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
-
Trash Domain Or Redirect it (unmaintained)
We have an old website with an old domain that has not been maintained for a few years; it now has a DA of 14 and a spam score of 24%. Our current domain (same business) within a few years has a domain authority of 21 and page authority 29 spam score 1%. (Yes, this domain should have been redirected from the get-go) The question is what do you do with it now? Toss it. Or redirect it. That domain has existed for years but still not sure what its value is from an SEO perspective. I would love to hear your feedback. Is there any benefit to redirect the old domain to the current domain. Or is it a negative and what impact?
Technical SEO | | MyBambooSEO0 -
Disavow to all domains?
Hi there, I have several versions of my domain setup in Webmaster tools. Should I upload my disavow file against all of these domains? For example.....
Technical SEO | | niallfred
If I find a link pointing to: http://www.mydomain.com from: http://www.somespammysite.com do I need to add a disavow file in Webmaster tools for all my domain versions or only the version the offending links points towards? So... Only
http://www.mydomain.com
Or
http://www.mydomain.com
http://mydomain.com
https://www.mydomain.com
https://mydomain.com0 -
HTACESS Redirect Root Domain To Sub-Directory
Hi Guys, I posted on another post here http://moz.com/community/q/site-migration-between-cms-s about an issue I am hleping out on with a client about migrating between Joomla and Wordpress. He wants to keep some of the old links live on the Joomla installation (I have advised that Google won't be able to crawl these) he wants the new wordpress installation to run on www.site.com/customise (a subdirectory) I have researched this and can't see any issues with indexing or page authority as it's just like having an index.php on the end of every URL. So basically if you go to www.site.com it will be redirected to www.site.com/customise. Will there be any issues, will go frown upon this in anway? Kind Regards Neil
Technical SEO | | nezona0 -
Should I enable trackback on my blog?
Hi, I received a notification that somebody posted a trackback comment and I am not sure about the recommended course of action. What is the SEO impact of accepting trackbacks on my blog? Should I simply ignore them or should I accept them? What I understand is that it means somebody linked to my blog (which is good) but do I get something out of posting the trackback in the comment section or am I just giving somebody a free link? Is that the same as if I was to link to another blog or does it carry some sort of a social recognition helping my site authority? Cheers Guillaume
Technical SEO | | tbps0 -
What is the advantage of using sub domains instead of pages on the root domain?
Have a look at this example http://bannerad.designcrowd.com/ For each category of design, they have a landing page on the sub domain. Wouldn't it be better to have them as part of the same domain? What is the strategy behind using sub domains?
Technical SEO | | designquotes0 -
Redirecting blog.<mydomain>.com to www.<mydomain>.com\blog</mydomain></mydomain>
This is more of a technical question than pure SEO per se, but I am guessing that some folks here may have covered this and so I would appreciate any questions. I am moving from a WordPress.com-based blog (hosted on WordPress) to a WordPress installation on my own server (as suggested by folks in another thread here). As part of this I want to move from the format blog.<mydomain>.com to www.mydomain.com\blog. I have installed WordPress on my server and have imported posts from the hosted site to my own server. How should I manage the transition from first format to the second? I have a bunch of links on Facebook, etc that refer to URLs of the blog..com format so it's important that I redirect.</mydomain> I am running DotNetNuke/WordPress on my own IIS/ASP.Net servers. Thanks. Mark
Technical SEO | | MarkWill0 -
Switch domain from one account to another at domain registrar
We need to move our domain from one account to another at our domain registrar (which is Moniker). Both the "from" account and "to" account will be at Moniker. The "from" account currently has privacy settings enabled and we'd also put these in place for the "to" account. Has anyone done this and see any impact on SEO? Is there any big or common mistakes that I should be aware of? Thanks all!
Technical SEO | | evoNick0 -
Sub Domain SEO
I am thinking to Add Sub Domains to get better rankings for Local Searches. So I will develop City Specific Sites with Specific Language. For Example qatar.wisnetsol.com. IT will be in Arabic. If my Good standing and Ranking on Google for wisnetsol.com will help my subdomain to rank better? if we setup wisnetsol.com/qatar, how it can target Qatar in Google Webmaster tools? Will links for qatar.wisnetsol.com and wisnetsol.com are seprate? What do you think about this strategy? Is it good or bad?
Technical SEO | | Khuram0