Which one is better?
-
I am working on creating new blog. I already had one. I want to add this new topics as subdomain. Now i am confused. Which one will be better for SEO?
subdomain.maysite.com or mysite.com/subdomain
Thanks in advance
-
This quote is from Moz's domain setup guide:
"Since search engines keep different metrics for domains than they do subdomains, it is recommended that webmasters place link-worthy content like blogs in subfolders rather than subdomains. (i.e. www.example.com/blog/ rather than blog.example.com) The notable exceptions to this are language-specific websites. (i.e., en.example.com for the English version of the website)."
I think that quote is pretty compelling towards the idea of subdirectories. But I think the value of subfolders versus directories certainly makes sense especially from a linking, age, and juice perspective. Ultimately, it comes down to you and what you want for the website.
-
I agree with Tim Holmes, here is a detailed explanation why sub-folder are better than sub-domain now.
- Sub-domains are treated as a separate entity now, and they don't add to SEO value of the main domain.
- Any links within the subdomain to the main domain are treated as external links.
- Since links are coming from an external domain but the same IP, this may be treated a low-quality backlink for the main domain, though people are divided over this but it can neutral to negative impact instead of being positive. As search engines would consider this as unnatural linking.
- Sub-Folders are treated as part of the domain and pass all the SEO value when connecting internally.
Here is a response from Rand Fishkin to a similar question
Subfolders are the way to go, but they're hard to do for a lot of organizations. Many CMS' (like Hubspot) make it quite challenging to host a Wordpress installation on a subfolder, but subdomains are pretty easy. Hence, when choosing where to host a blog or a separate content section, many folks go with the easier route rather than the one that requires a lot of technical effort and webdev/engineering time.
However, that doesn't mean that they're not losing out - I'd wager that all of those companies would see a bump if they moved their blogs to a subfolder of the same domain. We see this in example after example when sites invest in it, and you can see plenty of folks discussing their own experiences in the comments of the Moz post you linked to.
I hope this helps, feel free to ask further questions and respond to answer.
Regards,
Vijay
-
This has been banded around so many times, in general I would advocate a sub folder as opposed to sub domain. purely due to the value it adds to your sites main chosen domain, if it were on a sub domain this is where the value would sit and it would not pass any value around as well as it could a sub folder. It is only potentially a small benefit, but a benefit none the less.
A good recent on it was had back on Jan https://mza.seotoolninja.com/community/q/the-great-subdomain-vs-subfolder-debate-what-is-the-best-answer
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
-
301 Domain Redirect And Old Domain to a New one including pages
Hi, I need to 301 an old domain to a new one (new website) I need to 301 the domain to a new page not the new domain direct for example www.olddomain.co.uk to www.newdomain.co.uk/pagenew Then I need to also 301 all the other pages on the old domain to the new one for example... www.oldmain.co.uk/oldpage to www.newdomain.co.uk/newpage Issue is I can do one or the other not both, I can get the other pages to redirect but then the main domain wont redirect to the correct new page. Or I can get the old domain to redirect but not the internal pages. Thanks
Technical SEO | | David-Sharpe0 -
One company, 3 countries, 3 sites - best solution?
Hi all, I'm working with a company that has 3 x websites all on separate WordPress platforms. One is at .com, the others .fr and .de - they are essentially very similar. I have suggested that it is worth exploring setting all of these websites up on the .com domain with country-specific directories to combine their authority and help all 3 websites naturally rank due to combining incoming links, authority etc. Quesitons: To ensure each country has control of their site, would you maintain a separate install of WP at each directory, i.e: .com/fr/ and .com/de or would you put it all on the same WP? Would you go down this route of combining all 3 sites onto one domain with country-specific directories? What are the pitfalls?
Technical SEO | | Bee1590 -
Are links still considered reciprocal if the link from one website is rel="nofollow" and the other isnt ?
Im working on a site that has some press coverage due in the next couple of days from quite a big site in the niche. The press outlet has requested that we link back to the content they post about us, they said the link can be rel="nofollow" if we'd prefer. Id really like to get the full benefit of the link back to our website, obviously if i did a straight link back to the 3rd party press site the links would be reciprocal and cancel each other out in terms of "link juice", but i was wandering if we make our link back to the 3rd party rel="nofollow" will we still get the full benefit of their link to us in terms of link juice ? ie. having the link back to them, but nofollow wouldn't been seen as a reciprocal link. ? (Obviously either way there is still benefit of having the link even if it reciprocal as it will send traffic to our site, but just no "link juice") Note - Ive used the phrase"Link Juice" for lack of a better term, any ideas on how else to refer to this ?
Technical SEO | | Sam-P1 -
Is it better to use XXX.com or XXX.com/index.html as canonical page
Is it better to use 301 redirects or canonical page? I suspect canonical is easier. The question is, which is the best canonical page, YYY.com or YYY.com/indexhtml? I assume YYY.com, since there will be many other pages such as YYY.com/info.html, YYY.com/services.html, etc.
Technical SEO | | Nanook10 -
One simply question about disavow tool
Hi Guys, my website is under a negative seo attack. One simply question about disavow tools. Everyday I have to upload a file with the new bad backlinks (domains). The fact is that when I try to upload a new disavow report the tool continue to show me the file of the day before and If I upload the new file it replace the old one. So.... what I have to do? 1. Upload a new file with the backlink domain of the day that replace the old one
Technical SEO | | Italianseolover
2. Or upload a new file with the old backlinks plus the new one? Thank you very much.0 -
Better to have less pages with more related content?
I work with a law firm and we are having a hard time busting into the first page of results for any of our keywords. I am new at SEO and have been trying to analyze how are competitors have an edge over us when on paper we are better optimized than their websites. One glaring difference is they have fewer webpages, which possibly makes each of their pages more keyword rich. Would it be smarter to condense our many webpages/topics into less, more general web pages? I hope my question is even making sense, thanks for any possible help! Our site is http://www.utahdefenseattorney.net/
Technical SEO | | MyOwnSEO0 -
Merging several sites into one - best practice
I had 2 sites on the web (www.physicseditor.de, www.texutrepacker.com) and decided to move them all under one single domain (www.codeandweb.com) Both sites were ranking very good for several keywords. I not redirected the most important pages from the old domains with a 301 redirect to the new subpages (www.texturepacker.com => www.codeandweb.com/texturepacker) Google still delivers the old domains but the redirect take people directly to the new content. I've already submitted the new site map to google webmaster tools. Pages are already in the index but do not really show up in the search results. How long does it take until google accepts the new domain and delivers the new content in the search results? Was it ok what I did? Or is there some room for improvement? SeoMoz will of course not find any information about the new page since it is not yet directly linked in google. But I can't get ranking information for the "old" pages since SeoMoz tells me that it can't crawl the old domains....
Technical SEO | | gossi740 -
Best way to change from one CMS to wordpress??
I have a client that was working with another SEO consultant and they pretty much dropped the ball big time! The SEO company took his site off of wordpress and put it on another CMS (http://www.wsinetsuccess.com/WSI-E-Fusion). My client would like to take hes site off of the WSI E Fusion platform and back onto wordpress. My question is how is the best way to going about doing this with out loosing all of the PR to the site? Should I find all of the URLs that are on the site and just 301 them to the right page? Thank you very much for your help.
Technical SEO | | pakevin0