Better SEO Option, 1 Site 3 Subdomains or 4 Separate Sites?
-
Hey Mozzers,
I'm working with a client who wants to redo their web presence. They have a a main website for the umbrella and then 3 divisions which have their own website as well.
My question is: Is it better to have the main site on the main domain and then have the 3 separate sites be subdomains? Or 4 different domains with a linking structure to tie them all together?
To my understanding option 1 would include high traffic for 1 domain and option 2 would be building Page Authority by having 4 different sites linking to each other?
My guess would be option 2, only if all 4 sites start getting relevant authority to make the links of value. But right out of the gates option 1 might be more beneficial.
A little advice/clarification would be great!
-
If you already have the 4 sites running on different domains, each has different content, and you linking sparingly and appropriately between the domains, I'd call it a toss up as to whether it's better to keep them separate or bring them together. Have you looked into buddypress for managing the separate domains within a single CMS? I think it can handle that.
-
Hey Tom,
Thanks for answering our question. Basically our sites are a parent company/ministry, a kids mentoring/tutoring ministry, a medical center ministry, and a food pantry ministry.
They all have their own domain and website currently but need to be updated. We are looking at combining the sites administrative functionality to allow for authors of each individual site as well as super authors for all sites.
So, the question is, should each site continue to have its own domain as they each will have unique content or should they be setup with subdomains becasue they are all apart of the same network.
Here is an example of a website setup very similar --> http://www.interlochen.org/
Thank you for further clarification/time on this matter.
-
I think the main question should be what these 3 'sub-sites' are.
Are they individual brands/businesses that can stand-alone and offer unique content on each domain? Do they cover different industries/niches?
If the answer to either of those is no, then I'd keep it all on the same domain. Option 2 runs the risk of looking like a link network (existing solely to boost up the main website), which, if discovered, could heavily penalise your website.
Even if that was to be avoided, I'd still recommend keeping all of your content on one domain, unless the other sites are completely different. This is because that any content you do produce that may accrue links or social shares will go straight to the main domain - that direct link will be the strongest SEO signal out of the lot. Building sub-sites just to blog/build content to accrue links to the main site is pointless unless those sites get their own links - in which case, why not have that content on your site anyway, in the form of a subdomain or sub-folder?
I'd only consider splitting the sites up if they target very different industries/niches. If they do, they will need to be fleshed out with considerable content to avoid looking like a link-network.
Simply creating microsites to create content that links to the main site just seems pointless, particularly if that content can be hosted on your domain, which would then get all the links/social signals anyway.
Hope this helps.
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
-
Will changing category URLs on site hurt SEO?
Hi Moz Community, We're looking to replace some URLs on our Wordpress site and I want to make sure we won't hurt our SEO with the changes. The site is lushpalm.com When we originally launched our site we created pages (which are linked to in our main menu) to essentially display our categories. We did this as a workaround because we didn’t like the URL to have the word “category” in it. Now we would like to make some changes and we want to make sure we’re not going to hurt our SEO in any way by accidentally duplicating content or otherwise. We want to fix our structure and now link to our category pages from our main menu, BUT we want to change the URL of the category page so that it doesn’t have “category” in it, essentially renaming it the name of the page currently linked to in our main menu. So basically, the category lushpalm.com/category/surf-trips, would be renamed with the URL lushpalm.com/surf-trips and the current page that is at lushpalm.com/surf-trips would be therefore replaced. My questions are: If we did this, would that mean that the previous “lushpalm.com/category/surf-trips” would cease to exist? Or is there some imprint of that out on the web? And if it is then would it re-direct to the new page? Would replacing the current page URL with a category hurt our current SEO in any way? Would this change cause any duplicate pages somehow? Thanks so much for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TaraLP1 -
SEO on Jobs sites: how to deal with expired listings with "Google for Jobs" around
Dear community, When dealing with expired job offers on jobs sites from a SEO perspective, most practitioners recommend to implement 301 redirects to category pages in order to keep the positive ranking signals of incoming links. Is it necessary to rethink this recommendation with "Google for Jobs" is around? Google's recommendations on how to handle expired job postings does not include 301 redirects. "To remove a job posting that is no longer available: Remove the job posting from your sitemap. Do one of the following: Note: Do NOT just add a message to the page indicating that the job has expired without also doing one of the following actions to remove the job posting from your sitemap. Remove the JobPosting markup from the page. Remove the page entirely (so that requesting it returns a 404 status code). Add a noindex meta tag to the page." Will implementing 301 redirects the chances to appear in "Google for Jobs"? What do you think?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | grnjbs07175 -
When Mobile and Desktop sites have the same page URLs, how should I handle the 'View Desktop Site' link on a mobile site to ensure a smooth crawl?
