Adding academic content for a school in a sub folder, sub domain, or different site?
-
I manage the website for a school and we are planning to put our academic policies/student handbook online. I’m curious if there is any SEO value to including this content in our main website?
This isn’t stuff that anyone is going to link to externally (student orientation procedures, how to enroll/drop credits, academic warning policies etc) and there would be limited internal linking as well (someone looking for course information doesn’t want to see this type of stuff).
I’m not interested in SERPs for this content, but I’m wondering if the additional content could help the site’s SEO overall? It is naturally rich with ‘academic’ keywords and the only websites that use this type of content are universities.
On a similar note, I need to put up student profiles for potential employers to view. Like the policies, this is not priority content for someone visiting our website, but it is still keyword-rich content, which would add to the overall 'size' of the site.
Should this stuff go in a folder, a subdomain, or in a different location altogether?
-
The more content that ends up ranking for it's own topical focus, the better the whole site does - it all gets a lift. The critical key though is topical relationships. If the content becomes too diverse across a site, it can weaken the site's topical consistency. The exception to this concept is if the site is intended to be a "general information" site covering a vast range of topics. However even in that case, when a site gets too diverse, it becomes increasingly more difficult to get individual topics to rank because only so much time and energy can go into supporting any individual topic.
-
Thanks - great answers.
Beyond the technical considerations, is there an SEO benefit to having a larger site with more content, especially if the content is keyword-rich?
Again, I'm not looking for this additional content to rank in search results (students who want it can navigate from the home page themselves) but does the additional content help the overall domain credibility/authority?
-
If the information contained in the academic policies is not needing to be kept confidential, and if that information is valuable to students (or even perhaps people considering becoming students, or parents of existing or potential students), then for those reasons, it would be legitimate to make it accessible from the main site without them having to go hunt for it.
Given those reasons, I believe it would be perfectly valid to have it be crawlable and indexable by search engines.
I would also group it all together in a dedicated location (such as a sub-folder hierarchically) with it's own sectional sub-navigation because it's no different than any other quality content - grouping topically focused similar content is proper for user experience.
As for the student profiles that's a completely different issue. This one involves the reality that it is most likely most student profiles are going to have very little depth of unique content. I assume students will fill out the content themselves. That leaves the door open for all sorts of good, bad and ugly.
Further, if there is some reason for students, faculty or other staff to be able to access it without having to sign in to a secure area, that is not a reason to have it found in search engines.
There are privacy concerns (so a secure area is then in fact, the best option if that's the case).
Most likely being "thin" or even some low quality or perceived duplicate content, if it's not hidden behind a log-int, it really should be blocked from search engines in a robots.txt file or use noindex,nofollow meta tags. (no valid reason to do noindex,follow).
Having said all that, I would suggest it could just as well go in a sub-folder of the main site or a separate sub-domain. Since it will be blocked from indexation/crawling, either would work.
One final reason it shouldn't be indexed or followed is as students come and go, that way you don't need to worry about a "301" redirect system to deal with them.
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
-
Are on-site content carousel bad for SEO?
