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Having the blog on a subdomain, e.g. blog2.site.com also runs the risk of not benefiting the primary domain, in terms of inbound links to the blog.
The best bet is to have the blog at site.com/blog or have it anywhere and setup a reverse proxy so it resolves at site.com/blog.
Here is a great article/infographic on the reverse proxy: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/what-is-a-reverse-proxy-and-how-can-it-help-my-seo
I hear there is a cool site with a bunch of great SEO resources. It's called SEOmoz. 
Agreed. From a branding/UX perspective it is key. I'm just making sure there isn't anything that can hurt things. Like you said though -- if it's for the user and natural it should be fine.
Many of the big guns like 1800 Flowers, Diapers.com and others all have their sister sites in tabs at the top.
Example: http://www.diapers.com/ with their 3 other properties.
Since all properties link to one another on every page, it's really a wash, right? No real gain as engines know they are connected and it's the same link multiple times. No real problem either as it's natural for the user experience to have reciprocal links here between the brands.
Any additional thoughts here?
Ha, I agree, though I think it gradually starts skewing in one direction.
Keys things to consider:
1. Video sitemap is key
2. You don't have to physically host the video assets to accomplish this. Most of the legit platforms (BrightCove, LiveClicker, Wistia) have a feature where they still host, but you indicate the URL of the page the video resides on, for the same effect.
3. The platforms (Wistia in particular) make it very easy to automate the site map and specify meta info for each video.
4. At the end of the day, you have to have great video content. (solid content and solid quality). Too many people right now are producing really bad video, and this will come back to hurt them. With great content, video can be a fantastic tool in the arsenal.
See my comment below. Just saw this note: There may be some stuff you still need to tweak, but it should save a lot of time. I'll post again after we dig in a bit. Again, on first glance it looks pretty clean and well worth it.
Hi Kevin,
Interesting timing. We JUST made the decision to switch from BigCommerce to Magento, and last Wednesday I discovered Ultimento. On first glance a lot of the customer reviews looked fake, but there are hundreds so I'm hoping that's not the case.
Long story short, from my research it looks like a lot of the features can be accomplished individually with different Magento extensions and such. That said, it looks like it can save you time. We have a lot of moving parts (which I'm guessing you do to) so went ahead with it and opted for the middle package (I think it was $300 or so) if it saves at least some time it will be well worth it for us. Plus, Magento can be finicky so I'm hoping it makes things a little less painless. This is our first Magento project so we are looking to reduce any pain points. (I've done a lot of research on speed enhancements and hosting if you want to discuss).
Ultimento also appeared to have some helpful features (not SEO related) that we will take advantage of. Again, doable with different extensions, but I like how it's all packaged up.
My developer is testing out Ultimento as I type this. My main question is if there are any customization limitations with it. We're doing some fairly custom stuff, so hopefully not.
I can circle back later this week with some more input on it after we test it out a bit. On first glance it's very clean though and the install was pretty quick.
Feel free to send me a message if you want to talk further about it (or other Magento items) offline.
Good luck!
Ha -- SEOmoz should offer a license/white-label of the forum technology. I'm sure there are many others (have not shopped yet) but I like this one.
Thanks! I should have clarified. I meant the community forum that we're interacting on right now -- is that all custom on Ruby too?
Yes, still has some weight. Although if you're looking to do this for several dozen terms, your efforts may be better off really focusing on your primary domain, with great landing pages for New Homes in Glasgow. e.g. site.com/new-homes-in-galasgow with great on page content and optimization, plus any links you build to that page will benefit the domain.
I think micro-sites with exact-match domains have their place, but also feel that can end up being more work than expected. Just need to balance out your goals and see if it's the right strategy.
You may find some helpful comments on a discussion I started last week. We were in a situation where we are starting a new video/content blog with issues putting it on the root. Finally made the decision to move to a platform that allows us more flexibility with this (for this and other reason).
http://www.seomoz.org/q/a-blog-structure-dilemma-we-re-facing
Yeah, I should have clarified. I meant the community forum that we're interacting on right now.
Interesting - Zendesk looks pretty powerful. I need to research more -- on the first 1 minute glance it looks more like a customer support engine vs. a forum manager, but I'm sure it can do both.
Completely custom built, or a 3rd party offering that can be customized? One of the most usable forums I've seen!
1. I don't see how having the local number re-direct to the 1800 would be an issue, from an on-page SEO perspective. As long as Google is seeing the local area code that is consistent with the area you should be fine. For Google Maps there may be a different answer.
