New Domain, Subdomain or Subfolder
-
Hi All,
I am working with a bank that would like to rank as many parts of the company site as possible for the company name. This includes the home page, a page on careers and a page on company reviews.
The question is, it is better to structure the careers and reviews content on a subfolder, subdomain or new domain.
Using subfolders to retain equity of the root domain site.americanbank.comamernicanbank.com/careersamericanbank.com/reviews
or (use subdomains - you lose some of the main domain equity and it is counter to the Moz research)
americanbank.comcareers.americanbank.comreviews.americanbank.com
or set up new domains to overcome Google bias not to rank the same root domain in the top 7 to 10 results multiple times when displaying results for a company name.
americanbank.comhttp://americanbankcareers.comhttp://americanbankreviews.com
Thanks for your perspective.
-
Use a subfolder URL's like http://americanbank.com/
Only purchase new domains to protect company's name do not do it to rank and pressure during geo-targeting ( like you, for instance, you may in some cases THIS IS NOT ONE that I know of need a Russian IP and TLD to rank in Russia) So if you do not need to rank outside the United States just by the .net .org .com 's)
Using a subfolder will increase the domain and page authority as opposed to using the some domain that will be treated somewhat like a new domain by Google. There are advantages and disadvantages to each however if you want to rank you want to use subfolders primarily if you want to separate your site into different branches, and maybe some of them are for landing pages and some are private for content that is sensitive in nature want to use a subdomain.
An example of how much more power you can get out of the site by using a subfolder versus subdomain John Doherty an extraordinary SEO did this to hot pads here's a large photo below
https://twitter.com/dohertyjf/status/563871687247003649
http://i.imgur.com/K2oi8J8.png
http://i.imgur.com/K5aoxWX.png
I am sure you can find similar cases using this
http://topsy.com/trackback?url=http%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fdohertyjf%2Fstatus%2F563871687247003649
should not redrect me to americanbank.com/business (unless for very good reason)
It appears you may be keyword stuffing your URLs. Maybe not intentionally I am not blaming you of anything but be careful Of the word business, it's not needed that many times.
You have a big redirect problem you should not use 302 redirects to the homepage (try it using this https://varvy.com/tools/redirects/ ) you have a very slow page load time as well unfortunately https://varvy.com/pagespeed/
http://i.imgur.com/oqj8hjT.png
I only keyed in your URL "https://www.americanbank.com" the server redirected to what is shown below
Scan for: https://www.americanbank.com/index.php/business
Hostname: www.americanbank.com
IP address: 198.61.143.68System Details:
Running on: Apache/2.2.15I checked for malware and what your sites running on my crazy sorry but it tells me a little bit more about your internalstructure
https://sitecheck.sucuri.net/results/www.americanbank.com/business I will run your site through deepcrawl.com as well in order to show you more issues.
List of Links Found
/business
/personal
/about-us
/ask-us
/security-center
/locations
https://www.americanbank.com/about-us/mobile-deposit
https://www.americanbank.com/ask-us/hurricane-preparedness
https://www.americanbank.com/about-us/online-statements
/business/loans
/business/loans/term-loans
/business/loans/lines-of-credit
/business/loans/sba-loans
/business/loans/construction-loans
/business/banking
/business/banking/checking
/business/banking/savings
/business/banking/cds
/business/banking/cards
/business/banking/online-banking
/business/banking/mobile-banking
/business/banking/phone-banking
/business/business-services
/business/business-services/ach
/business/business-services/digital-deposit
/business/business-services/merchant-services
/business/business-services/imaged-lockbox
/business/business-services/payroll
/business/business-services/positive-pay
/business/business-services/wire-transfers
/business/business-services/night-drop
/business/business-services/business-bill-pay
/business/investments
/business/insurance http://ipindetail.com/ip-lookup/198.61.143.68.htmlRackspace is an excellent hosting company however if I was a bank I would be on FireHost.com now https://armor.com I need to run your site through https://www.deepcrawl.com or screamingfrog.co.uk/seospiderIn order to get an idea of what's going on. However I can tell you that for things you want to rank for a subfolder is better than a subdomain. Hope I was of help, Thomas
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
-
Should I move my forum to a subdomain?
My forum causes a lot of 403, 404, soft 404 and 522 errors. I worry about this dragging down the value of my domain and wonder if I should move it to a sub directory. forum.domain.com. I was forced to do this with a very similar site and seems to have not suffered any google penalty (I implemented a 301 redirect to each page to its corresponding page on the subdomain.
Algorithm Updates | | 321Chat0 -
Remove new Knowlage graph overlay
Hi Moz, Recently Google started showed new snippets in searches as seen in the attached below (1) but the problem I'm finding is I'm sure its showing me different results to "normal" searches especially when compared to a logged out or alternative account (2). Now I've got a solution to this but wanted to know if anyone else had solutions to removing this or at least gaining a more normal result with it on. Seems to almost personalize the search results which isn't ideal so if anyone knows how to get this to stop I would love to hear it You can also see some more info here - https://www.seroundtable.com/google-pop-up-information-box-18007.html thanks helping me with the mild irritant NNX9J8p.jpg Ntj7WbX.jpg
Algorithm Updates | | GPainter0 -
Why is my domain authority (and page authority) plummeting?
In June our domain authority was at a 41. In July we were 38 and ever since then our domain authority is gradually getting worse and worse. We went from a 33 to a 29 in one week! Possible explanations include: Maybe the SEO we hired (for a few months in late 2011) added our domain to some less-than-awesome directories The 301 redirects on our home page are hurting us somehow Duplicate content for URL's with different capitalization (IE: /pages/aboutus and /Pages/AboutUs) Can someone please point me in the right direction? Which of the above possibilities would likely impact domain/page authority? Any other ideas as to why this might be happening? Any suggestions for improving our domain or page authority? Thanks for the help!
Algorithm Updates | | MichaelBrown550 -
SEO ANALYSIS ON A NEW SITE
Hi just would like if anyone could help me in provide some seo analysis on a new website http://www.ppilegalservices.co.uk/ main keyword is mis-sold ppi Its a very competitive keyword but not being able to come on google result in long tail keywords as well, Just got ranked on brand keywords like PPI LEGAL Services. Also running out of ideas as to how to create quality content any tips please? many thanks
Algorithm Updates | | conversiontactics0 -
Plural vs non-plural domain name
I'm sure this question has been answered and asked a 1,000 different ways but what would be the best domain name to use in the long term (2 years +)? The plural versions (examples.com) which has a decent domain authority and is ranking 1st in Google search results yet has less search volume or the singular version (example.com) that has no current SEO value for the search term that we'd like to target however the singular version of the keyword has a much higher search volume? so basically will it be better to have the exact match that has more volume or the plural form that has better rankings after 2 years of doing SEO for each domain? My guess is that using (examples.com) with the better domain authority and tightening the grip on its dominance in Google will still be more effective than having the exact match domain with more search volume for that keyword while performing the same amount of SEO even after two years. Any suggestions?
Algorithm Updates | | ydop0 -
What's better .NET or a hyphenated.COM domain
What's better .NET or a hyphenated .COM domain I know this is simple but in selecting a domain for my current project and I only have two options. firstname-lastname.COM or
Algorithm Updates | | RonSparks
firstnamelastname.NET I'm leaning to the .COM as after reading the how to choose a domain name post. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-choose-the-right-domain-name Thanks1 -
Best way to find new studies?
I'm wondering how sites break news without dedicating too much time researching. Are there any tools that you use? For example, if you wanted to be one of the first people to know when a celebrity was diagnosed with a health condition, how would you go about doing that?
Algorithm Updates | | nicole.healthline0