Blog.yoursite.com or yoursite.com/blog/?
-
Rand made the following post in 2009. In July of 2013 I question whether this is still best practice. Obviously, much has changed in our industry in four-and-a-half years!
"...if you're seeking to maximize your ranking ability for a given piece of content, it's my personal belief that you should, most of the time, keep it on 1 subdomain under 1 root domain (but feel free to use subfolders as it makes sense). Starting a blog? I almost always recommend yoursite.com/blog over blog.yoursite.com. Want to launch a new section of content? Use yoursite.com/newstuff rather than newstuff.yoursite.com."
Source: http://moz.com/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites
-
This is a very typical question that has been answered many times. Go with subfolders. Unless for some security reasons, it's better to go with subfolders.
-
With all other things being equal, I'd say it still stands true and Rand makes it clear that that's his personal opinion. It is rarely if ever possible to look at a situation in the wild where all things are equal but one. Content on your site is an important way to get deep links to your domain, yet hosting content off site is important for networking. Your best ranking sites are always a combination of both.
-
From what I gathered on the same topic, that still stands. I have read here and in many other places , that blog.yoursite.com would need to get Optimized as it were a brand new site. This is why I always stick to subfolders instead of subdomains for my personal sites.
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
-
Ability to Transition Completed Wordpress Website to New Coder/Developer
We have worked with the same Wordpress developer since 2012. They recently redesigned our Wordpress site. We purchased a real estate theme and they performed major modifications to it. The project took 8 months. There are many customized widgets and multiple plugins. We hired a new SEO. The SEO is very comfortable coding. The SEO performed certain modifications and the code broke. The original developer stepped in and and helped restore the code. The SEO stated that the site should not be so delicate; that too many plugins and widgets are used making it inherently unstable. The original developer is claiming that the SEO did not follow best practices (they did not use a dev server to test). For a non technical business owner this is very disturbing. We finally agreed that the new SEO would make changes on a dev server and the original developer will check these changes to ensure they do not break the code. My question is, shouldn't a Wordpress site be simple enough to hand over to a decent coder with little risk of breaking the code? Are there any standards regarding the hand over of a site? I am comfortable with my developers, but what if they change professions or close their company? How would I transition the site? There must be standards and protocols that allow a third party, such as an SEO to change code without causing havoc. Any one have some insight?
Web Design | | Kingalan11 -
Blogspot blog is subdomain, but domain is changing - How will this affect backlinks?
Hi Moz community, I appreciate the title is confusing, so let me explain. We use blogspot to host our blog. It's set up as a subdomain of our website. Let's call it: lovelyblog.lovelytraining.com Our website, in this example, is **lovelytraining.com ** We're migrating our website to a new domain: lovely.training We'll be redirecting everything on the primary website, so our link profile won't be lost. However, as the blog is hosted on blogspot, we'll lose links pointed to the blog. The blog would remain lovelyblog.lovelytraining.com - but our website would now be lovely.training The question is, has anyone migrated/redirected a blogspot blog in this way, to retain links? Secondly, is there another way we can tell Google that this is blog should be treated as a subdomain of our website? I'm sure I'm missing out something stupid, so don't go easy on me! Thanks all.
Web Design | | RobertChapman0 -
Incorporating Spanish Page/Site
We bought an exact match domain (in Spanish) to incorporate with regular website for a particular keyword. This is our first attempt at this, and while we do have Spanish speaking staff that will translate/create a nice, quality page, we're not going to redo everything in Spanish page. Any advice on how to implement this? Do I need to create a whole other website in Spanish? Will that be duplicate content if I do? Can I just set it up to show the first page in Spanish, but if they click on anything else it redirects to our site? I'm pretty clueless on this, so if anything I've suggested is off-the-wall or a violation, I'm really just spit-balling, trying to figure out how to implement this. Thanks, Ruben
Web Design | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Is it cloaking/hiding text if textual content is no longer accessible for mobile visitors on responsive webpages?
My company is implementing a responsive design for our website to better serve our mobile customers. However, when I reviewed the wireframes of the work our development company is doing, it became clear to me that, for many of our pages, large parts of the textual content on the page, and most of our sidebar links, would no longer be accessible to a visitor using a mobile device. The content will still be indexable, but hidden from users using media queries. There would be no access point for a user to view much of the content on the page that's making it rank. This is not my understanding of best practices around responsive design. My interpretation of Google's guidelines on responsive design is that all of the content is served to both users and search engines, but displayed in a more accessible way to a user depending on their mobile device. For example, Wikipedia pages have introductory content, but hide most of the detailed info in tabs. All of the information is still there and accessible to a user...but you don't have to scroll through as much to get to what you want. To me, what our development company is proposing fits the definition of cloaking and/or hiding text and links - we'd be making available different content to search engines than users, and it seems to me that there's considerable risk to their interpretation of responsive design. I'm wondering what other people in the Moz community think about this - and whether anyone out there has any experience to share about inaccessable content on responsive webpages, and the SEO impact of this. Thank you!
Web Design | | mmewdell0 -
Best way to move blog from subdomain to folder?
Hey all, Our company has 4 product websites, and each has its own separate blog. They are currently set up as subdomain blogs (blog.company.com) hosted on wordpress.com, but I would like to transition them over to root folders (company.com/blog) in order to improve accessibility and SEO. What is the best way to go about doing this? Should I continue to host the blogs on wordpress or are there better options? Would I migrate the blog posts over or just redirect? I'd like to get a general framework/plan of action going in order to know what to expect. Thanks!
Web Design | | kslusarski0 -
How does using a CMS (i.e. Wordpress/Drupal) affect backlinks and SEO?
So I need to build a website with over 100 pages in it. Elements of the design will probably be moved around and or tested so I need to use a CMS. It's pretty much a review site so while the content will remain static I'd like to employ A/B testing to mess with conversion rates. Wordpress has a plugin for that even. So I'm just wondering, since CMS pages are pretty much created on spot and not retrieved from a library, how this affects backlinks and anchor text? How exactly does the external website point to yours if the URL is dynamically generated? Or am I misunderstanding something? Please recommend any extra resources as well if you can.
Web Design | | seochump0 -
Duplicate Page Content mysite.com and mysite.com/index.html MOZ Dashboard
According to MOZ Dashboard my site shows Duplicate Page Content mysite.com and mysite.com/index.html .What i can do for that .redirect mysite.com/index.html to mysite.com .then how can i do that using .htaccess file .
Web Design | | innofidelity0 -
Suggestions for content slider/image slider copy/paste application.
Hey Moz Community, I am looking for a content slider that can be easily changed by non-technicals for posting different styles of content/calls to action and this seems to be best: http://www.slidedeck.com/ I have installed a nivo slider on a Seattle Painting site, and flash slider on a commercial painting site. But I want my blog clients to be able to format..then copy/paste code..linke embedding a video. opinions? Thanks John
Web Design | | johnshearer0