Is having all your media hosted on a sub-domain bad?
-
I just realized yesterday while doing some audit work on our site (which is still relatively new) that all of our audio assets are stored on a separate sub-domain.
We are an eCommerce site that sells audio books, and every product page has a sample audio file to listen to. But all those files are stored on a sub-domain of the main site. "cdn-media.oursite.com".
First, I understand that media(our audio files) has some inherent SEO value if hosted correctly. Is that true? And if so, how important would you think it is?
Secondly, assuming that it does have value, are we losing that value by having them hosted on a sub-domain? I have read things that say sub-domains are bad, and I have read things that say that Google at least has been treating sub-domains as sub-folders, but I can't find anything definitive one way or the other.
On another note, another thing I saw is that people are linking to the sound files directly in various places, and those links are going to the sub-domain, not the main domain. There aren't even pages on the sub-domain, just the files, so those links deliver a "visitor" to a page that is completely blank except for a tiny little audio player. Not sure what to do about that, but that can't be good one way or the other right?
How big of a problem is this really? Is it worth me going to our IT dept. and trying to change it? It sounds like it would be a pretty big deal to change, so I'll need a few voices to back me up if that's the case.
-
Honestly, most people just ignore it. But I'll leave the discussion open for awhile in case someone has some other solution/s to the issue and found them worth pursuing.
-
Thanks for the reply it's much appreciated!
yes, looking at the battle map now...may have to find another way...
I am also curious how others handle this.
-
CDN stands for "content delivery network" and it is very common practice to host media files in this way.
One thing you can look into is redirecting the sound file URL to the page on which the file is used (i.e. the product page), which would take care of the link equity loss you are concerned with. However, you will want to test that this doesn't break the way the file plays/displays on the product page.
It is not a "big" problem, but one solution I have recommended before is to set up the CDN as a sub-directory instead of a sub-domain. Depending on how much control you have over the DNS settings it can be doable. This would mean that the server hosting www.yourdomain.com/cdn-media/ would be different than the server hosting the rest of the site. That being said, this is something that could be a royal pain in the rear for your IT department, could cost a lot of money to implement, and may not even be possible in your particular situation. Choose your battles wisely.
One metric I'd want to see would be how many links outside of your domain are going into the CND domain.
I'm curious to see how others handle this situation so I'll leave this as a discussion for now. I hope you get some helpful answers!
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
-
Redirect to new SSL Domain
Hi Experts; How to redirect https://old-domain.com to https://new-domain.com without buying new SSL? I have one GoDaddy SSL and I want to use it for a new domain. Its currently use for old domain
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cafegardesh0 -
Change domain.com to www.domain.com - influence on linkbuilding, seo, etc.
Hello, Do you know what can happen when i change domain.com to www.domain.com? Will it have an influence to my link-building portfolio (external links to domain.com), position on google search, etc. Thank you for help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Reyzer0 -
Why is wrong domain being indexed?
We have 2 domains: revolve.com and fwrd.com (unrelated to each other, but hosted on the same server). If you do a site search for revolve.com but enter a designer brand that is only carried on FWRD (not on Revolve), the domain "revolve.com" pops up in the SERP, which is redirected to FWRD.com. Ex. https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=site%3Awww.revolve.com isabel marant Why is Google indexing the revolve.com pages, which don't actually exist? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ggpaul5620 -
International SEO Domain Structure
Hi Guys, I am wondering if anybody can point me to a recent trusted report or study on international domain name structure and SEO considerations. I am looking to read up on the SEO considerations and recommendations for the different domain structures in particular using sub-directories i.e. domain.com/uk, domain.com/fr. Kind regards,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WeAreContinuum
Cian1 -
Is my domain scorched earth from Penguin?
http://pisoftware.com was never a huge leader of traffic, but it ranked top 5 for my money keyphrases, and was bringing consistent quality visitors. As traction went up, that traffic just became more valuable. I was happy. Then Penguin came along, and made me sad. 60% loss in traffic, I stayed calm. I disavowed. I sent emails asking for links to come down. I atoned for my sins (of the distant, distant past - I know better now) - and waited. Never a hard penalty, never an email from Google - just rankings that got hammered. From #3 for my best keyphrase for #25 today. I write content, and I try and write it better all the time. I try to make it valuable. I leverage social media to the extent that I can. I do outreach. I'm trying to be patient, but it's hard when the software is awesome, and so few people see it. I'm considering starting over - or maybe even just creating another domain to use if this one never comes back. I wonder on the thoughts of experts. At MozCon I talked to a lot of people in the same boat, and it seems we are all taking similar steps. So the questions: 1. Should I start over? Or stay the course? 2. What has worked for others - what seems to have been the most valuable in getting back on the rise? 3. Thoughts on the site as it is now? I've worked lately on speed, mobile rendering, etc - and it seems responsive and solid to me. Thanks in advance, you crazy bunch of Mozzers you. Kelly
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kellster0 -
Cleaning bad pages
We have 10,000 of bad pages, which panda could track and penalize us for that. If we delete them we will get 404 error, and after that we could again get penality from G algo. How can i delete them to follow google rules and avoid penalities? If we make redirect of 10k pages with 301 to index, can 10k old pages be treated as duplicate?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bele0 -
Merging Domains... Sub-domains, Directories or Seperate Sites?
Hello! I am hoping you can help me decide the best path to take here... A little background: I'm moving to a new company that has three old domains (the oldest is 10 years old), which get a lot of traffic from their e-letters. Until recently they have not cared about SEO. So the websites have some structural, coding, URL and other issues. The sites are indexed, but have a problem getting crawled and/or indexed for new content - haven't delved into this yet but am certain I will be able to fix any of these issues. These three domains are PR4, PR4, PR5 and contain hundreds of unique articles. Here's the question... They want to move these three sites **to their main company site (PR4) and create sub domains for each one. ** I am wondering if this is a good idea or not. I have merged sites before (creating categories and/or directories) and the end result is that the ONE big site, is much for effective than TWO smaller, less authoritative sites. But the sub domain idea is something I am unsure about from an SEO perspective. Should we do this with sub domains? Or do you think we should keep the sites separate? How do Panda and Penguin play into this? Thanks in advance for the help! SD P.S. I'm not a huge advocate in using PR as a measurement tool, but since I can't reveal the actual domains, I figured I would list it as a reference point.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | essdee0 -
Is this Domain Change Worthwhile?
Hi- I have a client who has setup a new criminal law firm in the last few months. The URL is like: www.somenamelawyers.com ['somename' is the same # characters as their company name] I have run a successful AdWords a/c for them and many of the big traffic and conversion keywords include 'criminal lawyers'. From a SEO perspective, the long goal is to get traffic for 'criminal lawyers' and keywords that phrase match that. So I am considering migrating them to www.somenamecriminallawyers.com. I have researched this issue and understand the technicalities involved in moving. My question here is 'is this change worthwhile'. I think it is worthwhile because it really is in a sense rebranding them to be more clearly in a specific business domain, ie. criminal law. Also, they are a new outfit so they don't have a lot of backlinks yet. And mainly, they will get a SEO boost to their core keywords 'criminal lawyers'. Thanks in advance for your thoughts- Jules
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Juller0