New Sub-domains or New Directories for 10+ Year Domain?
-
We've got a one-page, 10+ year old domain that has a 65/100 domain authority that gets about 10k page views a day (I'm happy to share the URL but didn't know if that's permitted).
The content changes daily (it's a daily bible verse) so most of this question is focused on domain authority, not the content.
We're getting ready to provide translations of that daily content in 4 languages. Would it be better to create sub-domains for those translations (same content, different language) or sub-folders?
Example:
http://cn.example.com
http://es.example.com
http://ru.example.comor
http://example.com/cn
http://example.com/es
http://example.com/ruWe're able to do either but want to pick the one that would give the translated version the most authority both now and moving forward. (We definitely don't want to penalize the root domain.)
Thanks in advance for your input.
-
Would it be better to create sub-domains for those translations (same content, different language) or sub-folders?
You can safely use either method. For the most part it is solely a matter of your preference. Neither choice has a SEO benefit nor disadvantage when compared to the other.
If it was my site, I would choose to go with the subdomain approach as a means of separating the content. The site structure would be identical other then the prefix. It would be easiest to manage in my opinion.
But who am I? How about listening to Matt Cutt's opinion
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/subdomains-and-subdirectories/
-
You should put them in folders in order to pass your domain authority to them. If you put them in subdomains you'll have to start building their domain authority from scratch.
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 is still indexing the old domain a year after 301 redirects are put in place
Hi there, You might have experienced this before but for me this is the first. A client of mine moved from domain A (www.domainA.com) to domain B (www.domainB.com). 301 redirects are all in place for over a year. But the old domain is still showing in Google when you search for "site:domainA.com" The HTTP Header check shows this result for the URL https://www.domainA.com/company/cookie-policy.aspx HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently =>
Technical SEO | | iQi
Cache-Control => private
Content-Length => 174
Content-Type => text/html; charset=utf-8
Location => https://www.domain_B_.com/legal/cookie-policy
Server => Microsoft-IIS/10.0
X-AspNetMvc-Version => 5.2
X-AspNet-Version => 4.0.30319
X-Powered-By => ASP.NET
Date => Fri, 15 Mar 2019 12:01:33 GMT
Connection => close Does the redirect look wrong? The change of address request was made on Google Console when the website was moved over a year ago. Edit: Checked the domainA.com on bing and it seems that its not indexed, and replaced with domainB.com, which is the right. Just Google is indexing the old domain! Please let me know your thoughts on why this is happening. Best,0 -
Country Specific Domain
Guyz, we are new startups and have one very simple question regarding domain name. Should we use example.com or example.com.au ? Our Goal initially would be to target customer from Australia and gradually go global. So if we opt for .com.au we may have an edge in terms of local SEO in the beginning but lose out in the long run. What is the best way to tackle this? Thanks
Technical SEO | | WayneRooney0 -
Should we 301 redirect our old domain to the new domain
We have a product that when started was under the domain appnowgo.com. We've since changed the name and the domain is now knackhq.com. The latter domain doesn't rank nearly as well as the former for many of the keywords we are targeting. For example... "online database builder" and "web app builder" are two of those keywords. Obviously having app in the domain is not a bad thing but it is our old name. The question is, should we 301 the appnowgo.com domain to knackhq.com? Or should we use that better rank and just link users to knackhq.com from the appnowgo.com site until we can increase our ranking for knackhq.com? We don't plan to update the content on appnowgo.com anymore and we obviously don't want to drop off rank if at all possible. Thanks! Eric
Technical SEO | | sitestrux0 -
New small business.. brand or keyword rich domain?
With so many keyword rich domains in circulation is there actually little option for small business right now other than to use keyword rich domains themselves e.g. (businessname)(keywords).com instead of brand e.g. (businessname.com) where competitors are using keyword rich domains and ranking high? It could be a mis-perception on my part, but, unless you have a very old non keyword domain name, if you don't have a keyword rich domain name in a competitive market you will struggle to succeed unless you have a serious SEO budget. Unless you are the next Google/Facebook/Pepsi isn't branding just a load of BS ? We are ourselves are in a predicament about which domain to use for our own website design business. We have a brand name domain name which is a 4 char domain but we also have a brand+keyword domain and are not 100% which one to use as our primary domain. Perhaps we can use the brand domain as our primary domain and then use the brand+keyword domain as an appropriately constructed single page promotional site, perhaps with unique content which links back to the brand domain? Good idea / Bad idea? I guess the overriding question is, if the content is good enough is the domain name you choose irrelevent to some extent?
Technical SEO | | NeilD0 -
Domain taken. Which is better? Using hypens or longer domain.
I am wanting to set up an e commerce site and the domain name that I want is taken. I am considering using a domain that has the main keyword I want to rank for as the domain. I have heard chatter of google penalizing these types of sites and it seems that it hasn't come about. This is something that I would like to test out. So if "electricscooters.com" is taken, should I use "electric-scooters.com" or "electricscooters4less.com" Just wondering if the hyphenated or the longer domain will rank higher. The site won't be spammy at all, I will carry a few different companies that offer similar products. So for this case, I would only sell scooters from a few different manufacturers. Feedback would be appreciated!
Technical SEO | | Dave_Whitty0 -
Why the rapid drop in Domain Authority?
I couple weeks ago I switched my website from Drupal to a Wordpress CMS: Martial Arts Austin My rankings have remained the same, but the Domain Authority has plummeted from like 29 to 21. I know this is small fry, but I don't want my business to drop in ranking. The URL's were kept exactly the same, with the internal links and copy also kept the same with few additions. Also, according to Open Site Explorer, the site's stronger pages have now averaged out with the weaker and unused pages so they all now share the same Page Authority - that doesn't seem right. Is there reason for concern? Did I screw something up, or am I making too much of this? Thanks
Technical SEO | | OhYeahSteve1 -
Redirect Multiple Domains
This is a follow-up question from one posted earlier this month. I can't linked to that because it's a private question so I'm trying to summarize it below. We have a number of domains – about 20 - (e.g. www.propertysharp.com) that point to our main domain ip adress (www.propertyshark.com) and share the same content. This is no black-hat strategy whatsoever, the domains were acquired several years ago in order to help people who mistyped the websites url to reach their desired destination. The question was whether to redirect them to our main domain or not. Pros were the reportedly millions of incoming links from these domains - cons was the fact that lots of issues regarding duplicate content could arise and we actually saw lots of some pages from these domains ranking in the search engines. We were recommended to redirect them, but to take it gradually. I have a simple question - what does gradually mean - one domain per week, per month?
Technical SEO | | propertyshark0 -
Block a sub-domain from being indexed
This is a pretty quick and simple (i'm hoping) question. What is the best way to completely block a sub domain from getting indexed from all search engines? One item i cannot use is the meta "no follow" tag. Thanks! - Kyle
Technical SEO | | kchandler0