Subdomain VS Subdirectory
-
Hi guys i need help i cant decide which path should i take but 1st let me start by discussing about my goal and the company background.
The website is a listing more like a classified ads that manually verify each listings before we approve and we only allow listing of condominiums nothing else. We cover 10 countries. Our current website structure is like this
and so on
our goal is to dominate each local search queries, like lets say we like to rank our domain
- where people from singapore who uses local search engine could find condo's in singapore
is local search engine like http://google.com.sg
whats the best way to do it?
should i leave the structure of our site that way or through subdomain?
as what i have researched its more beneficial if we use subdomain but most articles are old im not sure if this can still be achieve today.
To all gurus please enlighten me. What strategy should i choose, any tips would also help.
Thank you very much. (sorry for my bad english, its not my native language)
-
thanks a lot
i have more to learn
-
Agree with this 100%. If you read through stuff on QNA you see subfolders over subdomains all day long.
-
This is the suggested best practice by many SEOs. You will also want to go into Google Webmaster tools, and Geo target each of these subdirectories.
-
I would go with subfolders versus subdomains. With subfolders you draw upon the strength of your whole website. With subdomains, each subdomain has to stand on its own. (Internal page linking, backlinking and content) By keeping everything tied to your root domain, you have greater value. I've learned this by experience with our own older strategies of using subdomains. Building up a bigger site with more pages is better.
Each subfolder, with its own localized topic, will rank just fine as a page, because it is supported by your larger 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
-
Practitioner Vs Practice Listings: Local Pack Issues
Hi, and THANK YOU! in advance for any input you give, its much appreciated. We've been doing research on this and also wanted to see if the community could provide any more input. We work with a plastic surgery clinic. The namesake of the surgery clinic is that of the first doctor: Practice Name: Gardner Plastic Surgery Plastic Surgeon 1: Dr. Gardner (we've worked with him since at least 2015) Plastic Surgeon 2: Dr. Baccaro (joined practice June 2018) Plastic Surgeon 3: Dr. Crespo (joining their practice starting Sept. 1 2020!) To summarize our issues to date: As we brought on our new surgeon Dr. Baccaro in 2018 we decided to ultimately claim his practitioner GMB listing, and to claim Dr. Gardner's (which had been unclaimed and we had to eliminate duplicates.) Before deciding to utilize the supplementary practitioner listings, we were managing/optimizing their main practice listing: Gardner Plastic Surgery. We continued to primarily/heavily optimize “Gardner Plastic Surgery” and mimicked the details for “Dr. Gardner” and “Dr. Baccaro” From Dec. 2018 - Jan. 2020 we would from time to time notice that "Dr. Paul Gardner's" individual listing was showing up in Local Pack instead of "Gardner Plastic Surgery" but it was not really a big issue, happened very occasionally. Around Dec. 2020 - Jan. 2020 we experienced some Google errors when trying to create Google Posts with videos--it resulted in a few very random and unexpected suspensions. We were posting appropriate content, it seemed that Google was struggling to process our video files from API and it would get stuck in a loop etc. All in all the suspensions happened, and we worked with Google many times to try to understand and stop that from happening. Fortunately that hasn't happened since (and we now don't post videos to Google posts because that was a bit too stressful. We still upload to main photo/video area) Since February 2020 to present we have consistently noticed "Dr. Paul Gardner" appearing in place of the well-optimized full of photos/videos/posts "Gardner Plastic Surgery." We thought algorithm updates etc./COVID were all factors as to why doctors may be more prescient than a clinic. There were times where we thought it was fixed for sure, only for it to continue to crop up. Specifically we were trying to rank for the search term "naples plastic surgeon" What We've Done So Far: I've done a LOT of research and understand a number of errors we were overlooking from Q&As like this (duplicate categories/phone numbers): https://mza.bundledseo.com/community/q/gmb-page-for-law-not-ranking-but-individual-attorneys-names-are And: https://mza.bundledseo.com/community/q/partner-outranking-main-site-in-local So I understand we have some decisions to make on the best path forward. We’re guilty of just about all of the issues Miriam elaborates on. ** As we move forward there are a few elements at play:** They are adding a new surgeon to the practice in September, we’re excited! Making a clear decision before he arrives is important With the addition of the 3<sup>rd</sup> surgeon “Gardner Plastic Surgery” is actually changing the name of its business to “Naples Plastic Surgery” as its much more suiting to the growing scope of practice. ** To end:** Wow. I wrote a lot and really appreciate it if you stuck with me! Some thoughts I had that I wonder if anyone has insight on: Is the fact that “Gardner Plastic Surgery” is “Dr. Gardner’s” namesake a huge factor into why the individual doctor is popping up more often? He’s well known and his name and his business name have been around the internet for years longer than Dr. Baccaro etc. Do you think changing the name to “Naples Plastic Surgery” along with other needed updates could help address the issue? Could our string of unfortunate, though ultimately well-intentioned suspensions be part of what’s enabled “Dr. Paul Gardner” to prop up as well? Should we choose to heavily optimize all listings and see how diversifying categories etc. helps? Should we try to de-optimize and focus on practice profile for now as that’s our main listing? If you have any other recommendations, I’d love to hear them. I think working on optimizing and diversifying our listings would be useful. Thank you again.