We're about to roll out a mobile site. The mobile and desktop URLs are the same. User Agent determines whether you see the desktop or mobile version of the site. At the bottom of the page is a 'View Desktop Site' link that will present the desktop version of the site to mobile user agents when clicked. I'm concerned that when the mobile crawler crawls our site it will crawl both our entire mobile site, then click 'View Desktop Site' and crawl our entire desktop site as well. Since mobile and desktop URLs are the same, the mobile crawler will end up crawling both mobile and desktop versions of each URL. Any tips on what we can do to make sure the mobile crawler either doesn't access the desktop site, or that we can let it know what is the mobile version of the page? We could simply not show the 'View Desktop Site' to the mobile crawler, but I'm interested to hear if others have encountered this issue and have any other recommended ways for handling it. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | merch_zzounds0 -
Cookieless subdomains Vs SEO
We have one .com that has all our unique content and then 25 other ccltd sites that are translated versions of the .com for each country we operate in. They are not linked together but we have href lang'd it all together. We now want to serve up all static content of our global website (26 local country sites, .com, .co.uk, .se, etc) from one cookie-less subdomain. Benefit is speed improvement. The question is whether from an SEO perspective, can all static content come from static.domain.com or should we do one for each ccltd where it would come form static.domain.xx (where xx is localised to the domain in question)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aires-fb770 -
Site Speed, is it worth it from a SEO point?
Hi, I understand a site which loads quickly is greater for the user but how does site speed affect rankings? I mean does Google log the speed pages load, the faster it loads the better the signal? So say I have a page which loads in 1.5sec would Google 'Rate' the site better if it loaded in say 0.8sec? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | followuk0 -
SEO structure question: Better to add similar (but distinct) content to multiple unique pages or make one unique page?
Not sure which approach would be more SEO ranking friendly? As we are a music store, we do instrument repairs on all instruments. Currently, I don't have much of any content about our repairs on our website... so I'm considering a couple different approaches of adding this content: Let's take Trumpet Repair for example: 1. I can auto write to the HTML body (say, at the end of the body) of our 20 Trumpets (each having their own page) we have for sale on our site, the verbiage of all repairs, services, rates, and other repair related detail. In my mind, the effect of this may be that: This added information does uniquely pertain to Trumpets only (excludes all other instrument repair info), which Google likes... but it would be duplicate Trumpet repair information over 20 pages.... which Google may not like? 2. Or I could auto write the repair details to the Trumpet's Category Page - either in the Body, Header, or Footer. This definitely reduces the redundancy of the repeating Trumpet repair info per Trumpet page, but it also reduces each Trumpet pages content depth... so I'm not sure which out weighs the other? 3. Write it to both category page & individual pages? Possibly valuable because the information is anchoring all around itself and supporting... or is that super duplication? 4. Of course, create a category dedicated to repairs then add a subcategory for each instrument and have the repair info there be completely unique to that page...- then in the body of each 20 Trumpets, tag an internal link to Trumpet Repair? Any suggestions greatly appreciated? Thanks, Kevin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kevin_McLeish0 -
SEO for an exponentially growing site?
Hey Mozers! I was having a quick chat with a friend the other day on doing SEO for a site that grows in page size at an exponential rate and was just wondering how you would go about optimizing it? The example that we used would be a site that allowed users to upload videos and then have people vote on two videos against each other. So, if there are 100 uploaded videos and each of them are pared up with the other 99 to create a unique voting/battle page which has it's own unique URL, the site can get very large, VERY quickly. Meaning if just one more video is uploaded there would be How exactly would you go about optimizing the site? My biggest area of confusion would be generating sitemaps. I'm aware of best practices with large sitemaps (i.e. having a sitemap of sitemaps, not going over 50k in entries per sitemap etc..) But, how would you go about creating the sitemaps for this website if it's growing at an exponential rate, if at all? If you have any other questions feel free to ask and I'll clarify it. Thanks! 😃 **TL;DR How would you optimize a site that grows at an exponential rate? **
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JordanChoo0 -
Site navigation menu in head of page for SEO
We are considering expanding our site navigation menu (horizontal) at the top of our pages. However, once implemented, this would include around 30-40 links at the top of the page; before the content of the page. How much effect (good/bad) would this have on SEO? Are their any other options? (perhaps rendering the menu after the main content with CSS)? Any thoughts, suggestions or ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Peter2640