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.
Confluence and SEO
-
I think this is a difficult question so apologies in advance and any help would be appreciated!
We currently have a large amount of support center content sitting on our main pages which we don’t think is very effective (mainly basic how to guides). We think it is difficult for visitors to understand and the UI is very poor. In order to solve this we’re currently moving this content onto a subdomain using Confluence, a wiki based team collaboration tool (from a company called Atlassian).
What we’re planning on doing is very much like what Atlassian themselves have done on this page: https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/ALLDOC/Atlassian+Documentation
What are the SEO issues / dangers that I need to consider before moving this content? I’m assuming that as this content will still be on the same domain then we can minimise link equity / authority loss by setting up re-directs to the new content. Also, has anyone had any experience of using Confluence and whether individual pages can be optimised for SEO? I notice that there are lots of add-ins that can be used, one of which is an SEO add-on which allows you to customise things like meta description tags.
-
HI Everett,
Thank you again for the response. Do you have information on how to block robots.txt in confluence? I have been trying to find out how to block Moz from crawling them, but would definitely consider blocking more.
Thank you,
-
Hello Nik,
I'd really need to see the site to give an informed opinion on this. If you don't want Google to pay any attention at all to the knowledge centers, you should probably block those in their respective Robots.txt files.
-
I will check on that now, I believe I set it up with full URL, but would be very grateful if that would fix part of my issue.
I am not surprised to hear you say subdomains are not so cut and dry... seems like nothing in SEO is
If you have time, I would be very interested in hearing any additional insight you have about this. We have large knowledge center/customer facing subdomains, but we also have most of our content on a hubspot subdomain. Essentially I don't want Google to pay attention to any of our knowledge centers, but would love if our hubspot pages could help our root domain authority. thank you! -
NikCall,
Subdomains aren't so cut and dry, in my experience. It depends on whether Google thinks they're the same site or different sites.
Have you tried setting up your campaign in Moz to track www.domain.com instead of domain.com?
-
Hello,
I am working to manage large Confluence/ Atlassian subdomains as well and I am curious if you have any best practices to share? I am currently managing it as these subdomains will not effect our root domain with meta data issues, but I do pay attention to critical crawler issues. It is my understand that subdomains do not really help or hurt your root domain unless there are these errors- have you found that to be true?
I am also trying to get roger bot blocked from these subdomains because they are burying me with crawl errors. I can just ignore them, but it is time consuming and masks the errors I really do need to focus on. do you have any insight in this area?
Thank you!
-
Thanks for your reply Everett, that definitely answers the main part of my question,
I'd be interested if anyone has any experience in using the Confluence add-ons for SEO?
-
You mentioned that this content was on your "main" pages. If that is so, I wouldn't redirect those pages to a subdomain since I am assuming they still have other, more user-friendly, content on them? Perhaps some examples would help.
However, I don't see any problem with using Confluence to put your documentation / help content onto a subdomain. I will let someone else speak to the SEO capabilities of various Confluence ad-ons though, as I have no experience there.
Just make sure the content no longer appears on your "main" pages once you move it over to the subdomain. If that was the only content on the page, then yes you should redirect it. If there was other important content on the page, just remove the documentation content and leave the rest.
I hope I have understood your question accurately.
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
-
Is managed wordpress hosting bad for seo?
hi, i would like to create my own website, but I am confused either to choose cpanel hosting or managed wordpress
Web Design | | alan-shultis0 -
Migration from HTML to Wordpress - SEO Implications?
I am in the process of having a wordpress site developed to replace my current HTML site. (I currently have my website in html and a blog in wordpress in a sub directory). I am doing this in phases to try and preserve as much of my good rankings as possible. My first phase is to replicate my site with the exact same pages, meta data, and site structure. I'm hoping that google will see this as not much change and not change my rankings for the worse. I also made it a goal that my site speed tests be at least equal to what they are now. We will have to 301 all of the URLs however since it will be going from /example.html to /example. I believe my blog will also need to move into the root directory as well, so I need to 301 all of those pages. I plan to wait a couple months for Phase 2. Phase 2 involves replacing old content (photo galleries), and introducing new content (virtual tours, videos, new pages, etc.) One of my reasons for moving to wordpress is to keep up with current trends a little easier since I have very little time. (I am owner, website maintainer, SEO - all on my own). My question here is three parts. 1. Do you think this strategy will work to preserve my current rankings? 2. Do you have any lessons learned or advice to share with me to make this as smooth as possible? 3. Do I really need to wait to add new content? I might get antsy and want to do it sooner! 🙂 Thank you in advance!
