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.
Complimentary sub-brand; subdomain, subfolder, something else?
-
Hello forum!
I have a question about subdomains vs. subfolders for a new sub-brand for a company.
The company is looking at creating a sub-brand delivering a different service to the parent company. It is complimentary in a sense, but it would need a very different marketing strategy. It is not trying to 'hide' its parent brand at all, but instead would leverage the parent brand as added social proof.
I've read that creating a subdomain essentially means starting from scratch in terms of SEO, and that a subfolder would better leverage the domain authority the TLD has accrued. However, creating a subfolder does not really gel with me, as it would not in my opinion provide a good experience for visitors.
I.e. it's like running a website that sells electronics and having a subfolder marketing IT support services.
Yes, there is some synergy-- but it can also lead to visitor confusion.
I'd love your opinions on this!
Carlo
-
Hey Carlo
I would go for a separate domain but try buying an aged domain that's clean with some existing back links. Failing that a new domain with keywords in the domain. Yea it still works!
Hope that helps
steve
-
Hi Vadim,
Thanks for sharing that video! Seems to conflict with what I've been reading. But I suppose it is coming straight from the horse's mouth.
P.S. Would love your feedback based on my response to Steve!
Cheers,
Carlo -
Hi Steve,
Thanks for commenting. The company provides Managed IT Support to businesses, and is looking to move into digital marketing and web design. So my original thoughts were:
- brand new domain
- subdomain
- subfolder and UI integration <-- (but this thought made me nauseous)
What do you think?
Regards,
Carlo -
Hi Carlo Del Fabbro,
You mentioned that you prefer not to use sub-directories but prefer sub-domains. To my understanding and according to Matt Cutts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MswMYk05tk subdomains and subfolders work the same way. There are some downsides with subdomains, but I do not believe they are with SEO, so it should not steer you away from using a subdomain. I am not sure why Rubix mentioned that in the post maybe ask him to clarify or get others to chime in
Hope this Helps!
-
Would it be more confusing to have:
http://itsupportservice.myelectronics.com rather than http://myelectronic.com/itsupportservice/
At least you get the leverage all the SEO work on the main domain!
It may depend on the brand and sub-brand though. What's the main main brand and sub-brand?
For what it's worth, my opinion is that you should go for a /folder/ off the main domain...
Regards
Steve
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
-
WordPress Sub-directory for SEO
Hi There, I'm working on a WordPress site that includes a premium content blog with approx 900 posts. As part of the project, those 900 posts and other membership functionality will be moved from the main site to another site built specifically for content/membership. Ideally, we want the existing posts to remain on the root domain to avoid a loss in link juice/domain authority. We initially began setting up a WordPress Multisite using the sub-directory option. This allows for the main site to be at www.website.com and the secondary site to be at www.website.com/secondary. Unfortunately, the themes and plugins we need for the platform do not play nicely with WordPress Multisite, so we started seeking a new solution, and, discovered that a second instance of WordPress can be installed in a subdirectory on the server. This would give us the same subdirectory structure while bypassing WordPress Multisite and instead, having two separate single-site installs. Do you foresee any issues with this WordPress subdirectory install? Does Google care/know these are two separate WordPress installs and do we risk losing any link juice/domain authority?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HimalayanInstitute0 -
Subdomain replaced domain in Google SERP
Good morning, This is my first post. I found many Q&As here that mostly answer my question, but just to be sure we do this right I'm hoping the community can take a peak at my thinking below: Problem: We are relevant rank #1 for "custom poker chips" for example. We have this development website on a subdomain (http://dev.chiplab.com). On Saturday our live 'chiplab.com' main domain was replaced by 'dev.chiplab.com' in the SERP. Expected Cause: We did not add NOFOLLOW to the header tag. We also did not DISALLOW the subdomain in the robots.txt. We could have also put the 'dev.chiplab.com' subdomain behind a password wall. Solution: Add NOFOLLOW header, update robots.txt on subdomain and disallow crawl/index. Question: If we remove the subdomain from Google using WMT, will this drop us completely from the SERP? In other words, we would ideally like our root chiplab.com domain to replace the subdomain to get us back to where we were before Saturday. If the removal tool in WMT just removes the link completely, then is the only solution to wait until the site is recrawled and reindexed and hope the root chiplab.com domain ranks in place of the subdomain again? Thank you for your time, Chase
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chiplab0 -
Franchise sites: Should each franchise have a subdomain or subdirectory?
