Sub domain names will they help with rankings
-
Hi, i have a site where i want to use sub domains to showcase the different areas in the country that we work, and i was thinking of having a couple of domain names with the city names to showcase the work we do in that city.
I would like to know if by having a subdomain name and then linking it back to the main site if this will help me with the rankings for the main site.
look forward to hearing from you
-
thank you for this. I was looking at sites such as citylocal.co.uk and thebest.co.uk who do this for each city. They are a totally different type of website to our health site but they have a subdomain for each city, so i thought this maybe a way to go but obviously with what you have said, it is not the best approach to take.
many thanks
-
Hey Tim,
There have been quite a few signals that, outside blogging and similar platforms that offer websites as subdomains, Google generally treats a subdomain and its parent domain as the same entity. This has been actually reinforced last year when they changed how Google treats subdomains inside Webmaster Tools.
I'll also quote Rand Fishkin on an answer he gave on subdomains vs subfolders last year:
"Thus, having a single subdomain (even just domainname.tld with no subdomain extension) with all of your content is absolutely ideal from an SEO perspective. It's also more usable and brandable, too IMO."
Regarding your domain-per-city idea, going on what Rand said, it would make even less sense from an SEO perspective.
To answer your question, linking back from the subdomain to main site will likely not help you with any rankings.
Hope this helps!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
linking domain issues
Hello guys. I am having issues with my linking domains. These domains are made outside of my website. I have tried to disavow these links but not able to do it. These are mostly from google redirects links. Here is the```
Link Building | | Rom1988z
code_text0 -
Are these links helping
Hi, We have had a few new links for a client and we are hoping that we can get some feedback on whether these have any link juice. We dont want to waste our time with links that dont benefit the website. Thanks http://thebestmealplancateringbiz.strikingly.com/blog/diet-meal-plan-delivery-services http://mealplanguide.home.blog/2018/11/02/importance-of-diet-meal-plans/ https://besthealthymeals.tumblr.com/post/179669447854/benefits-of-diet-meal-planning https://lauraberbenaj2.wixsite.com/mysite/blog/healthy-diet-meals-delivery
Link Building | | Caffeine_Marketing0 -
Domain and page backlinks
Hello Everyone, I am new at SEO, and I am a bit confused with the following situation: I have domain, wordpress site on it, and I am building backlinks to it (testing). I do not have "home" page among pages in wordpress, if it means anything. When I build links, i use different anchor texts, but they all point to http://somethingsomething.net -Ahrefs shows that I have 830 backlinks from 45 domains, to my URL, which is http://somethingsomething.net (it is also my site's home page address) -MOZ;s Open site explorer, on the other hand, shows the following: 8 internal links and 0 external links for page specific metrics, and 878 total links 0 external for root domain metrics. -Google Webmaster tools shows 10 external links pointing to my site Please can someone explain to me what is happening here? Thanks a lot
Link Building | | ShivFriv770 -
Struggling to re-rank website
A client of ours - www.helenbattphotography.com - was ranking well for local keywords. However, the rankings started to drop as of January this year (slowly) and quite considerably since May. We have not had any Google penalties. To date we have gone through backlinks and removed a few low quality/dubious links that were built around 5 years ago by another agency the client was using and also disavowed some others. This was done around 2 months ago. No impact to date. The website is hovering around page 4 and 5 for the keywords that it used to rank for on page 1 for. We are really struggling to increase the rankings for this client. We have introduced good, unqiue content to the site - not that this was ever really a problem on the site - but this has also made little difference. Would be great to get some feedback on the site and any obvious pointers that we might be missing here - a case of not being able to see the wood through the trees. Thanks
Link Building | | piperis0 -
Custom Domain Vs Free Sub Domain for SEO
What is your take on custom domain vs free sub domain for SEO? (example.com vs example.blogspot.com) Say if I have 10 links from 10 different domains but all hosted on blogger.com, will it still have the same link benefit as ones hosted on different hosting account? I am assuming it might be less due to the same C class IP appearing for blogger hosting. What do you think?
Link Building | | jombay0 -
More "new" root domains or more pages on older domains?
I have been slowly building links via personal/professional networking, press from art shows, blogging, and such. I work with several non related domains & local blogs & press outlets, it is pretty easy for me to add a few new pages of content along with text links. Or should I just concentrate on getting links from totally "new" domains that have never linked to me before?
Link Building | | Mcarle0 -
Separate blog url helpful?
I am managing a website for a hotel brokerage firm. The main URL is www.hotelassetsgroup.com but we started a new blog with the URL www.hotelsforsaleblog.com. We chose the blog URL because it has the words "hotels for sale." The main website has a tab at the top titled "Blog" which links to the blog URL. I am not sure if this is helping us or not because the main URL and blog URL are both competing for the name of the business "Hotel Assets Group." The blog has very little interlinking within the same URL because it mainly links to the main website. Should we combine the two URLs together and just have the blog URL be the same like- hotelassetsgroup.com/blog or something like that?
Link Building | | lwilkins0 -
How to find article sites that will be very picky
I'd like to write good, unique content, and one of the places i was looking at was article repositories. I do understand that most of them have been spammed to death, but I was wondering how I would go about finding ones that would accept my article. I do realize that niche news/forum/informational sites are probably my best bet. Beyond that, would would be a step down or a 'general' article directory where I could get something approved and post content that is high quality. I'm not sure I have time to go around to every niche site and make the handshakes necessary at this time.
Link Building | | ilyaelbert0