Subdirectory vs. Subdomain
-
I work for a large franchise organization that is weighing the pros and cons of using subdomains versus subdirectories for our franchisee locations. What are the pros and cons of each approach?
-
As far as the post-panda world goes, I found this post to be helpful for both beginner and advanced SEOs alike: http://www.whitefireseo.com/site-architecture/subdomain-or-subfolder-post-panda/360/
-
Sure - I dont like giving out my own clients here, but a quick search for say, Seattle Hotels, a very competitive niche, shows the following:
#3 just under tripadvisor and expedia: http://www.starwoodhotels.com/whotels/property/overview/index.html?propertyID=1154
#4 (and #1 in map pack): http://www.fairmont.com/seattle/
These hotels may or may not be franchises, but the business model makes no difference to Google. The important thing is that these two sites are both ranking in various cities for " <city>hotels". Each uses a slightly different technique (starwood using a subfolder that uses dynamic property ID urls, and fairmont that simply uses a subfolder.</city>
-
Jared,
Can you give me examples of franchises you know that rank well using this method?
thanks!
LP
-
Nakul,
Thank you for your reply!
Answer to your questions:
-
Franchisees could request changes through corporate that would have to be approved and implemented by corporate website manager.
-
It would be difficult to create and manage content for 250+ locations and not have duplicate content. I believe we will have a significant amount of duplicate content except for city name.
-
We would like main site to rank well for non geo specific search "product" and franchise content to rank well for geo specific search "product dallas"
I would appreciate your response based on these clarifications!
thanks!
-
-
Great points here by both Matt and Nakul. Of particular importance is understanding who will have access to edit, and site duplication. If you want each of your franchise owners to have editing capabilities for the own store, then it may be easier to use subdomains from a permissions perspective.
As for duplicate content, you'll need to worry about that regardless of whether you use a sub or a folder.
As a case study, Ive worked two very large projects like this, and in both cases I used subfolders for the locations. The folders were the city name in both cases. Each location is positioned position 1 or 2 across the board, and each location shows well in the map packs.
-
For a franchise scenario, it would be best to use a sub-domain, however it does depend on other things as well.
1. Would franchises be able to control / add / edit any content on these sites ?
2. Any duplicate content issues between multiple sites ?
3. Do all of them need to be indexed in the search engines and getting/targetting search traffic ?As a general rule, for SEO, sub-folders are much better, but in your scenario, it's a different case.
You might also want to refer to other similar questions here on SEOMOZ.
- http://www.seomoz.org/q/blogs-are-best-when-hosted-on-domain-subdomain-or
- http://www.seomoz.org/q/setting-up-a-company-blog-subdomain-or-new-url
- http://www.seomoz.org/q/blog-vs-blog
and the post from Matt Cutts
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/subdomains-and-subdirectories/
-
As far as I understand, subdomains are good when you want each subdomain judged on its own merit. For instance, Wordpress uses me.wordpress.com and you.wordpress.com That means my site may not bring everyone down if I get penalized. However, if you had wordpress.com/me and wordpress.com/you, we're on the same domain so you'd find it harder to improve your own SEO while I am bringing you down.
So if you're trying to separate content, use subdomains. If it's all one company/organization and you are confident all franchisees will do the right thing, use subfolders. If you wanted say
The SEO work would be 2x (or 50x if you had 50 franchises) but it would stand alone. That means if the Boston Franchise did a lot of work, they'd be much better off than the ATL one who did less. If the main franchise.com is doing all the seo for everyone, you'll want to use subfolders.
At least that's my understanding of the difference!
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
-
Process to move blog from subdomain on Wordpress, to subfolder on BigCommerce store
Hi Having weighed up all the angles, it's time to bite the bullet and move our blog from a subdomain to a subfolder on our ecommerce store. But as someone new to SEO I am struggling to find the correct process for doing this properly for our situation. Can anyone help? I have outlined what I have learned so far in 10 steps below to hopefully help you understand my situation, where I am at and what I am struggling with. Advice, tips and suggested further reading on all/any of the 10 points would be great. Some quick background The blog is on Wordpress, and on a subdomain of our store (blog.store.com). It is four years old, with 80 original posts we want to move to a subfolder of the store (store.com/blog). The store has been built using BigCommerce, and has also been active for four years. Both the blog and the store exist as properties within our Google Search Console. The 10 steps required for the move, based on research so far, and the associated questions 1 Prepare new site: which I am guessing means reproducing all of the content over at the new subfolder location (store.com/blog)? 2 Setup errors for any pages not being transferred: I have no idea how to do this! 3 Make sure analytics is working for the new pages: it should be as the both the site the pages are moving to a subfolder of is already running with analytics and has been for years - is this a safe assumption? 4 Map all URLs being moved to their new counterparts: is this just record keeping? In a spreadsheet? Or is it a process I don't yet understand?? 5 Add rel='cannonical' tags: while I understand the concept of these, I have no idea how to implement them properly here! 6 Create and save new sitemaps: as both the blog.store.com and store.com exist in Google Search Console already, can I just refresh the sitemap for store.com/blog once the subfolder is created to achive this? 7 Setup and test 301 redirects: these can be created in BigCommerce for the new pages in the store.com/blog subfolder, and will refer back to the blog.store.com URLs the pages came from - is this the right way to do this? I am still learning here and know enough to know how much this can matter, but not enough to fully grasp the intricacies of the process 8 Move URLs simultaneously: I have no idea what this means or how to achieve it! is this just for big site moves? Does it still apply to 80 blog posts shifting from a subdomain to a subfolder on the same root? If so, how? 9 Submit a change of address in Google Search Console: This looks simple enough although Google ominously warn: ‘Don't use this tool unless you are moving your primary website presence to a new address’ Which makes me wonder how simple it really is - my primary website in this case is the store, which is not moving. address But does 'primary' here simply mean the individual property with search console? I am going in circles on this one! 10 Configure the old blog on the subdomain to redirect people and engines to the new pages: I thought the 301 redirects and rel='cannonical' stuff did that already? What did I miss?? For anyone still here, thanks for making it this far and if you still have the energy left, any advice would be great! Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Warren_331 -