Local Listings | | MoxxiMarketing0 -
I have a site with a lot of subdomains and I want to see what keywords each is ranking for.
Do I have to enter them manually, one at a time, in the keyword subdomain search or is there a way to submit a list of subdomains and have Moz generate a report of the results?
Local Listings | | thallstd0 -
Citation Quantity vs Real Links
Hi Everyone, I've got a question about citations. My website is in a niche where there are 3 main competitors - ourselves and two other sites. We have around 300 citation links and around 50 high quality links within our niche from people like bloggers, editorial links within news sites etc. The other two competitors have 900 and 2000 citations each, but nothing else. None of the high quality links we have worked hard over the past year to get. We're generally ranking lower than the other two sites. Should we focus on getting more citations to "catch up"? Until now we haven't because we've been worried a lot of the citations our other competitors are on look spammy, but it seems whatever we do we can't beat them. On the face of it though, we are a better company with a better site and we've got more/better real links, so I'm starting to wonder if citations are holding us back.
Local Listings | | rswhtn0 -
Creating a Wordpress Multi-site - Should I have separate Domains or use Subdirectories?
Hello, I have a company building out a website and wanted to get the community opinion on how we should set-up the domain network (separate domains or subdirectories). Our company has several locations across the country and really act as their own entity in those locations (Austin, Norman, College Station, etc.). Currently, we have all the locations under 1 domain like so... maindomain.com/our-locations/norman. This clearly isn't they way it should be set-up and it was done a long time ago, so we are changing to either: Separate Domains already purchased Subdirectories such as maindomain.com/norman I would like to know what would be the best strategy for our communities in regards to SEO? Thanks!
Local Listings | | TylerAspen1 -
Concerned about cannibalization for local SEO results. Should we move some of our location pages to a subdomain?
Currently we are providing local SEO recommendations for a well known pharmacy chain. Like most major brands they enjoy multiple organic (not just 3 pack results) listings when people search for local phrases such as "Dallas pharmacy clinics'". The issue is that all these listings are coming from the same domain page. We are seeing multiple listings both branded and non-branded search queries. Our concern is that Google will someday decide to choose one listing as the most authoritative and nix the rest of the local listings which will reduce their first page search engine saturation. To maintain first page saturation we are considering recommending to the client that they move some of their location listings
Local Listings | | RosemaryB
to a subdomain (different IP address) to avoid a Google "clean up". Please note that our client is certainly not using any "doorway" pages but some of these are very scarce on content. They do not have an issue with duplicate content either. By using subdomains could we help maintain our client's first page saturation? Any links to articles would be much appreciated.0 -
Local Link Building Question: High DA Chambers vs Low PA Trade Groups
Hi all, We've been researching relevant, real organizations in our area that allow members to link their websites from the directory. I've basically got two buckets of prospects: Chambers of commerce type sites with more authority (DA ~40+) but less relevance to our niche (injury law) Bar associations with less authority (DA ~20) but super relevant. Assuming that they cost the same and covered the same geographic area, which links would you go after if you had to choose one or the other? Thanks in advance.
Local Listings | | LeeAbrahamson0 -
G+ Local Business Page vs. Brand Page Problems
I'm struggling a bit with a Brand page vs. Local page on G+ and wondering if anyone here has had this same problem and found a solution.... This is related to a business that has a does have a physical address for a head admin office, but they provides a financial service to people across Canada over the phone. So although the business has an address and local phone number for admin purposes, it doesn't want people showing up at that address and definitely doesn't want to be considered a "Local" business. However, Google automatically creates the local listing in google maps, which the business has claimed but otherwise does not want to maintain. Instead the business has a Brand page on G+ (not local) which it has linked to the domain and actively maintains as their G+ business page. The trouble is, Google is associating showing the local listing as the rich snippet in in their organic result instead of the Brand page. Is there anything the company can do to further help Google associate the Brand G+ page with the website instead of the local listing? I already tried removing the link to the website from the local listing in hopes that would dis-associate it with the domain. That got rid of the rich snippet, but now the local listing shows up as a separate organic result just below the main company website, which is just as bad or maybe worse. To confirm, the website IS linked to the BRAND page using rel=publisher, and the brand page does have a verified link to the company domain. Thanks for the help!
Local Listings | | PlusROI1