Subdomain and root domain effects on SEO
-
I have a domain lets say it's mydomain.com, which has my web app already hosted on this domain. I wanted to create a sub-product from my company, the concept is a bit different than my original web app that is on mydomain.com and I am planning to host this on mynewapp.mydomain.com. I am having doubts that using a sub-domain will have an impact on my existing or new web app. Can anyone give me any pointers on this? As much as I wanted to use a directory mydomain.com/mynewapp, this is not possible because it will just confuse existing users of the new product/web app. I've heard that subdomains are essentially treated as a new site, is this true? If it is then I am fine with this, but is it also true that subdomains are harder to reach the top rank rather than a root domain?
-
Why not just buy a new domain if it is a totally separate product?
You are correct: a sub domain is essentially (for SEO purposes anyway) treated as its own entity.
As long as you build great content, find great link opportunities and treat it as you would any other domain you should have no problem getting it ranked.
-
Aditya
No matter what you want to use it for, a sub domain is essentially its own domain and, it does not really affect your original domain. As to how a sub directory will will confuse your visitor but a subdomain won't, I do not see that as true. But, I think your real question is "is it harder for a subdomain to "rank" than a subdirectory? No, but let's be clear about what does rank in the SERPs: Pages.
So, you can have a sub domain with 5 pages that are able to rank just as easily as a domain that has five pages that rank. (Or one page, or 100). Given what you are wanting to sell, I would focus on UI/UX and ranking for the key terms for your apps. Quit worrying about the subdomain vs subdirectory. Choose one and rock on.
Best,
Robert
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
-
E-Commerce Cart Migration SEO Advice
Hi all, First time post here. We operate a small ecommerce store and plan on moving cart, most likely from Interspire to Magento or possibly Prestashop. We want to be sure not to damage our current search rankings when making this move and ideally improve our rankings at the same time by utilizing the new cart’s <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">seo</acronym> functionality as best we can. Stage 1 of the project will see us simply move our current store from one cart to another. For this move we are keeping our existing single domain and intend on moving our current set up without making many, if any changes to content, product descriptions , URL’s etc as we believe this best practice for ensuring our current rankings remain as they are- is such thinking correct? Or should we do otherwise Stage 2 would see us operate a multi lingual, multistore, with 4 domains operating with 1 back end. For the 3 new domains we are looking to set up these storefronts in whichever manner will be most beneficial from an <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">seo</acronym> perspective We welcome any advice as to what we should consider? What we should and shouldn’t do? and best practices for this project Please advise if any other information is required to best answer our query Thanks for taking the time to read our post, any forthcoming tips and advice will be greatly appreciated
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | StuSol0 -
Black Seo --> Attack
Hello there, Happy new year for everyone, and good luck this year. I have a real problem here, I saw in MOZ link history that somehow the "Total Linking Root Domains" is growing from a medium of 30 - 40 to 240 - 340 links and keep it growing. I guess somebody make me good joke, cause i did not buy any link :)) even cn, brasil, jp links, my store is from Romania. How I can block these links I think google will make me bad instead. What should i do? Thank you so much. With respect,
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Shanaki
Andrei 0tYg1wB.png0 -
SEO from INDIA Smarter then Google?
Exploring this url: filterscanada.ca In Open Site Explorer, it is clear those guys bought one of those package available on site like eLance.com a low price over seas!!! Where freelancer around the word can be hired for a fews bucks. For example, I post a job on eLance for SEO and most of the freelancer submitting where from INDIA. For just a few hundreds dollars, you can get a complet SEO package. At first, the price was attractive, but when posting on seoMoz and doing research, I came to the conclusion, the techniques they use might hurt more the produce positive result... How can you get a D.A. of 45 using backlinks they get? I read all those things about Google algorithm, and Panda and Penguin and this and that... Being impossible to crack! Do you have a explanation? I work really hard ans spends lots of $$$ to have a clean site selling furnace filters
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BigBlaze205
I follow all the SEO guide lines, practice only white hat trying to built somethings, but with a P.A. of 19 and a competitors ranking like this, I ask myself: "Maybe INDIA is smarter then Google and I should do like this site, spend a couple of hundreds dollars and buy myself a high D.A."0 -
One good domain generating to much links what to do
I think penguin had no effect yet on spain. propdental.com remain the same.And propdental.es still growing.No penguin 2.0 effect. I think it will need a few more days to see if there is impact on spain.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | maestrosonrisas
Althought i have a question regarding coagnitive SEO, (is regarding a link to propdental.es from unidirectorio.com) i think is a good web, but as generated me an very big amount of links)i have this on link from unidirectorio.com that has generated 2400 links to www.propdental.es with this ancor text "clinica dental con dentistas especialistas en implantes dentales ortodoncia invisalign y carillas" Links is comes from this page http://undirectorio.com/Salud/dentistas/ and then generates 2400I can not remove this link. I seemed a good directory with just 3 pages linking out and good page rank on my specific field.I ask google to dont take that link into account, although i am not sure if i did it well.**Can someone tell me how to say to google to dont take in account the links from a domain?**google still shows this link on webmaster tools, i am afraid it ends up been bad. I seems a good directory is not an exact ancor text although containt all work i want to rank.What would be your advice? Do i have any way to make sure that google does not have the links recieved from that domain into account0 -
Spammy Links (from .ru) pointing to my domain! How to deal with it?
