Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Moving from a subdomain to subfolder
-
Hello,
I am currently working on a site that is leveraging multiple subdomains. I wanted to see if it suggested to migrate them into subfolders. One of the subdomains is a .shop and the other is location specific.
Thanks,
T
-
Hi There,
- Sub-domains are treated as a separate entity now, and they don't add to SEO value of the main domain.
- Any links within the subdomain to the main domain are treated as external links.
- Since links are coming from an external domain but the same IP, this may be treated a low-quality backlink for the main domain, though people are divided over this but it can neutral to negative impact instead of being positive. As search engines would consider this as unnatural linking.
- Sub-Folders are treated as part of the domain and pass all the SEO value when connecting internally.
Here is a response from Rand Fishkin to a similar question
Subfolders are the way to go, but they're hard to do for a lot of organizations. Many CMS' (like Hubspot) make it quite challenging to host a Wordpress installation on a subfolder, but subdomains are pretty easy. Hence, when choosing where to host a blog or a separate content section, many folks go with the easier route rather than the one that requires a lot of technical effort and webdev/engineering time.
However, that doesn't mean that they're not losing out - I'd wager that all of those companies would see a bump if they moved their blogs to a subfolder of the same domain. We see this in example after example when sites invest in it, and you can see plenty of folks discussing their own experiences in the comments of the Moz post you linked to.
I hope this helps, feel free to ask further questions and respond to answer.
Regards,
Vijay
-
Normally I would advocate moving whatever possible to a subfolder, but I'm a bit confused by the .shop. Did you mean shop.mywebsite.com?
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
-
Subdomain 403 error
Hi Everyone, A crawler from our SEO tool detects a 403 error from a link from our main domain to a a couple of subdomains. However, these subdomains are perfect accessibly. What could be the problem? Is this error caused by the server, the crawlbot or something else? I would love to hear your thoughts.
Technical SEO | | WeAreDigital_BE
Jens0 -
Robots.txt in subfolders and hreflang issues
A client recently rolled out their UK business to the US. They decided to deploy with 2 WordPress installations: UK site - https://www.clientname.com/uk/ - robots.txt location: UK site - https://www.clientname.com/uk/robots.txt
Technical SEO | | lauralou82
US site - https://www.clientname.com/us/ - robots.txt location: UK site - https://www.clientname.com/us/robots.txt We've had various issues with /us/ pages being indexed in Google UK, and /uk/ pages being indexed in Google US. They have the following hreflang tags across all pages: We changed the x-default page to .com 2 weeks ago (we've tried both /uk/ and /us/ previously). Search Console says there are no hreflang tags at all. Additionally, we have a robots.txt file on each site which has a link to the corresponding sitemap files, but when viewing the robots.txt tester on Search Console, each property shows the robots.txt file for https://www.clientname.com only, even though when you actually navigate to this URL (https://www.clientname.com/robots.txt) you’ll get redirected to either https://www.clientname.com/uk/robots.txt or https://www.clientname.com/us/robots.txt depending on your location. Any suggestions how we can remove UK listings from Google US and vice versa?0 -
Are subdomains a good seo strategy for a multistore e-commerce?
Hi there I'm wondering what is the best strategy to work with multi-stores on magento: to use or not to use subdomains? Suppose we have the www.website.com and we configure it to use multistore. The url base will not have the store id on it so it will not be like www.website.com/store1 and www.website.com/store2. It will simply rely on the user session so if we have two categories for each store it will acces using: www.website.com/category1 (for store 1) www.website.com/category2 (for store 2) The homepage will allways be set on www.website.com so we should have a single page for several "home pages" (depending on the user session / store he is accessing). I guess this is not a good option if we want to rank for different keywords (for each store). So I was wondering if it is a good solution to set: store1.website.com store2.website.com This way we have 2 "home pages" each one able to rank. Does it make sense? Is it good or bad for seo? Another option I was considering was: www.website.com (for store 1) store2.website.com (for store 2) store3.website.com (for store 3) www.website.com/blog (for blog) Can this work? Good or bad for seo? best regards
Technical SEO | | qgairsoft0 -
Reverse proxy a successful blog from subdomain to subfolder?
I have an ecommerce site that we'll call confusedseo.com. I created a WordPress blog and CNAME'd it to blog.confusedseo.com. Since then, the blog has earned a PageRank of 3 and a decent amount of organic traffic. I am considering a reverse proxy to forward blog.confusedseo.com to confusedseo.com/blog/. As I understand it, this will greatly help the "link juice" of the root domain. However, I'm concerned about any potential harm done to the existing SEO value of the blog. What, if anything, should I be doing to ensure that the reverse proxy doesn't hurt my "juice" rather than help it?
Technical SEO | | bedbugsupply0 -
Http to https - is a '302 object moved' redirect losing me link juice?
Hi guys, I'm looking at a new site that's completely under https - when I look at the http variant it redirects to the https site with "302 object moved" within the code. I got this by loading the http and https variants into webmaster tools as separate sites, and then doing a 'fetch as google' across both. There is some traffic coming through the http option, and as people start linking to the new site I'm worried they'll link to the http variant, and the 302 redirect to the https site losing me ranking juice from that link. Is this a correct scenario, and if so, should I prioritise moving the 302 to a 301? Cheers, Jez
Technical SEO | | jez0000 -
Correct linking to the /index of a site and subfolders: what's the best practice? link to: domain.com/ or domain.com/index.html ?
Dear all, starting with my .htaccess file: RewriteEngine On
Technical SEO | | inlinear
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.inlinear.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://inlinear.com/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.html
RewriteRule ^(.)index.html$ http://inlinear.com/ [R=301,L] 1. I redirect all URL-requests with www. to the non www-version...
2. all requests with "index.html" will be redirected to "domain.com/" My questions are: A) When linking from a page to my frontpage (home) the best practice is?: "http://domain.com/" the best and NOT: "http://domain.com/index.php" B) When linking to the index of a subfolder "http://domain.com/products/index.php" I should link also to: "http://domain.com/products/" and not put also the index.php..., right? C) When I define the canonical ULR, should I also define it just: "http://domain.com/products/" or in this case I should link to the definite file: "http://domain.com/products**/index.php**" Is A) B) the best practice? and C) ? Thanks for all replies! 🙂
Holger0 -
Should we move our documentation off subdomain?
Background: We have a popular open source e-commerce platform at http://spreecommerce.com. Right now the documentation is on http://guides.spreecommerce.com. We have "edge" documentation (for stuff that's not yet released) on http://edgeguides.spreecommerce.com but since it's largely duplicative we've told google not to index any of the edge stuff (via robots.txt). Question: Should we consider moving the guides under the main website under /docs or something like this? There's a ton of great content that people often read to learn more about the platform. Seems like we might be diluting our juice a bit to have it on a separate domain. WDYT?
Technical SEO | | schof0 -
Blogs are best when hosted on domain, subdomain, or...?
I’ve heard the it is a best practice to host your blog within your site. I’ve also heard it’s best to put it on a subdomain. What do you believe is the best home for your blog and why?
Technical SEO | | vernonmack0