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.
Two blogs on a single domain?
-
Hi guys,
Does anyone have any experience of having (trying to rank) two separate blogs existing on one domain, for instance:
www.companysite.com/service1/blogwww.companysite.com/service2/blogThese 2 pages (service 1 and service 2) offer completely different services (rank for different keywords).(for example, a company that provides 2 separate services: SEO service and IT service)Do you think it is a good/bad/confusing search engine practice trying to have separate blogs for each service or do you think there should be only one blog that contains content for both services?Bearing in mind that there is an already existing subdomain for a non-profit part of business that ranks for different keywords: non-profit.companysite.comand it will potentially have another blog so the URL would look like: non-profit.companysite.com/blogAny ideas would be appreciated!Thanks
-
The URL structure is mostly subjective to me - there's not a clear value between the two. I tend to think of services as a subset of each store location, as opposed to the the locations being a subset of the service sets.
So - if it's easier to build the URLs the way you laid them out already, that's not an inherent problem.
-
Hi Kane and Josh,
Thank you both for your opinion.
Is there any reason why these permalinks
are better than
www.business.com/service1/location/brighton
www.business.com/service2/location/brighton?
I'm hoping that having unique content on each page will help to rank it and will be 'easy' for search engines to understand that we offer 2 different services (for different audiences) in the same locations.
Thanks a lot again!
-
Hey there,
There's no problem with running 2 different blogs with www.companysite.com/service1/blog & www.companysite.com/service2/blog URL structures. Hubspot and Moz are both good examples of companies that segment out 2 or more blogs in different subfolders. If both blogs have the same categories, you may bump into conflicting issues, but you should be able to segment these, eg title tags of "Service1 Category Name - Company Name" and "Service2 Category Name - Company Name".
Not sure about that non-profit subdomain you mentioned - that sounds like quite a few blogs. But, if the content is truly different then it's not a big problem.
As Josh said, the local service landing page scenario you laid out is a totally different situation. If your two services share an office in that city, then I would generally prefer to see this permalink variation, but it's not a deal killer:
For a moment, let's say you do carpet cleaning and window cleaning. Having two pages for those cities like this is entirely fine, if you properly build out unique content for those pages that is different than the other city and service pages across the site. Otherwise, these pages are effectively duplicate content, and they aren't going to perform well. Examples of unique content for a location+service page would be testimonials from customers at that location, names/bios of staff at that office, custom photography for that office and their work and services, etc.
-
Thanks a lot Josh!
According to your answer, do you think the same principle applies for a website that offer different services in the same locations. For example,
www.business.com/service1/location/brighton &
www.business.com/service2/location/brightonDo you think it would be easy for search engines to understand that there is one (same) business providing different services in the same locations? Or would this url structure be too risky?
Big thanks!
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
-
Redirection of 100 domain to Main domain affects SEO?
Hi guys, An email software vendor managed by a different area of my company redirected 100 domains used for unsolicited email campaigns to my main domain. These domains are very likely to get blacklisted at some point. My SEO tool now is showing me all those domains as "linking" to my main site as do-follow links. The vendor states that this will not affect my main domain/website in any way. I'm highly concerned. I would appreciate your professional opinion about this. Thanks!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Apr 6, 2024, 2:34 AM | anagentile0 -
How Can I Redirect an Old Domain to Our New Domain in .htaccess?
There is an old version of http://chesapeakeregional.com still floating around the web here: http://www.dev3.com.php53-24.dfw1-2.websitetestlink.com/component/content/category/20-our-services. Various iterations of this domain pop up when I do certain site:searches and for some queries as well (such as "Diagnostic Center of Chesapeake"). About 3 months ago the websitetestlink site had files and a fully functional navigation but now it mostly returns 404 or 500 errors. I'd like to redirect the site to our newer site, but don't believe I can do that in chesapeakeregional.com's .htaccess file. Is that so and would I need access to the websitetestlink .htaccess to forward the domain? Note* I (nor anyone else in our organization) has the login for the old site. The new site went live about 9 months before I arrived at the organization and I've been slowly putting the pieces together since arriving.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jan 18, 2017, 9:25 PM | smpomoryCRH0 -
Managing Subsidiaries. Should I house them all in a single domain? What about a single social media presence?
Situation: My company has 8 subsidiaries. They each have their own niche (IT, Electrical, Roofing, etc...). We also have offices in multiple countries (If that's even a factor). Questions: 1. Should I establish a web presence for each one? (www.SubsidiaryOne.com) I would then link to these sites from www.ParentCompany.com. The other options are to do something like www.ParentCompany.com/SubsidiaryOne or SubsidiaryOne.ParentCompany.com. We are trying to build the brand of the parent company so I figured that housing everything inside of the parent company domain would help me meet my goal. Each company will have its own unique content, products, blogs, etc... 2. Should each subsidiary have its own social media presence (Its own Google+, Twitter, FB, etc...) or should I house them all under the umbrella of the parent? Thanks, Alex
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Oct 6, 2013, 8:41 PM | MeasureEverything0 -
Domain expiration and seo
My domain name is free with my service with yahoo but it expires every year and gets extended automatically as I continue service, how does this impact my seo efforts? I've heard that the search engines prefer sites to expire in 3 years or more? Is this a fact?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jun 17, 2012, 7:04 PM | bronxpad0 -
Redirect posts from a wordpress.com blog over to a self-hosted blog
Hi All I started a wordpress.com blog with a few posts on it, and these have been shared using social media so links to these exist on Facebook and Twitter. I've decided that its going to be better and more effective to have the blog on my primary domain. How would I setup a redirect from the wordpress.com blog to my self hosted blog? Normally I'd write a .htaccess file but I'm unable to do that over at wordpress.com. I can't even see an option to install plugins, otherwise I would have used the "Redirector" plugin.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Apr 25, 2012, 2:31 PM | blacey0 -
How long should a domain redirect take?
Hi, I know that this is a 'How long is a piece of string?' type question but at what point should the ranking value of site A pass over to site B following a domain 301 redirect? I have shifted a domain over to a new URL, same hosting server, same IP address. I haven't made any URL changes or any content changes other than to change the site logo to match the new domain name. Domain B is basically an exact clone of domain A. I have redirected Domain A to domain B using the following line at the top of the .htaccess file:- Redirect 301 / http://www.newdomain.com/ I have submitted a sitemap for the new domain via google webmaster tools. It looks like the original domain as been completely indexed by google following the redirect as all rankings have been dropped from the results and there are no results for a site:olddomain.com search. Surely the rankings should have switched over at this point? Any help would be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jan 24, 2012, 8:28 AM | AdeLewis
Ade.0 -
Exact match domain names
Hello, Someone approached a client of mine to sell a exact match domain name for a very competitive and high converting keyword. Would this be of any use and what are the best tactics to employ if it is purchased? I was of the opinion that the 'power' of exact match domain names are dying fast but would be interested to hear what people with experience in this think and what they have done with them (i.e. set-up a website on that domain or re-directed it)? Thanks, Rikki
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Dec 5, 2011, 10:13 AM | RikkiD220 -
Buying a banned domain
Hello all, I've found a exact match keyword domain that I'm able to buy. Problem is that I'm under the impression it might have been banned by google, currently it is only showing adsense without content. The site can't be found using the cache: or site: parameters in Google and the PR is 0. What are your experiences on buying a banned domain and how can I double check if the domain is banned? This blogpost suggests I should not buy it, any other opinions? Thanks. Hellemans
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Aug 30, 2011, 4:38 PM | hellemans0