Microsite Subfolder URL vs Redirected TLD for best SEO
-
We have a healthcare microsite that is in a subfolder off a hospital site.They wanted to keep their TLD and redirect from the subfolder URL. Even with good on-page SEO, link building, etc., they're not organically ranking as well as we think they should be.
ie. They have http://our-business-name.com vs. http://hospital.org/our-business-name/
For best SEO value, are they better off having only their homepage as TLD and not redirect any interior pages but display as subfolder URL?
ie. Keep homepage as http://our-business-name.com but use hospital urls for interior pages http://hospital.org/our-business-name/about/
Or is there some better way to handle this?
-
Thanks so much for taking the time to help! I really appreciate it!
-
In that case, I would ask the hospital.org to canonical to the new site, not redirect.
Recently had a similar case but in reverse... microsite was ranking really well for a term that they wanted ranking for their main website. We set up canonicals from microsite to main site and the main site started ranking for the term within a week.
-
The goal with adding as a subdirectory off the hospital site rather than as a stand-alone site was to gain the benefit of the weight of the hospital seo which ranks on the 1st page of search for more than 1,500 keywords.
The healthcare site has stiff competition with a similarly named local business that one of the drs previously worked for. He has now created this new business, which is affiliated with the local hospital. When his name is typed in search, the hospital site which has a bio page on him comes up first, then his previous business which, at least by site search, no longer has his name on their site (rather than his business), and his site doesn't even show on the 1st page.
The content is one and the same. The hospital.com/businessname/ redirects to the businessname.com
If you mean how are the URLs structured, they are friendly.
-
What is your goal here? What is on the businessname.com? What is in hospital.com/businessname/?
Off the bat, I think canonicals will be involved.
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
-
SEO Best eCommerce Practice - Same Product Different Keywords
I want to target different keywords for the same e-commerce product. What's the best SEO practice? I'm aware of the pitfalls to keyword stuffing. The product example is the GoPro Hero 5 Action Camera. The same action camera can be used in many different activities, e.g. surfing, auto racing, mountain biking, sky diving, search & rescue, law enforcement etc. These activities target completely different markets, so naturally the keywords are different. I have three strategies to tackle the issue. Please let me know which one you think is best. 1) Create different keyword landing pages with a call-to-action to the same conversion page Each landing page will be optimized for the targeted keywords e.g. surfing, auto racing, mountain biking, sky diving, search & rescue etc. Obviously this will be a big task because there will be numerous landing pages. Each page will show how the product can be used in these activities. For Surfing, the content would include surfing images with the GoPro Hero 5, instructions on how to mount the camera to a surfboard, waterproof tests, surfing testimonials and surfing owner reviews, etc. The call-to-action leads to a generic product conversion page displaying product information such as specs, weight, video formats, price, shipping, warranty etc. The same product page will be the call-to-action for all keyword landing pages. Positives Vast number of targeting long-tail keywords, numerous landing pages Good specific user experience who may be looking for "underwater action camera" (specific mounting instructions related to surfboards etc.) Less duplicate content as there is only one product page showing the same information Negatives Challenging to come up with each page for the vast amount of activities. Inbound Link Considerations
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ChrisCK
Inbound links from publications can link directly to the product page or the keyword landing page Surf Magazine may link to:
"Surfing Action Camera | GoPro Hero 5 | GoPro.com" - gopro.com/hero5/underwater-surf-camera
"GoPro Hero 5 Action Camera | GoPro.com" - gopro.com/hero5 2) Create different keyword landing pages with call-to-action to directly add product to cart Similar to the first option, but the call-to-action on the landing page is to Add Hero 5 to Cart. The user experience will be similar, the content creation challenges will be similar, but the techy product info e.g. specs, price, video format, etc. will be displayed on the same landing page. Positives Same benefit to long-tail keywords targeting Same benefit to a good, specific user experience Negatives Same challenges to create each long-tail keyword landing page Since there is no aggregate "product page", inbound links will be split between the landing pages Splitting of Page Authority to each landing conversion page Surf Magazine will link to:
"Surfing Action Camera | GoPro Hero 5 | GoPro.com" - gopro.com/hero5/underwater-surf-camera
Cycling Magazine will link to:
"Cycling Action Camera | GoPro Hero 5 | GoPro.com" - gopro.com/hero5/cycling-camera 3) Create conversion-focused product page with casual blog about keywords This is currently what GoPro has chosen - GoPro Hero 5. The product page displays the many different types of activities on the same page. The page is focused on the user experience with images of the action camera being used in different cool activities, showing its versatility. Note, very little long-tail keyword targeting on this page, instead they could use a broad keyword "action camera". To target long-tails, maybe a blog can be used brand ambassadors displaying the product being used in the various activities. Positives User experience focused Higher conversion rate Less content creation work Inbound links go to the same product page, building Page Authority Negatives Poor ranking with short-tail keyword (GoPro is not even in Top 10 SERP for "action camera") Poor ranking with long-tail keywords, (GoPro doesn't rank for "diving camera, cycling camera, surf camera") For blogging the long-tail keywords, who really converts from landing on a blog of the actual seller?! I hope those three strategies were explained clear enough and have enough of a differentiator. Please let me know what you think!0 -
Five best practice for SEO
Hello Everyone, I am new to SEO and need some help. I have 6 sites and I need to know what are the top 5 strategies for Off page seo. I mean the most important ones. Thanks Abie
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | signsny0 -
Canonical Question: Root Domain Geo Redirects to SubFolder.