2. Why couldn't they remove the 800 number, or at least have both?
When you say 'Magento's Own URL Re-Writes" are you referring to their built-in custom URLS at the product and category level? if so, I think you'll need to go a step further than this.
if you're migrating from another platform, will all the URLS be exactly the same? e.g. currently you are at site.com/category/product-example and you'll use the same structure in Magento? In which case using Magento's re-writes would be consistent --- but again, there may be extra 301s you need to setup. (If the new URL isn't exactly the same you definitely will need to)
We are just starting a project with Magento actually, and I will be investigating a few things. Are you using Community, Pro, or Enterprise?
Are you essentially asking if you have Boots, Dress Shoes and Flip-Flops, and on each you link to the other, e.g. "you may be interested in these awesome leather boots" or in the side nav everything is linking.
If so, yes - a good idea. It helps the search engines find other content. I would make sure there is content to the link, e.g. not just a random link in the middle of nowhere, but within navigation, related products, "other categories" "suggested products" etc etc, this is fine.
There are some white-board Fridays to check out about exact match anchor text that may help too.
Agreed. And focus on best practices for local or regional optimization. If your business is only really focused in Charlotte, for instance, there are many other things you can do to help with this geo optimization.
Should be fine. If there were 10 blogs that had the exact same links and structure it may raise some suspicion. Also, if this blog has hundreds of 'thank you' links, it may be a bit fishy.
But it sounds like it could be natural for the user experience, especially if they mention a bit about why they are thanking each.
You should be fine. I think Google is going to get smarter and smarter at recognizing the same video, but if it's relevant to the page and there is other supporting content, it is adding to the user experience and you'll be ok.
Another option to consider on certain videos is to create a 2nd video (in Wistia). Essentially it's the same upload, but a new file with unique title/description etc. YouTube doesn't let you do this, but you'll be fine in Wistia. This could come into play if there is the same video with a sightly different context that needs to be on 2 pages.
One question I'm pondering is the situation where a 'how to' video get's the attention of prominent bloggers. Let's say 15 big blogs in your industry all use the embed code (if you make it available) to post the video in a post of their own. This A) should benefit with by receiving a backlink, but B) does this complicate the waters from the Search Engine's perspective? I guess it's still on your video sitemap, and Google should know that you're the original source.
We just started on Wistia, after a few years on BrightCove and experience with a bunch of others. Pretty cool platform, plus I hear a new (and much more flexible) player is coming out in December. Exciting!
Great idea -- and the link Scot posted is perfect. However our platform doesn't give us access to mod_proxy or htaccess, so we are unable to setup the reverse proxy. unfortunately. Sigh.
Agreed with CafePress.
You can still focus on long-tail, but on your own domain. So www.familysite.com/long-tale-insurance-page.html etc
I'd definitely focus on long tail and also local modifiers. Insurance is probably one of the top 5 most competitive (from an SEO perspective) businesses. Would recommend not focusing your entire marketing portfolio on SEO. may be some great social opportunities, especially if you're local/regional.
My 2 cents.
I read it as only really applying to on-site links. So if you have the same anchor text link on every page (like the side nav or footer) Google takes that into account (in a better way).
In general, you don't want ALL exact match anchors -- there was a WBF post on it.
Agreed with Vistage. If it's a balance of time (and regardless) I'd definitely try to focus on the stronger blogs your guest posting on. But yes, great to have more links from some strong blogs, and just more exposure to their visitors.
I agree with EGOL -- great way to stand out. That said, bad video can be detrimental. Using videos from the manufacturer will largely depend on how good they are. I've seen some horrible product videos that probably hurt a product page.
Why not create your own?
Some good posts here: http://www.seomoz.org/q/search?utf8=✓&query=video+seo&x=0&y=0
Why not build engagement and recommend growing a profile?
In 2012 we will be rolling out a directory of local services for our industry. This will ultimately be thousands of additional pages, with city/zip searching, individual provider pages etc.
The main reason is for UX -- providing local resources for our industry to compliment the online experience (we're an online B2C retailer)
My question is if there are pros/cons to putting this on a subdomain, or if having it on the root is ideal.
I don't see a huge influx of backlinks (making a sub fine) but I suppose that could change down the road. I do see some indexing benefits for new terms like 'service x in los angeles' etc, but that would also be fine on a sub.
It feels like it would be cleaner to keep separate and on a sub, but maybe we're missing something. We certainty don't want to hurt anything on our primary site which drives the business.
Thoughts?
Is her business located in Canada (e.g. she has a physical Canadian office address that will be on the site)?
I would recommend that, along with the .ca, plus dozens of other factors to specifically target Canada.
It's a platform issue. BigCommerce. Everything else has been fantastic with them, but our only option for WordPress is to host on a subdomain.
