Revisited: The subdomain vs subdirectory question
-
This has been much discussed before, but I would like to bring it up again in a specific content.
I was wondering what people think about choosing between the two (subdomain vs subdirectory), when adding new 'channels' to a digital media platform.
The two examples that I have are both very smart companies, that very recently went different route for the same challenge. I'd like to hear some pro's/con''s and any input you might have!
The exapmles are:
Vice: the main site is Vice.com, and they have begun to add a ton of new 'channals' or topically specific content (e.g. news.vice.com, noisey.vice.com, munchies.vice.com etc).
Mic: the main site is Mic.com and they have been adding new channels in sub-directories: mic.com/arts, mic.com/world, mic.com/music
Thanks!!
-
Here's my $0.02:
I think that these two companies probably made decisions, but not completely based on SEO or organic ranking.
The Mic.com site that is using sub-directories will likely see much better SEO, because all of the content is on the same domain, and not treated differently.
My assumption for the Vice.com site is that they want to have different channels or content on other subdomains.
My hunch is that for Vice.com, they decided to go with subdomains, so that they could have this content live on different physical servers or different infrastructure.
I took a look at the main site, www.Vice.com, and it's using Tumblr, running on AWS with Elastic Load Balancing.
For the Munchies.vice.com, it's running on WordPress.
While it is possible to have content displayed from WordPress on one subdirectory and Magento on another (by either installing both applications on the same server, or creating virtual links behind the scenes) a lot of companies will opt to do this on separate systems.
That's probably the reason that they went this way.
In the end, SEO doesn't trump everything...
But, here's a reference about sub-domains vs. subdirectories on Moz:
In the past, I've answered a similar question in the past here: http://moz.com/community/q/blog-on-subdomain
But the gist of it is:
store.mydomain.com --> content on the store. is treated as a different site, and SEO efforts (content, inbound links, social media) only help the subdomain.
mydomain.com/store --> subdirectories are usually the way to go. All of the content, inbound links and social media shares will help build the overall domain authority for you.
My recommendation is to go with the sub directory (mydomain.com/store/, and there are a whole lot of articles that back this up:
http://moz.com/community/q/blog-on-subdomain-vs-subdirectory-best-practices
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/subdomains-and-subdirectories/
http://moz.com/community/q/best-place-for-a-blog-blog-mydomain-com-or-mydomain-com-blog
Hope this helps,
- Jeff
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
-
Changing domain name, witch is better - brand name.com vs keyword + brand name.com?
Hi, I just made one decision and now I'm bit worried, if I did right one. I hope that you can give me feedback and advice regarding it. I'm in hookah market, so I do not have any possibilities to buy adds, so SEO is really-really important to us. I know a lot of things what has to be done to perform better, but currently I have just few really important questions. In international market the main keyword is "hookah" and everything related to that. We are small company and our brand is not that well known and do not have high volume traffic on website. Hookah in front of that we tough will give better understanding to audience about what is the page. Which domain name is better for SEO and also branding purposes? Currently we were using the first one without keyword, no we switched to the second one (just about week ago). https://hekkpipe.com https://hookahhekkpipe.com Regarding it, some really important questions: Would the longer version of domain helps us better rank with important keywords to us or not? When we will write good content, which domain is more likely shared? I'm bit afraid that first one and that we made a mistake changing the domain name. When the 1st one, then how big difference does it potentially make? Thank you
Branding | | Karel_K0 -
Which domain/subdomain strategy would be better?
I have multiple subdomain based news website. Each subdomain is in the format languge1.newsdomain.com, language2.newsdomain.com etc. These are not mere translation of one site into another but giving content tailored for the language and culture of the audience it serves. In essence they are related but different. When it comes to "english" I have two options. Option1. Create english.newsdomain.com using the same format and use the main www.newsdomain.com as a launching pad (navigation site) which allows the user to choose language and goto appropriate site. This gives the advantage of creating a common brand of newsdomain.com for all languages. There won't be any other content on this www.newsdomain.com Option2. Use www.newsdomain.com for english content and only allow the list of other sites as footer or part of menu. This gives the advantage of having main domain with content (and links and other benefits) but makes it a bit difficult for users who do not speak english, to find their destination. Any thoughts which is better or worse?
Branding | | Maayboli0 -
Google+ Page Question
When we do a search in Google for our brand name like this "google+ whiteboard creations" we see 2 different G+ pages: 1) https://plus.google.com/b/104564843813332206907/ and 2) https://plus.google.com/+WhiteboardCreations/ #2 is our real one which we are trying to promote, grow, etc, etc. However, I'm not sure where the other one came from. Did Google create it? We have the option to "Delete Page" in the settings, but unsure if it will delete the real page we actively manage. Has anyone else had this issue with multiple pages? Any advice as get into G+ more and more? Thanks in advance everyone! - Patrick
Branding | | WhiteboardCreations0 -
ECommerce Sites: Sub domain vs. Unique Domains
Hello everyone! I manage 3 large eCommerce sites that sell textbooks, digital learning solutions, electronic teaching resources, etc., to three different markets in the education space (K-12, College, and Post-College/Career Search). Currently, the 3 sites live on three different sub domains of the companies main domain. Is this best practice? I assume we want all three under the same domain to consolidate domain authority. But... What if I told you that we have dozens of sub domains of the companies main domain? Some are for marketing sites, some are for digital products, some are customer-specific sites, etc. We probably have close to 100 sub domains that are used regularly. Then what if I told you that the company doesn't hardly even use the root domain (other than a handful of old pages)? Even the root domain redirects to a sub domain. Just looking for some insight on this, as I will be doing an SEO/marketing/conversion overhaul going forward. On a side note, we use Magento as an eCommerce platform, and it's rampant with duplicate content, duplicate page titles, pages with too many links, and so on and so forth. That's another problem for another day...
Branding | | brad.s.knutson0 -
Duplicate Content Question
I have a question about duplicate content. We have our mission statement on our home page, a few paragraphs. When I searched Copyscape the only pages that came back were sites like Google Plus, Manta, Linkedin, AngieLists ect. All of them have the same exact copy. Would this be something that is hurting us for duplicate content??
Branding | | chuck-layton
It is our mission statement so we kind of want to be the same across those sites. Any input would be great. Thanks, Scott0 -
Register a Domain: Brand Name VS Product Name
Hi All, Since Google give more priority to brand names and most of the penalized websites by Google's Penguin update are websites which had links with promoted keywords, is it a good idea to register a new domain by the product name (ex: www.leatherbags.com) ?. Or is it good to register the domain by the company or brand name and then build a reputable brand first before targeting product based keywords (ex: leather bags) ?.
Branding | | Iresh.Dilan1 -
What is the impact of changing a primary .edu to a subdomain .edu?
Hello I'm looking for feedback on the impact of search rankings, overall SEO efforts and how Google will view changing example.edu to subdomain.example.edu All URLs/content under www.example.edu and example.edu would be 301 redirected to subdomain.example.edu, essentially making subdomain.example.edu the primary domain. Thank you!!
Branding | | msmcsearch0 -
Benefits of +1ing a Sub Page vs. Root Page
Say I'm on Nike and I +1 a soccer shoe page...does the Nike root page rank higher/for more terms for my google+ followers or would just the soccer shoe page?
Branding | | Hakkasan0