Blog - subdomain vs. subfolderq
-
Hi everyone
I work on an ecommerce site and I'm trying to get more content together for the site & blog. The development team want to put the blog we have on a subdomain of our site, my question is - what is better for SEO
Subfolder vs. subdomain
I've read a couple of articles to say subfolder is better and a subdomain needs a lot of management to build up authority itself?
Thanks!
-
Hi Erick,
Thanks for the response. It all makes sense to me, and I'll push for it. I'll have to build a case of why we want to go with a subfolder, so having feedback and real life case studies from others is great!
Thanks!
-
Using a subfolder has shown to rank better and faster than using a subdomain in tests I've done as well. Subfolder as mentioned by other lets you use your current domain authority to help your posts rank.
Secondly if you are producing great content and actively looking for ways to promote it, as that content is shared and linked to,etc... you are not only building the page authority of your post, but building the domain authority of the site itself.
Also keep in mind how and what you name your sub folders and blog posts as those are super important to help you rank for specific keywords as well.
User experience is also a good thing to keep in mind as the more comfortable the user is with your site, the better their engagement will be. So if navigating to your blog through your known domain is better, do that because your users will feel more comfortable with it and this should also help your engagement.
-
Directory for me, as this help of so many front from reporting to domain authority.
-
I'd personally recommend subdirectory. Google tends to see subdomains as being separate websites so, as you said, it's harder to build up authority to a subdomain blog.
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
-
404 vs 410 Across Search Engines
We are removing a large number of URLs permanently. We care about rankings for search engines other than Google such as Yahoo-Bing, who don't even list https status 410 code option: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/bingmaps/spatial-data-services/status-codes-and-error-handling Does anyone know how search engines other than Google handle 410 vs 404 status? For pages permanently being removed John Mueller at Google has stated "From our point of view, in the mid term/long term, a 404 is the same as a 410 for us. So in both of these cases, we drop those URLs from our index. We generally reduce crawling a little bit of those URLs so that we don’t spend too much time crawling things that we know don’t exist. The subtle difference here is that a 410 will sometimes fall out a little bit faster than a 404. But usually, we’re talking on the order of a couple days or so. So if you’re just removing content naturally, then that’s perfectly fine to use either one." Any information or thoughts? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sb10300 -
Can I run a successful SEO campaign for a subdomain?
My company has been around for several years now and hasn't really paid much mind to SEO or search engine rankings, so now I'm an in-house marketer with moderate SEO knowledge. We're setting up an article site with our help pages and blog under a subdomain so our writers can easily post articles without having to go through developers every time, as our root domain was set up with a custom in-house CMS. Is it possible for me to run a successful SEO campaign for our article site subdomain? I get that the root domain wouldn't benefit from any SEO authority the new site obtains, but my hands are tied.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | teachbanzai0 -
Home page vs inner page?
do you believe that the advantage of targeting a search term on the home page is now worse off than before? as I understand it ctr is a big factor now And as far as i can see if two pages are equal on page etc the better ctr will win out, the issue with the home page is the serp stars cannot be used hence the ctr on a product page will be higher? I feel if you where able to get a home page up quicker (1 year instead of two) you still lost out in the end due to the product page winning on ctr? do you think this is correct?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
What would you do with this odd Blog configuration?
G'day fellow digital marketers! I'm analysing a new site in analytics. Having been hit by Panda, and being plagued with a variety of issues - one that's got me scratching my head is their blog configuration. Now, on most sites you'll have something like: www.clientsite.com/blog All blog posts would then sit under the blog page: www.clientsite.com/blog/this-is-a-blog-post Anyway, on this blog - when a new post has been created historically - they've all been placed directly under the homepage, so when you click a link on: www.clientsite.com/blog You instead arrive at: www.clientsite.com/this-is-a-blog-post So, we have 150+ posts equally sharing the hompage authority - detracting from their ability to rank for their core services pages. I'm thinking of going to town on the 301 re-direct wagon, changing: www.clientsite.com/this-is-a-blog-post to www.clientsite.com/blog/this-is-a-blog-post But I'd like to know your thoughts and experiences before I get to work! Thanks in advance guys and gals, John.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Muhammad-Isap0 -
Two websites vs. one for SEO
I recently met with a new potential client who currently has two websites for his business - one that is for the business as a whole and another that is specific to one of his particular services (his main service and what the overall business is known for). My first question was "why do you have two websites?" His response was that he has had a really hard time ranking well organically for his main service. He worked with an SEO company for two years and never was able to establish a solid organic presence for searches related to his main service - so he went ahead and had a site built to focus specifically on that service with the hope that it would help him rank organically for searches related to that service. The new site was built very recently (Dec. 2014) and it hasn't had a lot of optimization work put into it. The original site has a much higher Domain Authority, more incoming links, etc. My typical preference has always been to use one website and drive all traffic to that site, while building out specific content for any products/services on individual pages of the site. For some reason I'm torn as to what to do with this particular situation since his main concern is ranking for his core service, which hasn't happened with the original site. I'm concerned, though, that optimizing and managing two websites will be less effective than driving all of the traffic to one site, and that it could actually be detrimental overall. What are your thoughts? Suggestions? Feel free to let me know if you need any more details.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | garrettkite0 -
Internal links to blog posts
I am linking manually to blog posts in my site from my Home page. Our site isn't set up with an auto "Recent Posts" that shows on Home. Should I use the exact blog post title as the anchor text or do I need to create something that is not an exact match to the title of the post?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gfiedel0 -
Wordpress Blogs and SEO
So far we have been creating separate blogs on wordpress.com for our sites, and writing there. Today I was told that there was better SEO hosting the blog on the actual domain. i.e. www.widgets.com/blog instead of widget.wordpress.com Is this true? Oddly I have had my WP beat my own URL on one account. So I am not sure if this is valid. Can someone tell me pros and cons of both? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | greenhornet770 -
Internal or external blog better?
Hello, We are adding content to ourdogsmind(dot)com We're going to have a blog with unique content. Should we use an external blog with links back to our site, or an internal blog. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0