E-commerce solution and subdomain issues
-
Hello All,
In light of Wil Reynold's closing keynote at Portland's Searchfest, I thought I might try posting here to get some advice. We run a family business on the side and we're looking at starting to use volusion.com for our e-commerce solution. The catch is we currently have a wordpress site summitmining.com running on thesis with great SEO. Ranking #1 & #2 for our highest trafficked terms.Ideally, I'd like Summitmining.com to direct to the Volusion store and then summitmining.com/blog to go to our wordpress installation BUT since the volusion site will be hosted with the company and they will not host our wordpress installation we'd have to use a subdomain instead of a subdirectory which I understand will be bad for SEO.
Does anyone have any recommendation on how to set this up without totally screwing up our ranking OR any recommendations of an easy to use shopping cart (I've worked on a magento site before and it's too complex for us) that wouldn't require a separate or subdomain?
Thank you so much!
-Cherie Prochaska
503-816-3557
[email protected]
@cherieprochaska -
I've not run into any issues hosting WP on an IIS server. I expect that it's either a known compatibility issue with whatever IIS version your host is running, or they're simply unfamiliar with it and avoiding potential support problems.
My main site is all written in ASP and I plugged a WP blog onto the site in just a few minutes, with really no configuration issues. I'm hosting that site at Arvixe.com.
-
Hello Cherie,
You're probably already aware that it is possible to install WP in a subdirectory: http://codex.wordpress.org/Giving_WordPress_Its_Own_Directory . The problem, as Syed mentioned below, probably has something to do with Volusion being on ASP.net and Wordpress requiring a Linux/PHP host. In my experience, just about every decision you make going forward will be more difficult to get done if you go with an ASP.net site because a lot will revolve around having someone use Internet Server Application Programming Interface (ISAPI).
It is possible to set up the WP site on another host, but if you found Magento too complex, this might not be the best way to go either:
Can I ask why you want to move if your rankings good and business is going well? There are probably a lot of improvements you could make with the help of a good Wordpress developer.
If you really must move over to Volusion and want to keep the WP blog, this may be one of those times when the "Put your blog on your primary domain" rule of thumb is put aside for an exception.
-
I imagine it has something to do with IIS compatiblity issue with Wordpress/ PHP. Your host might have to spend $10k or so to get the latest IIS to make it compatible with PHP and that's my best guess as to why they won't do it.
Here is a link for the IIS compatbility with PHP, it helps: http://php.iis.net/
My recommendation for an easy to use simple shopping cart is OpenCart. I find it much simpler than Magento and has a host of features that most webmasters would be content with. The script is free but if you want more advanced options/ features, you can get those 'extensions' for $5-99. The script is easy to work on and customize.
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
-
Content Issues: Duplicate Content
Hi there
Technical SEO | | Kingagogomarketing
Moz flagged the following content issues, the page has duplicate content and missing canonical tags.
What is the best solution to do? Industrial Flooring » IRL Group Ltd
https://irlgroup.co.uk/industrial-flooring/ Industrial Flooring » IRL Group Ltd
https://irlgroup.co.uk/index.php/industrial-flooring Industrial Flooring » IRL Group Ltd
https://irlgroup.co.uk/index.php/industrial-flooring/0 -
Is a shorter subdomain better?
For example, consider the two subdomains below: learn.bluelinkerp.com learnmore.bluelinkerp.com Would there likely be an appreciable difference between the two based on length alone? Also, would it be better to use a term that relates to our product in general such as "software.bluelinkerp.com"? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | BlueLinkERP0 -
Canonical Issue?
Hi, I was using the On Page Report Card Tool here on SEOMOZ for the following page: http://www.priceline.com/eventi-a-kimpton-hotel-new-york-city-new-york-ny-1614979-hd.hotel-reviews-hotel-guides and it claims there is a canonical issue or improper use of it. I looked at the element and it seems to be fine: <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.priceline.com/eventi-a-kimpton-hotel-new-york-city-new-york-ny-1614979-hd.hotel-reviews-hotel-guides" /> Can you spot the issue and how it would be fixed? Thanks. Eddy
Technical SEO | | workathomecareers0 -
What's the issue?
Hi, We have a client who dropped in the rankings (initially from bottom of the first page to page to page 3, and now page 5) for a single keyword (their most important one - targeted on their homepage) back in the middle of March. So far, we've found that the issue isn't the following: Keyword stuffing on the page External anchor text pointing to the page Internal anchor text pointing to the page In addition to the above, the drop didn't coincide with panda or penguin. Any other ideas as to what could cause such a drop for a single keyword (other related rankings haven't moved). We're starting to think that this may just have been another small change in the algorithm but it seems like too big of a drop in a short space of time for that to be the case. Any thoughts would be much appreciated! Thanks.
Technical SEO | | jasarrow0 -
Avoiding Duplicate Content in E-Commerce Product Search/Sorting Results
How do you handle sorting on ecommerce sites? Does it look something like this? For Example: example.com/inventory.php example.com/inventory.php?category=used example.com/inventory.php?category=used&price=high example.com/inventory.php?category=used&location=seattle If not, how would you handle this? If so, would you just include a no-index tag on all sorted pages to avoid duplicate content issues? Also, how does pagination play into this? Would it be something like this? For Example: example.com/inventory.php?category=used&price=high__ example.com/inventory.php?category=used&price=high&page=2 example.com/inventory.php?category=used&price=high&page=3 If not, how would you handle this? If so, would you still include a no-index tag? Would you include a rel=next/prev tag on these pages in addition to or instead of the no-index tag? I hope this makes sense. Let me know if you need me to clarify any of this. Thanks in advance for your help!
Technical SEO | | AlexanderAvery1 -
Subdomain for a blog
My client has a site hosted with a company that allows very little customization including I am unable to add a blog to the site. As he has a fair amount of time & money invested in the site, he is reluctant to start over. So my question is this. His blog is currently hosted off site, would it benefit him if I had them add a cname or a record to show his blog at blog.mydomain.com? Or does Google recognize that it is still a separate site and treat it as such? Finally does it matter how they set it up cname, a record or redirect? This is definitely not my area of expertise (if that is not already obvious from the question!). Thanks for your help! Matthew
Technical SEO | | farlandlee0 -
301 redirect Issues
my clients site is www.greenbayharvest.co.uk When you enter that URL it redirects to www.greenbayharvest.co.uk/shop, dont ask why, thats the way they set it up and thats what im stuck with. So, how do i resolve the 301 issue here. we want all things to point to www.greenbayharvest.co.uk, in terms of SEO but does the fact that there is a redirect going to /shop make this an issue? we appear to have: www.greenbayharvest.co.uk/shop www.greenbayharvest.co.uk greenbayharvest.co.uk greenbayharvest.co.uk/shop all these URL's go to the same same page so what is the best way to correct this? thanks for any help on this Lee
Technical SEO | | IPIM0 -
How to move my blog from subdomain to subfolder?
Not an unusual situation, I have a blog on blog.domain.com it has quite a few blog postings. The platform is old and will be scrapped, but the blog content itself is going to be moved to domain.com/blog. The current process is we are manually listing all linked to/content pages and we are going to 301 redirect them to their counterparts on the new blog. This is going to be a tedious process. A) Is there any way to automate the moving of the blog? B) What is the best way to do the massive 301 redirect, php headers, .htaccess? Should we move the individual pages with redirects, or redirect the domain in the .htaccess (this will be very difficult to match all the titles and file structure)?
Technical SEO | | MarloSchneider0