Which one is better?
-
I am working on creating new blog. I already had one. I want to add this new topics as subdomain. Now i am confused. Which one will be better for SEO?
subdomain.maysite.com or mysite.com/subdomain
Thanks in advance
-
This quote is from Moz's domain setup guide:
"Since search engines keep different metrics for domains than they do subdomains, it is recommended that webmasters place link-worthy content like blogs in subfolders rather than subdomains. (i.e. www.example.com/blog/ rather than blog.example.com) The notable exceptions to this are language-specific websites. (i.e., en.example.com for the English version of the website)."
I think that quote is pretty compelling towards the idea of subdirectories. But I think the value of subfolders versus directories certainly makes sense especially from a linking, age, and juice perspective. Ultimately, it comes down to you and what you want for the website.
-
I agree with Tim Holmes, here is a detailed explanation why sub-folder are better than sub-domain now.
- Sub-domains are treated as a separate entity now, and they don't add to SEO value of the main domain.
- Any links within the subdomain to the main domain are treated as external links.
- Since links are coming from an external domain but the same IP, this may be treated a low-quality backlink for the main domain, though people are divided over this but it can neutral to negative impact instead of being positive. As search engines would consider this as unnatural linking.
- Sub-Folders are treated as part of the domain and pass all the SEO value when connecting internally.
Here is a response from Rand Fishkin to a similar question
Subfolders are the way to go, but they're hard to do for a lot of organizations. Many CMS' (like Hubspot) make it quite challenging to host a Wordpress installation on a subfolder, but subdomains are pretty easy. Hence, when choosing where to host a blog or a separate content section, many folks go with the easier route rather than the one that requires a lot of technical effort and webdev/engineering time.
However, that doesn't mean that they're not losing out - I'd wager that all of those companies would see a bump if they moved their blogs to a subfolder of the same domain. We see this in example after example when sites invest in it, and you can see plenty of folks discussing their own experiences in the comments of the Moz post you linked to.
I hope this helps, feel free to ask further questions and respond to answer.
Regards,
Vijay
-
This has been banded around so many times, in general I would advocate a sub folder as opposed to sub domain. purely due to the value it adds to your sites main chosen domain, if it were on a sub domain this is where the value would sit and it would not pass any value around as well as it could a sub folder. It is only potentially a small benefit, but a benefit none the less.
A good recent on it was had back on Jan https://mza.seotoolninja.com/community/q/the-great-subdomain-vs-subfolder-debate-what-is-the-best-answer
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
-
Which URL structure is better?
Quick question - Have a real estate site focused on "apartments", but apartments in not part of my company name. That being said, should which of the following URL structures should I use? http://website.com/city/neighborhood/property-name OR http://website.com/city-apartments/neighborhood/property-name
Technical SEO | | ChaseH0 -
How can I get Google to forget an https version of one page on my site?
Google mysteriously decided to index the broken, https version of one page on my company's site (we have a cert for the site, but this page is not designed to be served over https and the CSS doesn't load). The page already has many incoming links to the http version, and it has a canonical URL with http. I resubmitted it on http with webmaster tools. Is there anything else I could do?
Technical SEO | | BostonWright0 -
Hit by a penalty? But which one?
Hi guys, First off, thanks for reading my post! My site, www.doctorloanusa.com suffered a massive drop in Google rankings and traffic on September 27. For the past 4 years, I've ranked in spots 1-3. My main keywords are physician loans and doctor loans. I had a competitor copy almost ALL my text. In early October, I filed a DMCA takedown and had the infringing site removed from the SERPS. I also made text changes to my site. I thought this duplicate content was the problem, but I have yet to see any improvements 2 months later. My site isn't particularly deep content-wise, but it's competitive with others in my niche. I have relatively few links but others in the SERPS have very similar link profiles. I tried to clean up a few questionable links and used the disavow tool. I have used the SEOmoz on-page tools to grade my site. Typically, I receive grade A reports. I still rank for my website URL, and still rank 1 in both Yahoo and Bing. My bounce rate is 43%. If anyone could provide insight, I would be very grateful. I need to get this site ranking again, as this property is my main source of income. Is the site over-optimized? Is it my anchor text profile? Thank you very much in advance!
Technical SEO | | Cary_Forest0 -
SEO problems from moving from several pages to one accordian
Ive read other posts that say using accordion is not detrimental to SEO, and for conversion optimization we want to take several of our existing pages and make them into one accordion. But what will this do to seo and duplicate content as I redirect the old pages to anchors in the accordion? I would think this would be a dup content problem as www.oldinfo1 www.oldinfo2 will now have their content on the same page but I will be redirecting them to www.newpage#oldinfo1 www.newpage#oldinfo2 Is there a way around duplicate content problems?
Technical SEO | | JohnBerger0 -
How can I redirect old URLs to new ones?
We are trying to optimize our website for search engines and one of the things we have noticed that needs to be changed are the URLs. I know how to modify the URLs but have no idea how I can get the old redirected to the new ones using 301. We have some pages ranking pretty high on Google and we can't loose this traffic. Our website is hosted on Plesk and it was coded using Cold Fusion. I do have access to the .htaccess file. Any help would be highly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | personalproducts0 -
HTML 5 and SEO any one seen any change ?
I have seen a few articles regarding HTML 5 and its implications re: SEO Has anyone implemented HTML 5 for SEO? and has there been any discernible impact? http://www.netlz.com/seo-blog/2012/04/09/seo-for-html5/ http://searchengineland.com/seo-best-practices-for-html5-truths-half-truths-outright-lies-99406 https://seogadget.co.uk/xhtml-20-and-seo/
Technical SEO | | Metropolis0 -
Best way to change from one CMS to wordpress??
I have a client that was working with another SEO consultant and they pretty much dropped the ball big time! The SEO company took his site off of wordpress and put it on another CMS (http://www.wsinetsuccess.com/WSI-E-Fusion). My client would like to take hes site off of the WSI E Fusion platform and back onto wordpress. My question is how is the best way to going about doing this with out loosing all of the PR to the site? Should I find all of the URLs that are on the site and just 301 them to the right page? Thank you very much for your help.
Technical SEO | | pakevin0 -
Two domains One hosting account
I have two separate domains set up on one hosting account through godaddy. Will this affect the SEO negatively? They are completely different sites with their own unique domains but on my local files the second domain is set up as a subfolder for the original hosted domain. Any thoughts? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | DavetheExterminator0