Web Design | | CalicoKitty20001 -
How can a Pincode finder website be SEO optimised?
Guys, I wanted to build a simple Pincode finder website for India. The targeted visitors as is obvious will be from India. Alike other Pincode finder websites, the users in this case too will have to key in the location / area of whose pincode he is looking for and they will get Pincode from that very location / area. Other than this, users will also come to this website when they search for something like " <location name="">pincode</location>" on Google (for instance, users will search for something like "Hiranandani Gardens Powai Pincode") Along with data fethced from our sources via Indian postal departments and other data available in public domain, we shall be using data from Google Maps API too. My question in regards to the same is as follows: What should the page-structure / structure of the website be for ranking well on Google? What should be the URL structure? Other suggestions to rank well on Google in this regards? Competition: (You can search for the term "Hiranandani Gardens Powai Pincode" to know how these sites show data) http://www.getpincode.info http://www.pincode.net.in Pls. help...
Web Design | | ShalinTJ0 -
SEO and Squarespace? Is this Really an Option?
Hi all, Any feedback on Squarespace, SEO capabilites and ranking factors? I have a client wishing to use the platform and despite the good reviews, which appear to be from resellers by the way, the forums say not. Although apparently Rand Fishkin, SEOMoz (yes right here!) gave them a big thumbs up “The square space team have put together a remarkable platform, SEO friendliness! Really not sure here and don’t agree, there are many limitations and hosting with a template provider is always big no no. Cheers
Web Design | | VirginiaC
Virginia0 -
Can white text over images hurt your SEO?
Hi everyone, I run a travel website that has about 30 pre-search city landing pages. In a redesign last year we added large "hero" images to the top of the page, and put our h1 headlines on top of them in white. The result is attractive, but I'm wondering if Google could be reading this page as "white text on white page", which is an obvious no-no, especially if it could seem that we're trying to hide text. Here's an example: http://www.eurocheapo.com/paris/ H1: Expert reviews of cheap hotels in Paris I should add that our SERPs for these city pages has dropped (for "Cheap hotels in X"), but it could obviously be related to other issues. Any advice would be appreciated. Many thanks! Tom
Web Design | | TomNYC0 -
WIX? is it any good for SEO
Hi people. I have just built my website www.bellagiolimousines.com.au using WIX. I am in the process of optimising for SEO, and after reading a couple of older posts i.e 2012; I read that some SEO consultants do not like WIX. However with their recent upgrades, I was hoping if anyone else has had any recent experience with WIX? I have spent a considerable amount of time building this site, and I don't want to waste anymore time in optimising it, if I am not going to receive a top 3 organic SERP. Hope to hear from someone real soon!
Web Design | | Giorgio680 -
SEO Issues From Image Hotlinking?
I have a client who is hotlinking their images from one of their domains. I'm assuming the images were originally stored on the first domain (let's call it SiteA.com) and when they were putting together SiteB.com, they decided to just link to the images directly on SiteA.com instead of moving the images to Site B. Essentially hotlinking. Site A is not using the images in any way and in essence is just a gateway for their other sites and in this case a storage for their images. It doesn't use those images at all, so it really doesn't get any benefits of the images being referenced since I read that Google sometimes counts that hotlinking as a "vote" for the original image. But again, since ite A doesn't use the images that are being hotlinked at all, there's no benefit for Site A. My concern is that it's affecting their SEO for Site B because it makes it look like Site B is simply scraping data by hotlinking those images from Site A. Their programmer suggested creating a virtual directory so that it "looked" like it was coming from Site B. My guess is that Google can see this, so then not only will it look like Site B is scaping/hotlinking images, but also trying to hide it which may send up red flags to Google. My suggesstion to them was to just upload the images correctly into their own images directory on Site B. They own the images, so there's not any copyright issue, but that if they want proper SEO credit for that content, it all needs to be housed on the correct server and not hotlinked. Am I correct in this or will the virtual directory serve just as well?
Web Design | | GeorgiaSEOServices1 -
What is the difference of HTML5 and web 2.0? What is web 2.0 and is this better for seo?
A little bit confused with the new stuff. The web 2.0 webpages are so much better? What changes?
Web Design | | Naghirniac0