Hi, I didn't find an answer to my question in the Forum. I attached an example of content carousel, this is what I'm talking about. I understand that Google has no problem anymore with tabbed contents and accordeons (collapsible contents). But now I'm wondering about textual carousels. I'm not talking about an image slider, I'm talking about texts. Is text carousel harder to read for Google than plain text or tabs? Of course, i'm not talking about a carousel using Flash. Let's say the code is proper... Thanks for your help. spfra5
Technical SEO | | Alviau0 -
HTACESS Redirect Root Domain To Sub-Directory
Hi Guys, I posted on another post here http://moz.com/community/q/site-migration-between-cms-s about an issue I am hleping out on with a client about migrating between Joomla and Wordpress. He wants to keep some of the old links live on the Joomla installation (I have advised that Google won't be able to crawl these) he wants the new wordpress installation to run on www.site.com/customise (a subdirectory) I have researched this and can't see any issues with indexing or page authority as it's just like having an index.php on the end of every URL. So basically if you go to www.site.com it will be redirected to www.site.com/customise. Will there be any issues, will go frown upon this in anway? Kind Regards Neil
Technical SEO | | nezona0 -
301 redirect of one site version to new domain
Hello all. I today have domain.com that has 10 language versions and the structure is by folders: domain.com/ru/
Technical SEO | | Gregos
domain.com/pl/ etc. Soon I plan redesign,new CMS and I plan to register 9 new ccTLDs. My question is: Can I 301 redirect domain.com/ru/ to domain.ru without having some bad effect on domain.com? I mean,the main domain,com is not going to be affected by permanent redirect of one url to completly new domain right?0 -
Trying to get google to know my site is a magazine site is this wrong
Hi, i have put a line to describe what my site is at the top of my site and i want to know if this is wrong or not. We have dropped frok being number one in google for lifestyle magazine to now number seven. Before we had to redo our site we were number one and then we dropepd to around number four when we finished the site and now we are number seven and i need to try and get back up there. To help google know we are a lifestyle magazine i have put a line at the top of the site and i want to know if this looks out of place and if i should take it down. i need advice on how to get google to know we are a lifestyle magazine and get back in the top five of google my site is www.in2town.co.uk any help would be great
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Geotargeting duplicate content to different regions - href and canonical tag confusion
If you duplicate content onto a sub-folder for say a new US geotargeted site (to target kw spelling differences) and, in addition to GWT geotargeting settings, implement the 'Canonical' and 'Hreflang' tags on these new pages to show G different region and language version (en-us). Then does the original/main site similar pages also need to have canonical and href tags ? The main/original sites page I don't really want to target a specific country (although existing signals (hosting etc) will be UK (primary target of main site) but pages show up in other country searches too (which we want). Im presuming fine to leave the original/main site as it currently is although wording in google blog/webmaster central articles etc are a bit confusing hence why im asking for anyone elses opinion/input on this. Also is there are any benefit (or just best practice) to use 'www.example.com/en-us/...' in the subdirectory URL as opposed to just 'www.example.com/us/' many thanks in advance to any commentators 🙂
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
301 from old domain to new domain
Hi, I need to create a 301 redirect for all internal pages located on organic7thheaven.com to the homepage of our new site at http://www.7thheavennaturals.com/ Currently internal pages of the old site such as the following are returning a page not found www.organic7thheaven.com/products/deepcleansing/miraclemud.asp Can anyone help me in setting up a .htaccess file for this problem please? Thanks
Technical SEO | | MJMarketing0 -
Are sub domain names a good idea
Hi i have read some info that says that sub domain names help with increase traffic but i am not sure if this is true. I would like to know if i should use a subdomain name to increase the size of my website and increase traffic. I have also read that it is a good idea to put a blog on a subdomain name. Can anyone share their experience and let me know if they have found that sub domains are a good idea
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
.CA site same as .com site - are both necessary?
Dear Friend, We representa a major national brand in the auto care industry, and they have locations in both US and Canada. There is a primary content site at .com that we have duplicated at .ca. We are hosting the .ca site on a separate IP on a server in Canada - but by in large it is the same site. (there are some minor changes we made to change US English to Canadian English - though minor. When we search Google.ca we generally see strong search results for the .com site, but rarely, if ever any evidence of rankings for the .ca site. The .com site was launched several years ago about 18 months before the .ca site. Why doesn't Google.ca show the .ca site? Is this an issue of duplicate content, and Google.ca simply shows the .com version which it knew about first? Are we wasting our time, money and efforts having both? Thanks, Tim ps. this isn't about location. We use a separate site to locate local shops, and have coordinated that well with Google Places, and when looking for local auto care - we do well in both US and Canada. The sites described above are largetl content sites.
Technical SEO | | lunavista-comm0