One of my clients has about 40 franchisees who are going to have their own sites on a WordPress multisite installation. The question they're wondering: should these be on subdirectories (thesite.com/this-franchise) or on subdomains (this-franchise.thesite.com)? Which is best for SEO? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ideasandpixels0 -
Robots.txt: how to exclude sub-directories correctly?
Hello here, I am trying to figure out the correct way to tell SEs to crawls this: http://www.mysite.com/directory/ But not this: http://www.mysite.com/directory/sub-directory/ or this: http://www.mysite.com/directory/sub-directory2/sub-directory/... But with the fact I have thousands of sub-directories with almost infinite combinations, I can't put the following definitions in a manageable way: disallow: /directory/sub-directory/ disallow: /directory/sub-directory2/ disallow: /directory/sub-directory/sub-directory/ disallow: /directory/sub-directory2/subdirectory/ etc... I would end up having thousands of definitions to disallow all the possible sub-directory combinations. So, is the following way a correct, better and shorter way to define what I want above: allow: /directory/$ disallow: /directory/* Would the above work? Any thoughts are very welcome! Thank you in advance. Best, Fab.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau1 -
PDFs and images in Sub folder or subdomain?
What would you recommend as best practice? Our ecommerce site has a lot of PDFs supporting the product page. Currently they are kept in a sub domain and so are all images. Would it be better to keep them all in a subfolder? I've read about blogs being hosted on a subfolder to be better than subdomain but what about pdfs and images? thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bio-RadAbs0 -
Merging Domains... Sub-domains, Directories or Seperate Sites?
Hello! I am hoping you can help me decide the best path to take here... A little background: I'm moving to a new company that has three old domains (the oldest is 10 years old), which get a lot of traffic from their e-letters. Until recently they have not cared about SEO. So the websites have some structural, coding, URL and other issues. The sites are indexed, but have a problem getting crawled and/or indexed for new content - haven't delved into this yet but am certain I will be able to fix any of these issues. These three domains are PR4, PR4, PR5 and contain hundreds of unique articles. Here's the question... They want to move these three sites **to their main company site (PR4) and create sub domains for each one. ** I am wondering if this is a good idea or not. I have merged sites before (creating categories and/or directories) and the end result is that the ONE big site, is much for effective than TWO smaller, less authoritative sites. But the sub domain idea is something I am unsure about from an SEO perspective. Should we do this with sub domains? Or do you think we should keep the sites separate? How do Panda and Penguin play into this? Thanks in advance for the help! SD P.S. I'm not a huge advocate in using PR as a measurement tool, but since I can't reveal the actual domains, I figured I would list it as a reference point.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | essdee0 -
Move blog from subdomain to main domain on ecom site?
I am wondering what my fellow mozers think. Pretty set about my direction but want to get any other input to aid in my decision. Have an ecom site with a www.blog.maindomain.com. The blog is fairly new and no major rankings. There are only about 30 posts. This isn't a super competitive market and the blogging won't be a huge part of our content strategy but I would like to use it for passing juice etc. Would you go through the trouble to move the blog to www.site.com/blog and redirecting all the old content to new?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PEnterprises0 -
Block an entire subdomain with robots.txt?
Is it possible to block an entire subdomain with robots.txt? I write for a blog that has their root domain as well as a subdomain pointing to the exact same IP. Getting rid of the option is not an option so I'd like to explore other options to avoid duplicate content. Any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kylesuss12
