Subdomain blog vs. subfolder blog in 2013
-
So I've read the posts here:
http://moz.com/community/q/subdomain-blog-vs-subfolder-blog-in-2013
and many others, Matt Cutts video, etc.
Does anyone have direct experience that its still best practice to use the sub folder? (hopefully a moz employee can chime in?)
I have a client looking to use hubspot. They are preaching with the Matt Cutts video. I'm in charge of SEO / marketing and am at odds with them now. I'd like to present the client with more info than "in my experience in the past I've seen subdirectories work."
Any help? Articles? etc?
-
I'm associated with a site that ranked fairly well. Earlier in the summer, the blog was moved from a subfolder to a subdomain for various reasons. While the reasons seemed valid at the time, the site's traffic plummeted about 1-2 weeks later. We've still been trying to analyze as many other changes were made a few weeks prior; however, the arrows are pointing to the subfolder to subdomain change which may have really caused this plague. We're now looking into moving it back to see if it will resolve the problem.
-
This does not influence my opinion about anything.
-
Google does not calculate DA
-
I have first-hand experience that merging a subdomain into a folder on a domain can have a kickass effect on your rankings.
-
-
I just tested:
and hubspot.com
both have the same DA in OSE.
I also tested support.hostgator.com and hostgator.com
those have the same DA.
-
If you got Jesse and PhD sayin' something, best go with it.
-
Well yes. I mean it's quite simple - Linking to a subdomain does not pass authority to the root domain. It's easy to test on any site you can find me that has a subdomain. Plug it into OSE and you have yourself two different DAs for that very reason.
It's something I don't see ever changing. There's a reason sub domains are treated separately in terms of incoming links; they are their own entity and I believe this will always be the case. Can't think of why it wouldn't.
-
Thanks guys. I know everyone in our industry is pro sub directories. I guess what I am looking for is irrefutable case studies / fact. Have you guys tested this post 2012? Is there any evidence from 2013 that this is still the case?
-
I second that. You use the blog to build the authority of the main domain.
-
Using a subdirectory will cause all of the potential link juice to flow to your root domain. If you go with a subdomain, the potential links gained from awesome blog content won't do your actual domain any good as far as ranking organically for your targeted keywords.
That's the short version. Subdirectories all the way (assuming this is what you're gaming at of course.)
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
-
SEO issues with masking blog domain?
We have a client who would like to move their Wordpress blog into a different server from their main site's server for security reasons. However, the blog is almost 10 years old with good traffic and rankings and we'd rather not have them change the domain. The developer has come back with a URL "masking" rule in .htaccess that will display the contents of the blog placed in the new server under a subdomain but still show the blog's original URL. If we block the new subdomain from indexing to avoid duplicate content - are there any SEO implications for doing this? Will Google see it as a deceptive practice and tank the blog's rankings? Any advice is greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | roundabout0 -
Is AMP works on blogs only?
I have installed AMP Plugin in my WordPress website but when I check pages with /amp/ it shows 404 error. But for blog pages, for the example www.website.com/blog/post/amp/ it shows amp version of the particular page. Also, nothing is showing in search console Accelerate Moile pages.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEO-Stephanie0 -
What is the Good URL structure for Blog posts
Please let me know what is the goood URL structure for blog posts http://www.abc.com/postname/ or http://www.abc.com/�tegory%/%postname% If Category, Can we name it Blog like website/blog/postname or it is good to use actual categories, and How many categories we can use?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Michael.Leonard0 -
404 in Google cache for one of my blog posts
Hey Moz People, I'm getting a 404 when I cache: this blog post http://www.inscopix.com/blog/decoding-brain-initiative and I'm not able to see what's causing it. Can someone take a look and let me know if they see anything standing out? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jacobfy0 -
URL categorization / subfolders
Hi Mozzers, We're currently in the process of a website redesign with new CMS and have the opportunity to change URL and structure. I would love some opinions as to what the best practise will be. A quick prerequisite, the website is entirely about France. French property, living, holidays, forum - everything. Therefore, we're unsure of the usage of the word France/French. Presently, we're running Classic ASP which allows for one subfolder then dynamic article ID. In my examples, I will take our activity holidays URL. At present this is /france-activity-holidays/DisplayArticle.asp?ID=12345. We know that DisplayArticle.asp?ID=12345 will simply become [article-title], however, its the preceding subfolders I would like some help with. Here are our thoughts on the options available. Can you please vote as to which you think is the best? /france-activity-holidays/ (one subfolder per category, as at present) /france/holidays/activity/ (always have a first subfolder with the word france) /holidays-to-france/activity-holidays/ (france in the primary subfolder) /holidays/activity-holidays-france/ (france in the secondary subfolder) /holidays/activity/ (because the whole website is about France, it is redundant to have /france/) /French-holidays/activity/ My gut feeling is either number 2 or 5. Concise, good for UX, OK for SEO. However, there is very little information around that is relevant to our sector. Thanks in advance! Matt
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Horizon0 -
301 redirects and Blogger - moving blog
Is there any way to add 301 redirects to individual posts on a blogger-hosted blog? We're getting ready to finally move our blog off of Blogger and onto our own webserver. We're probably going to use BlogEngine.net to run it. right now the blog is located at blog.MySite.com. We're probably going to move it to MySite.com/Blog. We don't have any really popular posts and we only really get ~10 visits a day on about 70 posts. Just trying to figure out the best way to handle this without inadvertently shooting myself in the foot.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | _JP_0 -
Is it bad to host an XML sitemap in a different subdomain?
Example: sitemap.example.com/sitemap.xml for pages on www.example.com.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOTGT0 -
301 vs Changing Link href
We have changed our company and want to 301 old domain from new domain in order to transfer the benefits of backlinks (DA: 50, 115 Linking Root Domains). I have the ability to modify around 50% of the backlinks. So my question is: Instead of redirecting all the links, should I update the 50% to link to the new domain instead of relying on redirects? Would this possibly trip an algorithmic filter and devalue these links? Or should I just do a 301 and not worry about modifying the links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Choice0