What has a better chance of ranking alongside my main site for my company name, a subdomain or new domain?
-
Hi Moz,
Do search engines really treat subdomains as separate domains in this regard? Or are we more likely to get more real estate on the first page with a new domain?
Our goal is to have our main site and this new subdomain or domain ranking in positions 1 and 2 for our company name.
This is going to be a careers site/portal.
Thanks for reading!
-
I think an overall better solution would be to work on developing a strong enough website that the site is given sitelinks, indicating a stronger brand that has extra real estate space at the top of the SERP. With subdomains, you might be able to rank second or third as well and I've definitely seen this happen (although can't replicate it right now). However, Google usually tries to show relatively diverse results, even for company names. You might have trouble ranking content on the same domain, even presented as subdomains, in both top positions. It's more common for Google to pick a social profile, a separate company resource and perhaps a review site for the top results, rather than listing link after link from the same root domain.
-
Is your company name a very unique name or something generic that a lot of other sites rank for? That makes it either very simple or more difficult depending.
SillySamantha'sCookies.com (easy)
FloridaPaintingContractors.com (more difficult)
I wouldn't do a subdomain or a new domain if you are trying to get #1 and #2 positions for your company name. I would optimize some additional internal pages for your company name on the main site and try to get the homepage and and an internal page ranked in the top two spots.
-
I don't think subdomains are the way to go. For your brand name, Google is going to naturally show your page in the first few results, unless your brand name is a common term or phase like "Baseball" or "Health Insurance". It used to be that using a subdomain treats it as a different site, or something close to that, but what I have read recently is that subdomains are treated as the same. At the end of the day, I would keep everything on my root domain in subfolders, therefore building up the power of my core domain at all times.
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
-
Domain authority a better metric then referring domain count?
Hi Guys, When reviewing competitors what would be a better metric - Referring domain count OR domain authority. From my understanding DA is a indication of the quality of the link profile. So if a site has a high DA this is a better metric for comparison then referring domain count. What are your thoughts on this? Cheers/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cathywix0 -
Migrating to a new domain
Hi The company I work for are planing to re-brand & come under our parent company name. This means the whole site will be moved to a new domain. Does anyone have any experience with this and can give me some useful docs to read/any advice? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey1 -
Competition site with Duplicate Name
I have a client who is in real estate and one of his competition used the same Name and Domain and added the word Toronto in front. The competition is putting similar content on the website. The competition also hijacked the Google listing since they both work in the same building. Is this going to affect the ranking our website? What negative effect will it put on our website?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KaranX0 -
Can you give me some advices to rank this domain?
Hi Moz community, I've a coleague that's working to rank this site: www.devsar.com. The selected keywords are:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gaston Riera
Mobile development
Web development
Django Development
Python Development I've checked the site: It's fast and clean. Has a good PA and DA. It's responsive and good lookking. Meta description , title, hreflang.. everything in order. Link profile a little rare (checked with ahref.com), it's because someone made a mistake redirecting some expired domain Can you help me to help my mate out?
Thanks
GR.0 -
Moving career site to new URL from main site. Will it hurt SEO for main page?
For one of our clients we are building a career site and putting it under a different URL and hosting service (mainly due to security concerns of hosting it under the same host and domain). almost 100% of the incoming traffic to their current career section (which it is in a sub-folder) receives traffic for branded keywords (brand + job/career/employment), that is, there are no job position specific keywords. The client is now worried that after moving the site, the inbound traffic to the main site will be severely affected as well as the SERP results. My questions are, will the non-career related SERPs be affected? I don't see how will they be but I could be wrong If no, how could we reassure her that the SEO to the main site wont be affected? are there any case studies of a similar case (splitting part of the website under a new URL and hosting service?) Thank you for your help. PS: this is my first post so please forgive me if this has been asked before. I could not find a good response.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rflores0 -
Is it worth buying a GREAT domain with rank?
Hey Guys, I am in communication with the owner of a domain with very good domain rank - that ranks well for keywords important to me. Strangely enough the website it terrible?! (I though Google valued "content" these days?!). Anyhow, it's link profile is tidy including sites such as DMOZ. His asking price for the domain is SUBSTANTIAL, however where it ranks for some keywords would be valuable for our organisation if we could leverage its authority. My questions are: 1) Is it worth buys a GREAT domain with a crappy website that ranks for keywords that are important to us? 2) (if the answer to 1 is YES) How should one go about leveraging the rank to benefit our site/business? 3) What would be the best way to utilise the site - redirects? Build out some kind of content and link to main site? Anyhow, hopefully some of you have great experience in this domain in the current Google Panda/Penguin white hat world? Would REALLY appreciate your thoughts!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | love-seo-goodness1 -
Stability in the rankings - Domain mapping
Tues domain mapping of multiple (more than 180) urls to a single address can harm rankeamento these urls? I have the following scenario… Mapping domain addresses: www.meusitecidade01.com www.meusitecidade02.com www.meusitecidade03.com ... www.meusitecidade181.com to: www.meusite.com where I have a index.php page which will assemble according to the url mapped. This could be hurting my SEO in any way? There has been a lot of stability in the rankings (not google dance) some of these urls for some keywords and unique pecularidade see that, relative to other site, is the above scenario.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eder.machado0 -
How long until 301 passes juice to new site?
We put up a new site for an attorney and changed his url along with total redevelopment. We used a 301 for the old to the new and it does resolve to the new. It has been one month and the old site in OSE still shows DA of 37 with PA for homepage of 15. The new site has come up.....to a DA of 6 with homepage at 1 still. For any who might wish it, the referring site is theHollandLawFirm.com and the new site is Houston-Bankruptcy-Attorney.info. Would love to know of any experience with the timing on this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobertFisher0