Can my affiliate subdomain hurt in any way?
-
Hello everyone,
My main website is:
http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com
Whereas the above site's related "affiliate" website is located on the subdomain below:
http://affiliates.virtualsheetmusic.com
I was wondering if having that "affiliate section" on a subdomain could affect the main website negatively in some way... or would be better to put it in a sub-folder on the main website, or even on a totally different domain.
Thanks in advance for any advice!
-
sub-domain vs folder - here is a whiteboard friday about the differences: https://mza.seotoolninja.com/blog/subdomains-vs-subfolders-rel-canonical-vs-301-how-to-structure-links-optimally-for-seo-whiteboard-friday
In your case i'd put it in subfolder
-
Thank you guys, your answer really clarified everything. No black hat, and no spam, absolutely. We should be ok then. I got confused when I read articles around (Randy also wrote something about it) where suggested to get rid of sub domains and put everything in sub-folders instead, but I guess that was just to benefit of link equity toward the main domain, otherwise wasted in the sub-domain... right?
-
Hello Fabrizio,
Just to add (and trying to add more information) to what Dimitii said.
Remember that subdomains are treated as separate sites, from the main domain. So if you're not in any black hay SEO or spammy tecniques, you shouldn't have any issues.Also, there will be no problem with sharing some links with the main site, as a internal linking.
Best Luck.
GR. -
Howdy.
Is this affiliate program spammy or tricky in any way? if not, meaning that everything is straight forward, no link exchange or any black hat seo, there won't be any repercussions. Many companies have affiliate programs which are true part of their business model, and there is nothing wrong with that.
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 you rank without 10 x content
If I create a page about a "Normandy bike tour "and present the same things (pictures, hotels, dates, day by day itinerary, clients reviews, map) as my competitors can I still rank ? Or do I need to add something totally that my competitors don't have on their webpages to rank and compete ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Can we compete for both videos and text results?
Hi, We have a ecommerce website that performs very well for our brand pages on the text results including the reviews snippet. Our brand pages also include embedded videos. Until now we have always ranked poorly on video results. Our videos are hosted over youtube. In order to boost our video result we have recently submitted a video sitemap to help crawlers find out our videos. The result is the following : our brand pages are now only competing in the video results space. Instead of showing as a text result with our reviews snippet, it shows as a video in a carrousel widget. Within the video tab we are ranking top. We have experienced a drop in CTR since then. Moz have reported a drop on all our brand keywords for text search although the video widget shows our brand there. Is there a way to compete for both videos results and text results, making the choice to keey the review snippet widget? Is the video sitemap useful only to compete within the video space? Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mattam1 -
Microsites: Subdomain vs own domains
I am working on a travel site about a specific region, which includes information about lots of different topics, such as weddings, surfing etc. I was wondering whether its a good idea to register domains for each topic since it would enable me to build backlinks. I would basically keep the design more or less the same and implement a nofollow navigation bar to each microsite. e.g.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kinimod
weddingsbarcelona.com
surfingbarcelona.com or should I rather go with one domain and subfolders: barcelona.com/weddings
barcelona.com/surfing I guess the second option is how I would usually do it but I just wanted to see what are the pros/cons of both options. Many thanks!0 -
What is Best Way to Scale RCS Content?
SEO has really moved away from the nitty gritty analysis of backlinking factors, link wheels, and the like and has shifted to a more holistic marketing approach. That approach is best described around MOZ as “Real Company S#it”. RCS is a great way to think about what we really do because it is so much more than just SEO or just Social Media. However, our clients and business owners do want to see results and want it quantified in some way. The way most of our clients understand SEO is by ranking high on specific terms or online avenues they have a better possibility of generating traffic/sales/revenue. They understand this more from the light of traditional marketing, where you pay for a TV ad and then measure to see how much revenue that ad generated. In the light of RCS and the need to target a large number of keywords for a given client, how do most PROs handle this situation; where you have a large number of keywords to target but with RCS? Many I’ve asked tend to use the traditional approach of creating a single content piece that is geared towards a given target keyword. However, that approach can get daunting if you have say 25 keywords that a small business wants to target. In this case is not really a case of scaling down the client expectations? What if the client wants all of the keywords and has the budget? Do you just ramp your RCS content creation efforts? It seems that you can do overkill and quickly run out of RCS content to produce.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AaronHenry0 -
What is the best way to handle special characters in URLs
What is the best way to handle special characters? We have some URL's that use special characters and when a sitemap is generate using Xenu it changes the characters to something different. Do we need to have physically change the URL back to display the correct character? Example: URL: http://petstreetmall.com/Feeding-&-Watering/361.html Sitmap Link: http://www.petstreetmall.com/Feeding-%26-Watering/361.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebRiverGroup0 -
Subdomain and domain authority
I have Domain A (main content site, lots of content), with a domain authority of 91, and Domain B (blog of the first site, lots of content), with a domain authority of 82. I'm merging the blog into the main domain. Would it be best to keep it as a subdomain, or under a directory?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | smorrison0 -
Can a domain rank for a competitive term with no links?
Hi, I know that this topic has received a lot of attention recently (Not all of it good) and I am not normally one to re-open a can of worms but the whole 'Camper Mens Shoes' fiasco has got me thinking. If you're not familiar with the story then you can get the highlights of it here - http://martinmacdonald.net/the-curios-case-of-camper-shoes/ My question is this - Say that you had a domain (Domain A) that was ranking well for a competitve keyword and that it had a good backlink profile. If you used rel="canonical" on every page of Domain A to point to a duplicate site on a different domain (Domain B) , would Domain B then rank well in place of Domain A? I know that this probably doesn't have much practical use but I am trying to get a better understanding of the effect of using rel="canonical" Would the result of doing the above mean that Domain B would rank well without having any links pointing directly to it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdeLewis0 -
Rel canonical and duplicate subdomains
Hi, I'm working with a site that has multiple sub domains of entirely duplicate content. So, the production level site that visitors see is (for made-up illustrative example): 123abc456.edu Then, there are sub domains which are used by different developers to work on their own changes to the production site, before those changes are pushed to production: Larry.123abc456.edu Moe.123abc456.edu Curly.123abc456.edu Google ends up indexing these duplicate sub domains, which is of course not good. If we add a canonical tag to the head section of the production page (and therefor all of the duplicate sub domains) will that cause some kind of problem... having a canonical tag on a page pointing to itself? Is it okay to have a canonical tag on a page pointing to that same page? To complete the example... In this example, where our production page is 123abc456.edu, our canonical tag on all pages (this page and therefor the duplicate subdomains) would be: Is that going to be okay and fix this without causing some new problem of a canonical tag pointing to the page it's on? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010