Impact of Medium blog hosted on my subdomain
-
I am using the Medium blogging platform to blog, but it is pointed to my site and appears at blog.mysite.com.
Since the content is hosted on Medium and pointed to my subdomain via an A Record / CNAME / etc...
1. Will my domain get credit for backlinks to the blog content?
2. If Medium changes in the future and no longer points to my subdomain, will I lose all of the backlinks I've built up?
-
Thanks John,
The right decision is clear to me now.
-Dave
-
David,
Everything John just said in Point 2 is exactly what was running through my mind as I read your question. As the person responsible for the SEO strength of your website, you should have full control over as much of your SEO activity as possible. If your blogging platform is concerning as described, you really need to reevaluate whether that's the best thing for your site.
-
David -
Thanks for your question, and it's one I see often. I would say this is a much bigger question than "subdomain v subfolder", but really the ability to affect your own SEO.
In direct answer to your questions:
- Since it's on your subdomain, yes. Make sure you have that subdomain verified in Search Console and sitemaps submitted, parameters controlled, etc as well. Also link between your main domain and your subdomain to pass link equity back and forth.
- If they change in the future and no longer point to your subdomain with no way for you to reclaim your content and republish it on a blog you host yourself, then yes. However, I don't really see this happening anytime soon.
Point 2 brings up the bigger question of if you should host your blog on Medium. While it is indeed a beautiful platform and writing on it is a joy (I actually do a lot of blog drafting in their editor), you don't have control over a lot of things such as:
- Internal linking within sidebars/top navs to other important places on your own website
- Full branding. I do recognize that you can add a top banner and branding at the top of blogs hosted on Medium, but it still overall looks like a Medium blog (their typeface, their styles, etc) not like your own brand
If you are concerned about the SEO implications (as you seem to be and should be), I'd definitely recommend investigating a self-hosted blog platform like WordPress instead of Medium.
Good luck!
-
1. Yes your domain gets credit for the backlinks.
2. If they change in the future and just have everything on Medium and not your subdomain you would lose the backlinks. I don't see that happening though.
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
-
Identify hidden content + Question of impact
I have a client that had a web agency which systematically implemented hidden content. Is there a tool that will compare source content vs what is readable on from the browser? Otherwise, can you recommend articles that focus on doing this? What are the impact on hidden content these days? Another client had hidden content on the first page and when we took over them they were ranking nr 2 with the home page on their brand name (nr 1 with a sub page). We have checked the link profile with Majestic, Ahrefs and Moz and nothing spammy comes up so I doubt it is Penguin related.
Technical SEO | | OscarSE0 -
To Subdomain or Not Subdomain?
I have a client that has a construction company that services a regional area. They now developed a PRODUCT that they want to promote that would have a national reach. We are redesigning the site, with new branding and all. How do I treat the website URL structure? Is the product it's own domain because of the target market? Or should I make a subdomain because we want to tie the companies together in some fashion. Every article I read confuses me more on how to handle this. Thoughts?
Technical SEO | | cschwartzel0 -
Temporary Redirect 302 to subdomain for a couple of weeks?
Hi, To prevent DDOS attack during the Olympic Game the admins will use a service call Site Shield by Akamai (http://www.akamai.com/html/solutions/site_shield.html). The thing is that they will have to redirect all the trafic to a subdomain instead of the main one (http://www.website.com instead of http://website.com) and this for a couple of week (no negotiation here, it's too late and they have no choice). Does a 302 will do the job? Will I loose authority? Does adding a canonical URL on every pages of the site removing the www from the URL will help? Should I do something on webmaster tool to help? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | TVFreak0 -
Changing Web Hosting
We're about to change web hosting providers and I'm wondering whether there's an "optimal" way to do this without losing any SEO value. Is it as simple as changing hosts without SEO in mind - point the domain to the new host?
Technical SEO | | b40040400 -
Site (Subdomain) Removal from Webmaster Tools
We have two subdomains that have been verified in Google Webmaster Tools. These subdomains were used by 3rd parties which we no longer have an affiliation with (the subdomains no longer serve a purpose). We have been receiving an error message from Google: "Googlebot can't access your site. Over the last 24 hours, Googlebot encountered 1 errors while attempting to retrieve DNS information for your site. The overall error rate for DNS queries for your site is 100.00%". I originally investigated using Webmaster Tools' URL Removal Tool to remove the subdomain, but there are no indexed pages. Is this a case of simply 'deleting' the site from the Manage Site tab in the Webmaster Tools interface?
Technical SEO | | Cary_PCC0 -
Multiple Subdomains, my worst seo mistake. now what should i do?
Hello Everyone, I have been running www.designzzz.com from lats 3 years now. and was doing extremely good with a PR 6 and 800K+ traffic monthly, but 6 months ago it started falling and falling badly.. now i am down to 350K total impressions :{ per month. I have been blaming penguin for this and been talking to google reps continously over it. they assured me that my site is not under any type of manual spam etc. Then i begin think and i realized taht was exactly the time when i launched a few subdomains as sub parts of my site like coding.designzzz.com , wordpress.designzzz.com , photograph.designzzz.com , shop.designzzz.com in the making... now is the part that i can't undo these subdomains.. what should i do ? my search traffic is almost killed. I seriously need insight on this guys : thanks in advance! Ayaz
Technical SEO | | wickedsunny10 -
Changing a blog url from subdomain to subfolder
I am abou to change my company blog from a subdomain (blog.mydomain.com) to a subfolder (mydomain.com/blog), from suggestions from this awesome community! Not only that though, because the current blog is on another server than the main site I have to move my blog between servers as well. This will be a big hassle for me, and means a big risk for errors as I don't have a clue what I am doing on the development part. Hint: I'm no developer. My blog is fairly new, having posted 18 blog posts so far. There is no major linking to or from the blog as it has been basically no activity on the blog. It has been fairly good optimized for SEO, with custom plugin settings for Wordpress SEO plugin and similar. Also followed advice from Rand regarding wordpress SEO. So I guess my question is: Would it be a big loss for me to just start over with a new blog on the subfolder domain? And move content over from the old blog manually (and then deleting the old one). Or would It be plain stupid taking that route? Thankfull for all help I can get!
Technical SEO | | danielpett0 -
SEO impact of adding a forum module to a site
I help maintain a site and the owners want to start a forum for their club members. This is a site that runs on Joomla, so it's likely we'll use some form of a Joomla module to add the forum functionality. My main question is whether there is anything to be concerned about for SEO purposes when adding the forum. I've never set one up, so I don't know the best practices for forums/discussion boards (although I'm scouring the web for general info). Should it be a subdomain or on the main domain -- or does this not matter? Are there any general setup processes that I should pay attention to for SEO best-practices? This question was mainly about the SEO impact, but if anyone can point me in the direction of forum best practice info as well, It would be appreciated. Cheers!
Technical SEO | | kariel
Kristy0