Blog on Subdomain or Subdirectory?
-
I was wondering what the SEO impact was of having a blog on a sub domain or sub directory.
Which of the following is better?
Personally, I like making the blog a more important part of the site so 2) is preferable; however, I don't know which one is best for SEO purposes. Do the search engines consider a subdomain as a different website? Can SEO authority be passed through each equally?
What is your preference?
Regards, Dino
-
You're very welcome. I'm glad I could help
-
That is what I thought as well. Thank you for taking the time to answer.
Regards, Dino
-
Hi Dino,
The consensus in the SEO community is that search engines still identify subdomains as separate sites (with respect to how domain authority is calculated and distributed throughout the Web graph).
Therefore, the second option (i.e., companysite.com/blog) is much better from an SEO perspective because it consolidates all of the website's content under a single site and maximizes the flow of authority through that site.
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
-
Can I safely asume that links between subsites on a subdirectories based multisite will be treated as internal links within a single site by Google?
I am building a multisite network based in subdirectories (of the mainsite.com/site1 kind) where the main site is like a company site, and subsites are focused on brands or projects of that company. There will be links back and forth from the main site and the subsites, as if subsites were just categories or pages within the main site (they are hosted in subfolders of the main domain, after all). Now, Google's John Mueller has said: <<as far="" as="" their="" url="" structure="" is concerned,="" subdirectories="" are="" no="" different="" from="" pages="" and="" subpages="" on="" your="" main="" site.="" google="" will="" do="" its="" best="" to="" identify="" where="" sites="" separate="" using="" but="" the="" is="" same="" for="" a="" single="" site,="" you="" should="" assume="" that="" seo="" purposes,="" network="" be="" treated="" one="">></as> This sounds fine to me, except for the part "Google will do its best to identify where sites are separate", because then, if Google establishes that my multisite structure is actually a collection of different sites, links between subsites and mainsite would be considered backlinks between my own sites, which could be therefore considered a link wheel, that is, a kind of linking structure Google doesn't like. How can I make sure that Google understand my multisite as a unique site? P.S. - The reason I chose this multisite structure, instead of hosting brands in categories of the main site, is that if I use the subdirectories based multisite feature I will be able to map a TLD domain to any of my brands (subsites) whenever I'd choose to give that brand a more distinct profile, as if it really was a different website.
Web Design | | PabloCulebras0 -
Having a Subfolder/Subdirectory With a Different Design Than the Root Domain
Hi Everyone, I was wondering what Google thinks about having a subfolder/subdirectory with a different design than the root domain. So let's say we have MacroCorp Inc. which has been around for decades. MacroCorp has tens of thousands of backlinks and a couple thousand referring domains from quality sites in its industry and news sites. MacroCorp Inc. spins off one of its products into a new company called MicroCorp Inc., which makes CoolProduct. The new website for this company is CoolProduct.MacroCorp.com (a subdomain) which has very few backlinks and referring domains. To help MicroCorp rank better, both companies agree to place the MicroCorp content at MacroCorp.com/CoolProduct/. The root domain (MacroCorp.com) links to the subfolder from its navigation and MicroCorp does the same, but the MacroCorp.com/CoolProduct/ subfolder has an entirely different design than the root domain. Will MacroCorp.com/CoolProduct/ be crawled, indexed, and rank better as both companies think it would? Or would Google still treat the subfolder like a subdomain or even a separate root domain in this case? Are there any studies, documentation, or links to good or bad examples of this practice? When LinkedIn purchased Lynda.com, for instance, what if they kept the https://www.lynda.com/ design as is and placed it at https://www.linkedin.com/learning/. Would the pre-purchase (yellow/black design) https://www.linkedin.com/learning/ rank any worse than it does now with the root domain (LinkedIn) aligned design? Thanks! Andy
Web Design | | AndyRCWRCM1 -
Referring subdirectory pages from 3rd hierarchy level pages. Will this hurts?
Hi all, We have product feature pages at 3rd tier like website.com/product/features. We have the help guides for each of these features on a different subdirectory like website.com/help/guides. We are linking these help guides from every page of features. So, will it hurts us anywhere just because we are encouraging 4th tier pages in website, moreover they are from different sub-directory. Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Wordpress Blog for Magento Store?
Magento is fantastic for e-commerce although the blog capabilities are limited and our web development fees are just ongoing. I have great experience with wordpress sites and I don't have a bad word to say about the CMS, there are plugins available for everything you possibly need to develop the blog. Would it be a good idea to integrate a wordpress blog for our e-commerce store? To keep both the transactional website and the blog on the same domain, but have a different style for the blog so we're not trying to 'sell' to people looking for home improvement advice and DIY guides, our main priority with the blog is to grow the website authority.
Web Design | | Jseddon921 -
Having your blog on an external domain, is this ok?
We have our website / ecomm cart with network solutions and they do not allow you to have a internal blog like www.islesurfboards.com/blog . So the only solution is to have the blog on a external domain www.islesurfboardsblog.com which we set up. Is this ok for seo purposes or are we gonna miss out on alot by doing this. Any help?
Web Design | | isle_surf0 -
Best Way to Remove Mutltiple XML Sitemaps From Multiple Subdomains
Just found a series of of XML sitemaps hosted like so: http://www.thesite.anothersite.com/sitemap.xml and defaulted to remove and 301 redirect but as this is the first time I've encountered an issue like this, an outside opinion or two would be much appreciated. Is the 301 the best option, should I 404 them or what?
Web Design | | ePageCity0 -
Should I nofollow my blog "read more" links?
I have a standard blog index page with entries formatted as such: Blog title Blog excerpt read more link The blog title is linked to the blog post (duh). The "read more" link is also linked to the same blog post, but I put a rel="nofollow" tag on that link because I don't want the SE's thinking "read more" is relevant anchor text. Now, is what I'm doing right? Won't having the read more link as nofollow result in some sort of conflict considering the blog title link is set to follow? Will a nofollow link have a cascading effect on any matching "follow" link? I've frequently read that "read more" should be nofollowed, but I've never once seen anyone address the conflict of having a follow and nofollow link on the same page pointing to the same link. Which one wins? Thanks.
Web Design | | bluekite770 -
What will you do with the subdomains, keep it or remove it?
A client of us has this webpage http://www.losestores.com/ not very good in design, but it has good products.
Web Design | | teconsite.com
He is having a problem with SEO, he is in page 2 for "estores" keyword. His domain authority is 27 and is upper than other domains that are ranking in page one. The question is the following: Since the webpage began to work the programmer that created it, did the following: a subdomain per section http://estores.losestores.com/ http://cortinas.losestores.com/ http://venecianas.losestores.com/ and so on. This page is not very big one. Will you remove the subdomains and do de following? www.losestores.com/estores www.losestores.com/cortinas What will be best? Thanks Victoria0