The clear answer is that having it in a directory is better, but doing so means we need to have a very manual setup and lose the efficiencies/functionality of wordpress.
Here is a post from earlier in the year with a similar discussion (didn't see that one before I posted this). Also looks like similar differences of opinion, though some more sources sited. http://www.seomoz.org/q/corporate-blog
Because of the lack of consensus, I'm curious to research more. Just want to make sure I/we didn't miss anything over the past few months.
James: do you have a source for the statement that Google now treats subs as a key site element?
Interesting. I need to research this more. It sounds like it's prone to errors, but maybe not.
Other factors to research as James pointed out, but keyword in the domain is only 1 of many factors. I've seen many examples of Exact Match domains being in the 8 or 9 position AND they have a lot of strong SEO elements.
I wouldn't spend much time sweating it. Focus on developing the best property you can, with great content, structure, UX, backlinks etc.
Thanks for the input, James. Agreed on the external site. I didn't know about subs being treated as a key element now. So other sites linking to posts on the blog (if the blog is on blog.site.com) will still benefit the primary domain?
Having it in a folder is doable, but more difficult to manage ongoing. I think it's a question of 'how much better' is it to have at site.com/blog...
Agreed with Simon. Look at tons of huge online retailers like Zappos. Just needs to be done right and you're fine.
We're launching a pretty large content program (in the form of a blog) and have a structure issue:
Big fans of Wordpress for efficiency reasons, but our platform doesn't allow hosting of a wordpess (or other 3rd party) blog on the primary domain where we want it. site.com/blog
Here are the options:
1. Sub-domain: We can easily put it there. Benefit is we use the efficient Wordpress tools and very fast to setup etc. Downside is that the root domain won't get benefit of any backlinks to the blog (as far as I understand). I also don't believe the primary domain will benefit from the daily fresh/unique content the blog offers.
2. Custom Rig: We could create our own manual system of pages on the site to look just like our blog would. This would allow us to have it at site.com/blog and benefit from any backlinks and fresh content. The downside is that it won't be as efficient to manage.
3. External Site: Create a different site just for the blog. Same issue as the sub-domain I believe.
User Experience is a top priority, and all of the above pretty much can accomplish the same UX goal, with #3 requiring a some additional strategy on positioning.
Is #1 of #3 going to be a big regret down the road though, and is the backlink/content benefit clearly worth doing #2?
(correct me if I'm wrong on my assumptions with #1 but at least with the backlinks I'm almost certain that's the case)
Many thanks for your inputs on this.
Take the time spent on thinking and researching purchased links and spend it on developing great content and building solid relationships.
Great input -- and #2 is exactly what we are planning. This all came up because of User Experience and I wanted to confirm we were not missing anything from the on-site technical seo end.
Really we're talking about a different product that has the same price and possibly some of the same images and specs.
Thanks!
We have the situation where a group of products fit into 2 different categories and also serve different purposes (to the customer).
Essentially, we want to have the same product duplicated on the site, but with unique content and it would even have a slightly different product name. Some specifications would be redundant, but the core content would be different.
Any issues?
I'd double check you don't have any traffic or links to these pages, then either delete or redirect.
I believe you are asking why 'BIG BRAND A' doesn't have competitors bidding for 'BIG BRAND A' related search terms -- vs why 'BIG BRAND A' doesn't bid on their own brand name. On first read I thought it was the latter, but now I see your intent (correct me if I'm wrong).
For the latter, big brands are in paid search for their own brand queries all the time. The examples you showed even have it. The cost is so low, and there are some added brand positioning arguments.
The trickier question is with competitors bidding on other competitors brand terms. e.g. Fredrick's of Hollywood bidding on 'Victoria's Secret' etc. I think some of the other responses addressed this.
We're rolling out quite a bit of pro video and hosting on a 3-party platform/player (likely BrightCove) that also allows us to have the URL reside on our domain.
Here is a scenario for a particular video asset:
A. It's on a product page that the video is relevant for.
B. We have an entry on our blog with the video
C. We have a separate section of our site "Video Library" that provides a centralized view of all videos. It's there too.
D. We eventually give the video to other sites (bloggers, industry educational sites etc) for outreach and link-building.
A through C on our domain are all for user experience as every page is very relevant, but are there any duplicate video issues here? We would likely only have the transcript on the product page (though we're open to suggestions).
Any related feedback would be appreciated. We want to make this scalable and done properly from the beginning (will be rolling out 1000+ videos in 2010)
Have you already gone through all the SEOmoz PRO resources? If not, I'd definitely start there.