Howdy, Working on a larger eComm site that 302s you based on your location. With that in mind should I canonicalize the final page. domain.com => 302 => domain.com/us/, domain.com/fr/, etc... (Should these all have a canonical pointing to the root domain.com?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | blake.runyon0 -
Transferring link juice from a canonical URL to an SEO landing page.
I have URLs that I use for SEM ads in Google. The content on those pages is duplicate (affiliate). Those pages also have dynamic parameters which caused lots of duplicate content pages to be indexed. I have put a canonical tag on the Parameter pages to consolidate everything to the canonical URL. Both the canonical URL and the Parameter URLs have links pointing to them. So as it stands now, my canonical URL is still indexed, but the parameter URLs are not. The canonical page is still made up of affiliate (duplicate) content though. I want to create an equivalent SEO landing page with unique content. But I'd like to do two things 1) remove the canonical URL from the index - due to duplicate affiliate content, and 2) transfer the link juice from the canonical URL over to the SEO URL. I'm thinking of adding a meta NoIndex, follow tag to the canonical tag - and internally linking to the new SEO landing page. Does this strategy work? I don't want to lose the link juice on the canonical URL by adding a meta noindex tag to it. Thanks in advance for your advice. Rob
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | partnerf0 -
301 Redirection and apostrophes in URLs
Hi I am experiencing trouble getting any redirects with apostrophes in the URLs to 301 redirect in order to eliminate 404 errors. I have tried replacing the instance of the apostrophe in the source URL field to %27 and variations of this but to no avail. The site is a wordpress site (the old URLS are legacies from the old Business Catalyst site) and I am using the redirection plug in. I have gone into some detail with a helpful soul here http://wordpress.org/support/topic/how-to-deal-with-apostrophes-in-source-url but unfortunately to no result. If anyone has any idea how to solve this puzzle I would be grateful for the help. Example: http://www.tesselaars.com/blog/Inside_Flowers/post/Online_Marketing_for_Florists_Part_1%E2%80%93_A_Website_You_Won%27t_Regret/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Seamoose0 -
We will be switching our shopping cart platform from volusion to magento and really cautious / nervous about our rankings / seo stuff. any advice for anyone that has migrated stores, etc. these urls are years old, etc.
shopping cart platform switch and SEO. What do you suggest? What's the best way to ensure we keep rankings.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PaulDylan0 -
Forwarding Empty URLs to Homepage for SEO & Old Backlink Salvaging - Is there any value or risk?
Our company owns about 30 URLs that we aren't currently using. Is there any SEO value to be gained by forwarding these content-less URLs to our homepage if they aren't currently indexed by google? Some of these sites were previously in use at low traffic volumes by companies who licensed use of our brand and URL. After parting ways a year or longer in the past, no 301 redirection was done to save the link juice, so it's long gone at this point. However, there may be some sites on the net that are still linking to various pages on the URL. What would be the best course of action to salvage any value of these URLs until they are in use again as full websites? Insights would be greatly appreciated! Cheers, Justin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | grayline0 -
Robots.txt: Link Juice vs. Crawl Budget vs. Content 'Depth'
I run a quality vertical search engine. About 6 months ago we had a problem with our sitemaps, which resulted in most of our pages getting tossed out of Google's index. As part of the response, we put a bunch of robots.txt restrictions in place in our search results to prevent Google from crawling through pagination links and other parameter based variants of our results (sort order, etc). The idea was to 'preserve crawl budget' in order to speed the rate at which Google could get our millions of pages back in the index by focusing attention/resources on the right pages. The pages are back in the index now (and have been for a while), and the restrictions have stayed in place since that time. But, in doing a little SEOMoz reading this morning, I came to wonder whether that approach may now be harming us... http://www.seomoz.org/blog/restricting-robot-access-for-improved-seo
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kurus
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/serious-robotstxt-misuse-high-impact-solutions Specifically, I'm concerned that a) we're blocking the flow of link juice and that b) by preventing Google from crawling the full depth of our search results (i.e. pages >1), we may be making our site wrongfully look 'thin'. With respect to b), we've been hit by Panda and have been implementing plenty of changes to improve engagement, eliminate inadvertently low quality pages, etc, but we have yet to find 'the fix'... Thoughts? Kurus0