Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Sub domain for geo pages
-
Hello Group!
I have been tossing the idea in my head of using sub domains for the geo pages for each of my clients.
For example: one of my clients is a lawyer in a very competitive Atlanta market http://bestdefensega.com.
Can I set his geo page to woodstock.bestdefensega.com?
Is this a viable option?
Will I get penalized?
Thoughts or suggestions always appreciated!
Thanks in Advance
-
I wouldn't recommend this approach. You definitely won't get penalized but you'll hurt your domain authority.
Subdomains are treated by Google as different websites (here's a great Whiteboard Friday about it) so by creating a subdomain instead of a folder you're diluting your "potential".
The better approach for your situation is create folders with geo specific locations and high performing/volume keywords. An example of this would be www.domainname.com/city-stateabbreviation-keyword (http://bestdefensega.com/woodstock-ga-lawyers or better yet use more "intent specific" long-tailed keywords like http://bestdefensega.com/woodstock-ga-lawyer-services )
This way when your geo specific pages get recognition from Google (whether through user data, link equity, etc.) it's not being diluted, it's full "potential" is given to your root domain which will help boost all of your pages.
Hopefully this helps!
-Jacob
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
-
Which are the best off-page SEO techniques for 2020?
I have just published an awesome website or blog, and i really worked hard keeping everything perfect. Do you think it’s enough? Having a perfect blog, website or business is just enough. i need readers for my blog, visitors to my website, and customers for my business. So, what to do?
Local Website Optimization | | boxinghunter0 -
I want to rank a national home page for a local keyword phrase
Hello - We are a nationally available brand based in Denver, CO. Our home page currently ranks #8 (used to be 5) for "real estate photography in Denver" -- I want to improve this ranking, but our home page is generalized and not geared toward Denver, CO but to all of our markets. I'm trying to troubleshoot this and have a few ideas.... I would love advice on the best route, or a different route altogether: Create a Denver-specific page -- _will that page compete with my home page that is already ranked in the top ten? _ Add the keyword phrase in the image alt attribute Add keyword phrase into the content - need to make sure that viewers realize we are national I already updated the meta description to say "real estate photography in Denver and beyond"
Local Website Optimization | | virtuance_photography1 -
Do you use HREF lang tags when each page that is localised only exists in that language?
Hi, I have 2 questions I am seeking an answer for. We have a home page in english GB, we then also have products which are specifically served in US. For these pages where the phone number is american, the spelling is american, the address is american, do we need to implement href lang tags? The page isn't a version of another page in english, the page is only in the native language.Secondly, is it recommended to create a second home page and then localise that page for US users?I'd be really greatful if anyone has any pointers as googles forum doesn't explain best practice for this case (as far as I can tell).Many thanks
Local Website Optimization | | Adam_PirateStudios0 -
Subdomain vs. Separate Domain for SEO & Google AdWords
We have a client who carries 4 product lines from different manufacturers under a singular domain name (www.companyname.com), and last fall, one of their manufacturers indicated that they needed to move to separate out one of those product lines from the rest, so we redesigned and relaunched as two separate sites - www.companyname.com and www.companynameseparateproduct.com (a newly-purchased domain). Since that time, their manufacturer has reneged their requirement to separate the product lines, but the client has been running both sites separately since they launched at the beginning of December 2016. Since that time, they have cannibalized their content strategy (effective February 2017) and hacked apart their PPC budget from both sites (effective April 2017), and are upset that their organic and paid traffic has correspondingly dropped from the original domain, and that the new domain hasn't continued to grow at the rate they would like it to (we did warn them, and they made the decision to move forward with the changes anyway). This past week, they decided to hire an in-house marketing manager, who is insisting that we move the newer domain (www.companynameseparateproduct.com) to become a subdomain on their original site (separateproduct.companyname.com). Our team has argued that making this change back 6 months into the life of the new site will hurt their SEO (especially if we have to 301 redirect all of the old content back again, without any new content regularly being added), which was corroborated with this article. We'd also have to kill the separate AdWords account and quality score associated with the ads in that account to move them back. We're currently looking for any extra insight or literature that we might be able to find that helps explain this to the client better - even if it is a little technical. (We're also open to finding out if this method of thinking is incorrect if things have changed!)
Local Website Optimization | | mkbeesto0 -
Page optimisation score = 93, but rank on 2nd page?
So, one of my pages has an optimisation score of 93. The DA of the website is 74 and is lower than many of our competitors, but to rank 12th? Anyway, does anyone have any suggestions? All the images are under 100kb, but the page speed isn't great (not something I'm currently able to change). All alt tags are using variations of our keywords.
Local Website Optimization | | SwanseaMedicine0 -
Subdomain for ticketing of a client website (how to solve SEO problems caused by the subdomain/domain relationship)
We have a client in need of a ticketing solution for their domain (let's call it www.domain.com) which is on Wordpress - as is our custom ticket solution. However, we want to have full control of the ticketing, since we manage it for them - so we do not want to build it inside their original Wordpress install. Our proposed solution is to build it on tickets.domain.com. This will exist only for selling and issuing the tickets. The question is, is there a way to do this without damaging their bounce rate and SEO scores?
Local Website Optimization | | Adam_RushHour_Marketing
Since customers will come to www.domain.com, then click the ticketing tab and land on tickets.domain.com, Google will see this as a bounce. In reality, customers will not notice the difference as we will clone the look and feel of domain.com Should we perhaps have the canonical URL of tickets.domain.com point to www.domain.com? And also, can we install Webmaster Tools for tickets.domain.com and set the preferred domain as www.domain.com? Are these possible solutions to the problem, or not - and if not, does anyone else have a viable solution? Thank you so much for the help.0 -
SEO Value in Switching to ".NYC" Domain?
Recently " .NYC" domains have become available for purchase to New York City based businesses. I own and operate a New York City commercial real estate firm, nyc-officespace-leader.com. New domain would be www.metro-manhattan.nyc Our existing domain has been in use for seven years.would there be an SEO benefit to transferring our site to .NYC domain? Or would a new domain kill our domain rank? Thanks, Alan
Local Website Optimization | | Kingalan10 -
Are there any suggestions when you completly redesign your web page keeping the same domain but change the host? I want it to go smoothly and want to avoid the rankings we already have including sub pages.
I am currently having our website completely redone by a design company. Are there any suggestions on this process as to not lose the rankings we currently have for our site? The domain will remain the same however we are planning on changing our host. We also have a good amount of sub domains that the web company will not be changing for us.
Local Website Optimization | | molchman0