Http vs. https - duplicate content
Hi I have recently come across a new issue on our site, where https & http titles are showing as duplicate. I read https://mza.seotoolninja.com/community/q/duplicate-content-and-http-and-https however, am wondering as https is now a ranking factor, blocked this can't be a good thing? We aren't in a position to roll out https everywhere, so what would be the best thing to do next? I thought about implementing canonicals? Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Code to Redirect Mobile Subdomain to Desktop Site
Hi Everyone, My client is switching from a mobile subdomain to a responsive site. All URLs are the same on mobile subdomain vs desktop so we just need a wildcard rule to redirect m. to www. Anyone have this wildcard redirect code for an .htaccess file? Much appreciated! Dan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kernmedia0 -
Sub-domain vs Root domain
I have recently taken over a website (website A) that has a domain authority of 33/100 and is linked to from 39 root domains. I have not yet selected any keywords to target so am currently unsure of ranking positions. However, website A is for a division of a company that has its own separate website (website B) which has a domain authority of 58/100 and over 1000 legitimate linking root domains. I have the option of moving website A to a sub-domain of website B. I also have the option of having website B provide a followed link to website A. So, my question is, for SEO purposes, is my website better off remaining on its own existing domain or is it likely to rank higher as a sub-domain of website B? I am sure there are pros and cons for both options but some opinions would be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BallyhooLtd0 -
Blog subdomain not redirecting
Over the last few weeks I have been focused on fixing high and medium priority issues, as reported by the Moz crawler, after a recent transition to WordPress. I've made great progress, getting the high priority issues down from several hundred (various reasons, but many duplicates for things like non-www and www versions) to just five last week. And then there's this weeks report. For reasons I can't fathom, I am suddenly getting hundreds of duplicate content pages of the form http://blog.<domain>.com</domain> (being duplicates with the http://www.<domain>.com</domain> versions). I'm really unclear on why these suddenly appeared. I host my own WordPress site ie WordPress.org stuff. In Options / General everything refers to http://www.<domain>.com</domain> and has done for a number of weeks. I have no idea why the blog versions of the pages have suddenly appeared. FWIW, the non-www version of my pages still redirect to the www version, as I would expect. I'm obviously pretty concerned by this so any pointers greatly appreciated. Thanks. Mark
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarkWill0 -
Unique domains vs. single domain for UGC sites?
Working on a client project - a UGC community that has a DTC model as well as a white label model. Is it categorically better to have them all under the same domain? Trying to figure which is better: XXX,XXX pages on one site vs. A smaller XXX,XXX pages on one site and XX,XXX pages on 10-20 other sites all pointing to the primary site. The thinking on the second was that those domains would likely achieve high DA as well as the primary, and would passing their value to the primary. Thoughts? Any other considerations we should be thinking about?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | intentionally0 -
Wordpress Config Thoughts: Multisite vs. Parent/Child Themes vs. Infinite WP?
We publish four local food and drink magazines, each with its own website and related web content. Even though the content across all four titles shares a common mission, there is little overlap in actual stories. That is, each site has its own story content, events calendar and business listing guide. Still, since we share an editorial staff and a common look among all four, we are debating the pros and cons of a few different wordpress and SEO configurations, and would welcome the community's input on the pros and cons. Here is what we are considering for the Wordpress configuration: Wordpress Multisite - concerns about 10-15% performance hit, incompatibility with certain plug ins, need to more ‘expert’ development InfiniteWP - concerns that adding a 3rd party plugin to the mix might complicate things Parent / child themes A single wordpress site with different content subfolders for each locale - simplifies events / guide listings / seo, but too much in one place? Problems with current config (four different wordpress installs across four different base domains - ediblemanhattan.com, ediblebrooklyn.com, ediblelongisland.com, etc) SEO value is currently spread across four base domains Four different wordpress installs / upgrades / templates / plugins must be managed separately Four different namespaces for registered users make cross-domain registration more difficult, less usable The independent site approach is potentially problematic if we were to decide to combine certain site features - for example guide and event listings - into a single site experience filterable by zip / location Our questions: WP config: independent sites vs. multisite vs. parent/child themes vs. other? SEO config: should we move to shared parent domain? If we do, should we use locale-based subfolders or second level domains (brooklyn.ediblemag.com vs. ediblemag.com/brooklyn)? Operations: We think there are SEO advantages to move all four sites share the same base domain - ex, ediblemagazine.com, but are there operational disadvantages we are not considering? Ability for local site editors to work within their locale section only Ability for ad sales to target a single locale, example, run of site display ads on specific locales Ability to segment users by their locale - ex. enroll users in email lists for edible brooklyn only
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brianhalweil0 -
Create new subdomain or new site for new Niche Product?
We have an existing large site with strong, relevant traffic, including excellent SEO traffic. The company wants to launch a new business offering, specifically targeted at the "small business" segment. Because the "small business" customer is substantially different from the traditional "large corporation" customer, the company has decided to create a completely independent microsite for the "small business" market. Purely from a Marketing and Communications standpoint, this makes sense. From an SEO perspective, we have 2 options: Create the new "small business" microsite on a subdomain of the existing site, and benefit from the strong domain authority and trust of the existing site. Build the microsite on a separate domain with exact primary keyword match in the domain name. My sense is that option #1 is by far the better option in the short and long run. Am I correct? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | axelk0