Looking for re-assurance on this one: Sitemap approach for multi-subdomains
-
Hi All:
Just looking for a bit of "yeah it'll be fine" reassurance on this before we go ahead and implement:
We've got a main accommodation listing website under www.* and a separate travel content site using a completely different platform on blog.* (same domain - diffn't sub-domain). We pull in snippets of content from blog.* > www.* using a feed and we have cross-links going both ways, e.g. links to find accommodation in blog articles and links to blog articles from accommodation listings.
Look-and-feel wise they're fully integrated. The blog.* site is a tab under the main nav.
What i'd like to do is get Google (and others) to view this whole thing as one site - and attribute any SEO benefit of content on blog.* pages to the www.* domain. Make sense?
So, done a bit of reading - and here's what i've come up with:
- Seperate sitemaps for each, both located in the root of www site
- robots.txt in root of www site to have single sitemap entry:
sitemap : www.example.com/sitemap-www
- robots.txt in root of blog site to have single sitemap entry:
sitemap: www.example.com/sitemap-blog
- Submit both sitemaps to Webmaster tools.
Does this sound reasonable? Any better approaches? Anything I'm missing?
All input appreciated!
-
Thanks Ben. We'll look to do this in the future.
Maybe with a virtual directory or something.
Cheers!
-
If you are looking for Google to view the site as a whole I would consider moving the subdomain to a subfolder. Especially if the subdomain is integrated into the navigation it makes sense to merge them.
I don't think a sitemap is going to have too much of an effect on the way Google handles the subdomain.
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
-
Editing A Sitemap
Would there be any positive effect from editing a site map down to a more curated list of pages that perform, or that we hope they begin to perform, in organic search? A site I work with has a sitemap with about 20,000 pages that is automatically created out of a Drupal plugin. Of those pages, only about 10% really produce out of search. There are old sections of the site that are thin, obsolete, discontinued and/or noindexed that are still on the sitemap. For instance, would it focus Google's crawl budget more efficiently or have some other effect? Your thoughts? Thanks! Best... Darcy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
One Website, Multiple Locations, One Blog?
There's definitely not going to be a "right" answer to this question, but I think it can lead to a great discussion. We are building a website for a client who has two locations, we are going to use a URL structure similar to this: www.Brand.com (this would be a landing page where users would select a location) www.Brand.com/Atlanta www.Brand.com/Boston However, we still want to focus on local SEO - so our deeper URL structure will be: www.Brand.com/Atlanta/Auto-Accident-Lawyer www.Brand.com/Atlanta/Motorcycle-Accident-Lawyer www.Brand.com/Boston/Auto-Accident-Lawyer www.Brand.com/Boston/Motorcycle-Accident-Lawyer The content on those pages will be unique and target local keywords. Each "version" of the website will have a navigation specific to that location. For example, once a user clicks into the Boston website, all of the navigation items will pertain to Boston. However, we run into an issue with the blog. Both locations will be using the same blog content, which ends up looking something like this: www.Brand.com/Atlanta/Blog/Blog-Article www.Brand.com/Boston/Blog/Blog-Article This obviously creates duplicate content. We could do something such as this: www.Brand.com/Blog/Blog-Article However, as noted above, each local version of the website has a separate navigation (this keeps a user in Boston on the Boston version of the website). So have a centralized blog is far from ideal unless navigations for both locations are included - which would allow users to return back to their local website. From my understanding, duplicate content doesn't necessarily "hurt" your SERPs, it simply keeps one of the duplicated pages from ranking. So the question comes down to this, is duplicate content a big enough issue to restructure a website to use a centralized blog?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McFaddenGavender0 -
Subdomain SEO question (php script on domain + wordpress on subdomain)
Hi Moz fellows, I am doing my first website which is entirely .php scripted. But I would like to have a wordpress blog to create content and blog posts, while the .php side of the website is more for sales pages and user generated listings.The only way to do this is to install wordpress on a subdomain "blog.website.com" QUESTION: If all my keywords targeted content is on the subdomain's Wordpress blog, but all my guest blogging efforts link to my main website, which one will rank? The subdomain or the domain? I need the domain to rank well as it is a Fiverr-like script, so if tons of people land on my "blog.website.com" subdomain, they will not convert into users... Let me know if you have experience with such a scenario, and thank you all in advance for your help! -Marc
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | marcandre0 -
SEO: Subdomain vs folders
Hello, here's our situation:We have an ecommerce website, say www.example.com. For support, we use zendesk which offers a great platform that makes publishing FAQ and various resource articles very easy. We're torn between publishing these articles on our actual website, or publishing them via Zendesk. If we publish them on our website, the url would be something like:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yacpro13
www.example.com/articles/title_article.html On the other hand, if we publish them via zendesk, the url would look like:
support.example.com/articles/title_of_article We would like to publish them via Zendesk, however, we do no want to miss out on any SEO benefit, however marginal it may be. Doing it this way, the domain would have all of the ecommerce pages (product and category pages), and the subdomain would have ALL other types of pages (help articles and also policies, such as return policies, shipping info, etc etc). I know a long time ago, folders were preferred over subdomains for SEO, but things change all the time.Do you think setting up all the ecommerce pages on the domain, and all content pages on the subdomain, would be a lesser solution? Thanks.0 -
How do I fix my sitemap?
I have no idea how this happened, but our sitemap was http://www.kempruge.com/sitemap.xml, now it's http://www.kempruge.com/category/news/feed/ and google won't index it. It 404's. Obviously, I had to have done something wrong, but I don't know what and more importantly, I don't know how to find it in the backend of wordpress to change it. I tried a 301 redirect, but GWT still 404'd it. Any ideas? And, it's been like this for a few weeks, I've just neglected it, so I can't just reset the site without losing a lot of work. Thanks, Ruben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Looking for SEO & design help
Our website is www.mosquitocurtains.com built by an amateur (me). Traffic has been on the decline, slipping from enviable rankings, higher bounce rates. Of course I have a modest budget but can't seem to sift through those that say, "Pay us a bundle and cross your fingers that we're any good."
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kurtyj0 -
301 redirect from one domain to other domain, How To?
Hi, I need to redirect 150 products pages from http://www.filtrationmontreal.com/ to http://www.furnacefilterscanada.com/ How can I do this? Is there a tool or anything I can do to do 301 from one domain to another one? Can I use Google Webmaster Tool? Thank you, BigBlaze
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BigBlaze2050 -
What are Benefits to Develop Large HTML Sitemap?
I've developed very simple HTML sitemap on Vista Stores. Today, I was checking Magento extensions and come to know about such a great extension. That will help me to create such a large HTML sitemap on my website similar to following one. http://wiredsport.com/sitemap/ http://www.breathalyzers.com/sitemap/ http://slindi.com/sitemap/ Which is best structure for HTML sitemap & Which are benefits to develop big HTML sitemap with all pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit0