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.
Does using a reverse proxy to make a subdomain appear as a subdirectory affect SEO?
-
Using a reverse proxy only makes it appear that a subdomain is really a subfolder. However, links in the end remain the same. Does this have any negative (or positive) impact on SEO? Does it make it difficult from the blog's (subdomain's) sitemap or robots.txt file to be properly read by search engines?
-
Hi,
I have similar query for the specifc case. This also involves tracking on Google Analytics and Search Console Setup. Could you have a look at this question and share your thoughts? https://moz.com/community/q/using-a-reverse-proxy-and-301-redirect-to-appear-sub-domain-as-sub-directory-what-are-the-seo-risks
-
Also, quick question: when you say to be careful not to serve the robots file under the subfolder, should we delete it then? The subdomain is actually a wordpress site that serves as a blog, and so it's got its own robots file. So, right now, both robots files (main site + wordpress) are coexisting.
-
Awesome! Thank you!
-
You can set it up to have the subdomain completely hidden behind the reverse proxy, if you do so, google won't notice any difference. If the subdomain is in the same local network you can just disconnect it from the internet, if you can't you can still set the subdomain robots.txt to reject crawlers. Just be carefull to do not serve the robots txt under the subfolder.
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
-
Will skipping <H> tags affect your SEO?
Will skipping <H> tags on a page have any impact on your SEO, e.g. skipping a <H2> so your page has a <H1> and then goes to a <H3>? Obviously a page must have a <H1>, but does it matter if you skip other headings?
Technical SEO | Sep 30, 2023, 12:56 AM | ciehmoz0 -
CcTLD + Subdirectory for languages
Hey, a client has as .de domain with subdirectories for different languages, so domain.de/de, domain.de/en, domain.de/fr etc. hreflang Tags are implemented, so each subdirectory of each language references to the other languages, so for domain.de/en it is: My question is about the combination of ccTLD + language subdirectory. Do you think this is problematic for Google and should be replaced with .com + language subdirectory? We have lots a high quality domains (from countries with corresponding languages) linking to .de/de and .de/en, some links on .de/fr & .de/es and 0 links pointing to .de/cn. Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | Apr 14, 2020, 3:53 AM | Julisn
Julian0 -
Barba Plugin and SEO
Hello, community! My client wants to use the barba.js plugin for their new site. What are the implications for SEO?
Technical SEO | Nov 19, 2019, 11:35 AM | SimpleSearch0 -
Subdomain or subfolder?
Hello, We are working on a new site. The idea of the site is to have an ecommerce shop, but the homepage will be a content page, basically a blog page.
Technical SEO | Mar 22, 2019, 7:00 PM | pinder325
My developer wants to have the blog (home) page on a subdomain, so blog.example.com, because it will be easier to make a nice content page this way, and the the rest of the site will just be on the root domain (example.com). I'm just worried that this will be bad for our SEO efforts. I've always thought it was better to use a sub folder rather than a subdomain. If we get links to the content on the subdomain, will the link juice flow to the shop, on the root domain? What are your thoughts?0 -
Canonical homepage link uses trailing slash while default homepage uses no trailing slash, will this be an issue?
Hello, 1st off, let me explain my client in this case uses BigCommerce, and I don't have access to the backend like most other situations. So I have to rely on BG to handle certain issues. I'm curious if there is much of a difference using domain.com/ as the canonical url while BG currently is redirecting our domain to domain.com. I've been using domain.com/ consistently for the last 6 months, and since we switches stores on Friday, this issue has popped up and has me a bit worried that we'll loose somehow via link juice or overall indexing since this could confuse crawlers. Now some say that the domain url is fine using / or not, as per - https://moz.com/community/q/trailing-slash-and-rel-canonical But I also wanted to see what you all felt about this. What says you?
Technical SEO | Mar 8, 2016, 8:35 PM | Deacyde0 -
Does the use of sliders for text-on-page, effects SEO in any way?
The concept of using text sliders in an e-commerce site as a solution to placing SEO text above or in between product and high on ages, seems too good to be true.... or is it? How would a text slider for FAQ or other on-page text done with sliding paragraphs (similar but not this specific code- http://demo.tutorialzine.com/2010/08/dynamic-faq-jquery-yql-google-docs/faq.html) might effect text-on-page SEO. Does Google consider it hidden text? Would there be any other concerns or best practices with this design concept? faq.html
Technical SEO | Sep 9, 2012, 10:59 AM | RKanfi0 -
What are the potential SEO downsides of using a service like unbounce for content pages?
I'm thinking of using unbounce.com to create some content driven pages. Unbounce is simple, easy-to-use, and very easy for non-devs at my company to create variations on pages. I know they allow adding meta descriptions, title tags, etc and allow it to be indexable by Google, but I was wondering if there were any potential downsides to using unbounce as opposed to hosting it myself. Any help would be appreciated!
Technical SEO | Aug 16, 2012, 3:26 AM | Seiyav0 -
MBG Tracker...how to use it?
So I am a new blogger that has been submitting guest blog posts to a number of different blogs. It was recommended that I use the MBG Tracker so I can track the back links. The problem is that I am totally lost on how to use this tool. As I said before I am new to this whole thing and I am not really sure what constitutes a "base link" and a "back link." In the author bylines we are linking to different pages within a larger website. If anyone can help me I would really appreciate it!
Technical SEO | Apr 11, 2012, 3:11 PM | Stroll0