Hi all, We run an e-commerce store - I am just looking at the apache logs and I am finding a lot of spammy links that have been referrers to our pages - when I check the links, I cannot find our URL in an HREF on their page so I presume they may be using some country based cloaking? These are the domains that are targeting specific pages on our site:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | bjs2010
http://3xru.ru/
http://saldoconsult.ru/
http://euro-casino.ru/casino/
http://delaymoney.maroderi.ru/
http://intimhot.ru/ How to deal with this? Our site is about cookware and they seem to be pointing these links to very specific products and categories. Never seen anything like this before, help would be appreciated. Thanks, B0 -
How tdo you replace an old SEO company's work?
I have a client that has been paying someone for what is basically directory placement on very specific niche sites that they have created. These sites are exact match keyword domains with not very high PA or DA (they're in the teens) and they provide no direct traffic. It's basically a link wheel that is probably helping them to rank for some of their bigger holy grail keywords. They are also providing some low quality article/blog marketing on these sites. Ultimately, they link to them ALOT and it's working in this specific niche. This client no longer wants to pay for these services, but there's the possibility of all of the links being taken down and their rankings being set back a ton. Has anybody ever experienced this and if so, how did you deal with it? What are some good tactics? Any tips would be great.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MichaelWeisbaum0 -
Best way to handle SEO error, linking from one site to another same IP
We committed an SEO sin and created a site with links back to our primary website. Although it does not matter, the site was not created for that purpose, it is actually "directory" with categorized links to thousands of culinary sites, and ours are some of the links. This occurred back in May 2010. Starting April 2011 we started seeing a large drop in page views. It dropped again in October 2011. At this point our traffic is down over 40% Although we don't know for sure if this has anything to do with it, we know it is best to remove the links. The question is, given its a bad practice what is the best fix? Should we redirect the 2nd domain to the main or just take it down? The 2nd domain does not have much page rank and I really don't think many if any back-links to it. Will it hurt us more to lose the 1600 or so back links? I would think keeping the links is a bad idea. Thanks for your advice!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | foodsleuth0 -
Purchased an expiring domain, Now the pagerank has gone.
A few days ago I had asked a question regarding purchasing an expiring domain to redirect to a new related site. The post can be found here >>> http://www.seomoz.org/q/purchasing-an-expiring-domain-with-quality-related-links The domain has some great links with several being from PR5 pages on nih.gov aswell as several keyword rich domains. This made my day and I ended up paying $309 for it. So today I have the domain with the registrar network solutions who I believe are owned by Google, not sure if that is the truth or not as I can't find any info on that. now my domain is no longer indexed in Google and the toolbar's pagerank has dropped from a 4 to a 0. It was not my choice to use network solutions but namejet only use them or ENOM. I have now installed a wordpress site on the domain to see if any pagerank exist, if it does then the site will shortly be indexed in Google without me building any links to it. Just 2 days ago the site was in Google, had the correct info:domainname.com command and now the info: command shows nothing. the site is either banned or all of the actual pagerank has been removed by Google. I am a little bit dissapointed in this even though it was initially an experiment to see if I could purchase good links through expiring domains. The thing is I am seeing people purchase domains with good links in excess of $3000. Has anyone else experienced anything like this?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | umtmedia0