I have a blog on a sub domain, would you move it to the rood domain in a directory?
-
I have a blog that preforms fairly well on a sub domain, but after reading a post that Rand made to the Q & A I am thinking about moving it to the main domain in a sub directory. What are your thoughts on this? Here are some stats on it. The blog currently gets about 5 x the traffic of the main domain. The domain is older, 2008 creation date. They pretty much register for the same keywords.
-
Thanks guys, you have pretty much confirmed what I thought. It looks like I have a fun weekend ahead of me redirecting and testing things out. But it will be a good notch to add to see how the traffic goes.
One thing I wanted to ask about, this is not the case in my instance, but would the recommendation be the same if the subdomain had a higher PR than the naked domain?
-
I have always hosted blogs in a subfolder. The reason is I want all the traffic to stay in one place, along with all the link juice. True, a blog on a subdomain may get viewed as two separate entities, and therefore have multiple chances to show up in Google, but I like to have the look, and PR all attached to one specific place.
Personally, I have never seen the benefit of having a blog hosted on a subdomain. It always made more sense to have all your eggs in one basket and to keep feeding your TLD instead of spreading out your efforts.
Here is an article I generally refer to for advice: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/subdomains-or-subfolders-which-are-better-for-seo/6849/
Like EGOL said "If you want your blog to be treated as part of the domain then put it on the domain. If you want your blog to be treated like a separate domain then put it on a separate domain."
-
Thanks for elaborating. But what we're debating may prove something else entirely. It seems weird, but it's a very smart dumb machine.
-
Google repeatedly changes their mind about some things.
They have repeatedly changed their mind about subdomains.
At some times in the past they treated subdomains exactly like they were part of the root domain. At other times they treated them like a separate site and they have been in the middle some times too I am sure.
If you want your blog to be treated as part of the domain then put it on the domain. If you want your blog to be treated like a separate domain then put it on a separate domain. By doing this you will always be right.
But, if you place it on a subdomain then I am betting that you will be wrong about 1/2 of the time - if you are lucky.
-
Personally, I've never put a blog on a sub. More people are saying there isn't any difference, but more people may be saying that because a few more have said as such. Lovely how that works?
It was about four years ago we were told that EMDs were losing their potency. Upon hearing that, I jumped right on the bandwagon. Bad move, at least for a little bit. It would be years before a non-EMD, all things equal, could easily compete with an EMD.
What is said and what is are often at chronological odds.
Are you talking about this post?
Perhaps a new URL for the same pages could cause the Googles to 'reconsider' the content, for better or worse. Hopefully it would be for the better. I think you're going to do it anyway, so please take notes. It has the makings of a post I would love to read.
-
thinking about moving it to the main domain in a sub directory. What are your thoughts on this?
If this was my site I would move it to /blog/ (or a folder with another name) immediately and use 301 redirects.
All of my blogs are in a folder on the main domain.
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
-
Choice of domain
Hi. I want to build a new site that is optimised for a training product that we have. We have an existing domain which I'm considering pointing at this new site. This domain is one of the new .training TLDs. Let's call this domain foo.training where my main keyword to optimise for will be "foo training". I've also looked and can see that foo-training.com is available. I read up on best practices for domains here : https://moz.com/learn/seo/domain My question is will the .training domain be seen as "spammy" in any way? Am I better to just go ahead and register the .com?
Technical SEO | | rmcatalyst0 -
Webmaster Tools and Domain registration
Hi, I have a travel project to manage and a question to arrange the registration of this page. Should I register in Webmaster Tools all domains which lead to the webpage of this travel company like abctravel.com, a-b-c-travel.com, adventure-bahamas-crew-travel.com and adventurebahamascrewtravel.com or only the main domain abctravel.com. Thanks for your advice.
Technical SEO | | reisefm0 -
New domain's Sitemap.xml file loaded to old domain - how does this effect SEO?
I have a client who recently changed their domain when they redesigned their site. The client wanted the old site to remain live for existing customers with links to the new domain. I guess as a workaround, the developer loaded the new domain's sitemap.xml file to the old domain. What SEO ramifications would this have if any on the primary (new) domain?
Technical SEO | | julesae0 -
Domain Hosting
I'm currently working with a client who provides products in Ireland Is it massively beneficial for the sited to be hosted on an irish server or will there not be much difference with it being hosted in England?
Technical SEO | | Sandeep_Matharu0 -
Forum on toplevel or sub domain?
Hiya all I am building a site for the expansion of a facebook fan page that will be sending a fair bit of traffic to the site. One feature of the site is a forum plus a store and i have to make the dissuasion on if i should have the forum and store on the main domain or on separate subdomains for each. domain.com forum.domain.com store.domain.com So my question is would it be better to keep all of these elements on the main domain or each on a separate sub domains? Will
Technical SEO | | wildwill0 -
Google is indexing my directories
I'm sure this has been asked before, but I was looking at all of Google's results for my site and I found dozens of results for directories such as: Index of /scouting/blog/wp-includes/js/swfupload/plugins Obviously I don't want those indexed. How do I prevent Google from indexing those? Also, it only seems to be doing it with Wordpress, not any of the directories on my main site. (We have a wordpress blog, which is only a portion of the site)
Technical SEO | | UnderRugSwept0 -
Beating a keyword Domain
Has anyone here managed to beat a keyword/exact match domain to top spot? I am currently second and wondering if it is worth the time and effort to knock it off the top spot. How hard is it to get these very annoyingly favoured domains off 1st? Any help and advice much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0 -
Redirecting Domains
Hi Everybody, My clients owns a lot of domains related to his website. I redirected them to the website. So his website is: www.vallnord.com but if you type Vallnordski, vallnordsnow, etc etc they will go to the website, but they will not change the url and will keep vallnordski, vallnordsnow instead of going to vallnord.com Not very clear actually, so if you have 20 seconds to type them you will see it very clear. I was wondering if this was a good practice or it is better to actually redirect someone completely (If they type vallnordski.com take them to vallnord.com)? Is redirecting a good SEO practice? Regards, Guido.
Technical SEO | | SilbertAd0