads
The same PDF files can be accessed at both the www and the cdn. subdomain. Thus, external links to the www version will continue to work.
Question 1: Should I set up 301 redirects in .htaccess such as:
Redirect permanent /downloads/filename.pdf http://cdn.example.com/downloads/filename.pdf
Question 2: Do I need to do anything else in my .htaccess file (or anywhere else) to ensure that any SEO benefit provided by the PDF files remains associated with my domain?
Question 3: Am I better off keeping my PDF files on the www side and off of the CDN?
Thanks,
Akira
-
On your cdn, you have an option to disallow se's to index files on subdomains by robots.txt so you can keep a copy on cdn.example.com as well, and noindex it via robots.txt for better user experience
-
Yup...keep it simple...where possible
-
There are about a dozen PDFs and they are indexed.
I agree that it's probably better to play it safe and keep these files on www.
Thanks!
-
How many PDF files are we talking ? Are they indexed ? Is there unique text content or images that have text that google has OCR'D ? If yes, I would suggest keeping them on www and therefore keep it simple. Again, it depends how many PDF files in number as well as their size in gigs would make it an easy answer.
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
-
Google Indexed a version of my site w/ MX record subdomain
We're doing a site audit and found "internal" links to a page in search console that appear to be from a subdomain of our site based on our MX record. We use Google Mail internally. The links ultimately redirect to our correct preferred subdomain "www", but I am concerned as to why this is happening and if it can have any negative SEO implications. Example of one of the links: Links aspmx3.googlemail.com.sullivansolarpower.com/about/solar-power-blog/daniel-sullivan/renewable-energy-and-electric-cars-are-not-political-footballs I did a site operator search, site:aspmx3.googlemail.com.sullivansolarpower.com on google and it returns several results.
Technical SEO | | SS.Digital0 -
Subdomain redirect
Hey guys, I was thinking about creating subdomains for one of my websites. I want to divide my website in different subdomains (blog.[site].com / directory.[site].com / etc.) but I'm afraid that this will negatively impact my rankings. My blog for example has a lot of supporting content for my products and services that are primarily hosted on the homepage. Have you guys ever created subdomains at a later stage of your website's existence? What kind of impact did you notice? Would you recommend it? Thanks a million!
Technical SEO | | Nizar.1 -
Google how deal with licensed content when this placed on vendor & client's website too. Will Google penalize the client's site for this ?
One of my client bought licensed content from top vendor of Health Industry. This same content is on the vendor's website & my client's site also but on my site there is a link back to vendor is placed which clearly tells to anyone that this is a licensed content & we bought from this vendor. My client bought paid top quality content for best source of industry but at this same this is placed on vendor's website also. Will Google penalize my client's website for this ? Niche is HEALTH
Technical SEO | | sourabhrana1 -
Single Page for video & text resources or multiple?
Our new site will have a 'learning center' which contains educational videos as well as articles for prospects who are considering purchase. We were thinking linking to the "Learning center" page from main menu then having multiple videos and articles on this page. (thumbnails, & brief descriptions). Then when the user clicks on the video or article this will take them to a page with that video or article. My thoughts are that would allow us to optimize each page for that question or video topic. Is this a good idea? or should we just have video thumbnails on one page and have the video play on that same page? What about articles, should they also expand on that page or should they open on separate page? We are using WP as CMS. If the videos open on separate pages then how does the user easily get the other videos? will they have to go back to the /learning page or something else? It would seem like a lot of work to have them keep going back to watch one video, then go back and watch the next. What is the best practice - if there is one? Examples of websites that do this well?
Technical SEO | | PhotographerSteve1 -
Subdomain hosted on a different server VS Subfolder on main server
We have a website developed in ColdFusion on a server does not support PHP. We have a blog for the site using WordPress (PHP), hosted on a different server, with a subdomain as the URL. (example: blog.website.com) I've heard that search engines treat subdomains as completely different websites from the main domain, so they could actually be in competition for rankings in the search engines - is that correct? I am under the impression that the traffic to the blog will not show as traffic to the main website, because it is hosted on a different server - is that right? If I am correct, I assume the best solution would be to install PHP on our main server, and put the blog in a subfolder ... or would the subdomain be OK as long as the blog is hosted on the main server? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | vermont0 -
YouTube & Google + Pages
Hello, Has anyone had luck associating their Google + business page with their YouTube channel? Our YouTube page is associated with our Google + profile (and we would like it to be associated with the Google + business page.) There are numerous articles out there that Google is working on an update to allow the Channel/Google+ business page association but I am wondering if there is news we might have missed. Or if there is a way to get around it? We want to implement video on some site pages and would rather use YouTube code as opposed to customizing a solution. Do most folks think Google will have an easy solution once it at arrives? Meaning if you upload videos to your channel that is currently associated with the profile page, do you think there will be a way to convert everything over to a Google + business page once they unveil an update. Thank you!
Technical SEO | | SEOSponge0 -
Should we use "and" or "&"?
Our client has an ampersand in their brand name. The logo has "&", their url is spelled out. I'm trying to get them to standardize the use of the name for directories/listings. Should we use "and" or "&"?
Technical SEO | | vernonmack0 -
Which do you believe & why? Wordpress posts or pages?
I hear a lot of conflicting opinions regarding when to use pages over posts. If you were using wordpress mainly as a static site and less of a blog would you use pages over posts? Let's say it is a yacht review site. Would you set up most of the content (boat review pages) as pages or posts? I hear some say in that case you would want to use mostly pages and use posts for news related items. Then there are others that suggest only making the few (contact, about, privacy, terms) as pages and everything else created as posts organized into categories. Any thoughts? Also, is there a tool to find out if a website that is not yours is using a page or a post? Thanks
Technical SEO | | PEnterprises0