• majorAlexa

        See all notifications

        Skip to content
        Moz logo Menu open Menu close
        • Products
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Pro Home
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Home
          • STAT
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Home
          • Compare SEO Products
          • Moz Data
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis
          • Keyword Explorer
          • Link Explorer
          • Competitive Research
          • MozBar
          • More Free SEO Tools
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
          • SEO Learning Center
          • Moz Academy
          • MozCon
          • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers
          • Agency Solutions
          • Enterprise Solutions
          • Small Business Solutions
          • The Moz Story
          • New Releases
        • Log in
        • Log out
        • Products
          • Moz Pro

            Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

          • Moz Local

            Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

          • STAT

            SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

          • Moz API

            Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

          • Compare SEO Products

            See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

          • Moz Data

            Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

          Let your business shine with Listings AI
          Moz Local

          Let your business shine with Listings AI

          Learn more
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis

            Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

          • Keyword Explorer

            Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

          • Link Explorer

            Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

          • Competitive Research

            Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

          • MozBar

            See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

          • More Free SEO Tools

            Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
          Moz Pro

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

          Learn more
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO

            The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

          • SEO Learning Center

            Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

          • On-Demand Webinars

            Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

          • How-To Guides

            Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

          • Moz Academy

            Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

          • MozCon

            Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
          Moz API

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

          Find your plan
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers

            Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

          • Small Business Solutions

            Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

          • Agency Solutions

            Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

          • Enterprise Solutions

            Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

          • The Moz Story

            Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

          • New Releases

            Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

          Surface actionable competitive intel
          New Feature

          Surface actionable competitive intel

          Learn More
        • Log in
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Dashboard
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Dashboard
          • Moz Academy
        • Avatar
          • Moz Home
          • Notifications
          • Account & Billing
          • Manage Users
          • Community Profile
          • My Q&A
          • My Videos
          • Log Out

        The Moz Q&A Forum

        • Forum
        • Questions
        • My Q&A
        • Users
        • Ask the Community

        Welcome to the Q&A Forum

        Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

        1. Home
        2. Research & Trends
        3. White Hat / Black Hat SEO
        4. Separate domain name for a subdomain?

        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.

        Separate domain name for a subdomain?

        White Hat / Black Hat SEO
        3
        6
        1460
        Loading More Posts
        • Watching

          Notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread.

        • Not Watching

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread if category is not ignored.

        • Ignoring

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Do not show question in unread.

        • Oldest to Newest
        • Newest to Oldest
        • Most Votes
        Reply
        • Reply as question
        Locked
        This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
        • FinanceSite
          FinanceSite last edited by

          I just created a subdomain to help our main TLD website. I was wondering if it's smart to create a separate TLD for this subdomain and set up a forward and build links to it.

          Reason I was thinking about it because it would be easier for people to remember instead of typing in subdomain.maindomain.com.

          But, I don't want the main website to suffer, since the purpose of creating this subdomain and it's content is to help the main domain.

          Any inputs on this? Thank you.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Francisco_Meza
            Francisco_Meza @FinanceSite last edited by

            What I would probably do is build the whole thing out on the test.example.com and move the website from there to example.com.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • FinanceSite
              FinanceSite @Francisco_Meza last edited by

              We're using joomla. The new project is with joomla 2.5, and the old one is joomla 1.5, which will take a while to upgrade, because of all those plugins and some plugins not working with the brand new joomla 2.5. But, we can make the template very similar to each other. Some plugins don't work well with each other and the SEF plugin. Both sites are quite huge, not the average size site.

              Francisco_Meza 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • Francisco_Meza
                Francisco_Meza last edited by

                Would that screw up SEO if we forwarded that domain to www.mydomain.com/social or social.mydomain.com and built links to that?

                If it's a new subdomain without link juice, just transfer the files to a folder.

                I don't know if this will help out at all, but I'm putting it in here to demonstrate different softwares.

                1) http://www.shipoverseas.com/ MAGENTO

                2) http://www.shipoverseas.com/blog/ WORDPRESS

                These are two completely different softwares, but the menus are the same. As you stated, you have different menus. WHY? What softwares are you using and why not just "bridge" them with a plugin?

                1) Do you think it would be professional to have the social site there with a different look?

                NO. I think more people would stop and wonder if they are on the same website.

                I am looking forward to your response and would like to help

                FinanceSite 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • FinanceSite
                  FinanceSite last edited by

                  This isn't a blog. We have created a social site for our website. I know that a folder would be better in general, but for this we needed a different plugins, extensions, template, etc.

                  So, we have www.mydomain.com. We created a social.mydomain.com.

                  I guess, we could create a folder called "social" and put our social website under that.... in that case it would be called www.mydomain.com/social, and just put a link there from the main website.

                  The 2 sites have different menus and have different templates. We will be updating the main site template soon to the new template, but they are still different. But that isn't really the main issue.

                  If we had transferred all the files into a subfolder,

                  1. Do you think it would be professional to have the social site there with a different look?

                  2. We bought the domain name: mysitesocial.com. Would that screw up SEO if we forwarded that domain to www.mydomain.com/social or social.mydomain.com and built links to that?

                  I appreciate your help!

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • Copstead
                    Copstead last edited by

                    I guess my question would by, why are you creating a sub domain to help your  main domain?  All the effort you are putting into the sub domain, could be put into the main domain for more power.  This is why everyone suggests "www.example.com/blog" instead of "blog.example.com".

                    Depending on what you are doing, a sub domain or a different tld are going to have the same effect.  (I'm assuming your main domain is www.example.com)

                    I would suggest reading "Root Domains, Subdomains, Microsites and subfolders" from SEOmoz. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                    • 1 / 1
                    • First post
                      Last post

                    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.

                    • See all categories

                    Related Questions

                    • ShawnW

                      Sitewide nav linking from subdomain to main domain

                      I'm working on a site that was heavily impacted by the September core update. You can see in the attached image the overall downturn in organic in 2019 with a larger hit in September bringing Google Organic traffic down around 50%. There are many concerning incoming links from 50-100 obviously spammy porn-related websites to just plain old unnatural links. There was no effort to purchase any links so it's unclear how these are created. There are also 1,000s of incoming external links (most without no-follow and similar/same anchor text) from yellowpages.com. I'm trying to get this fixed with them and have added it to the disavow in the meantime. I'm focusing on internal links as well with a more specific question: If I have a sitewide header on a blog located at blog.domain.com that has links to various sections on domain.com without no-follow tags, is this a possible source of the traffic drops and algorithm impact? The header with these links is on every page of the blog on the previously mentioned subdomain. **More generally, any advice as to how to turn this around? ** The website is in the travel vertical. 90BJKyc

                      White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ShawnW
                      0
                    • MuhammadQasimAttari

                      Keyword Appears In Top Level Domain

                      If i add a keyword in my domain so it will help me or not in search ranking.

                      White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MuhammadQasimAttari
                      0
                    • kamishah

                      Is domain redirection a good method for SEO?

                      I have a question and need suggestion from you guys. I’ve searched for my question on Google but don’t get exact information what I need. Maybe I can’t search perfectly.
                      Let me explain my confusion:
                      I’ve checked backlink profile of a website. He is not using his main domain while doing comment backlink. He put his another domain while doing comment backlink. The another domain redirect to the main domain. Why he use another domain while doing comment backlink?
                      Is it helpful to get better rank on Google? For example: My Main Domain = solutionfall.com
                      Another Domain= xyz.com (It redirect to solutionfall.com)
                      He just uses xyz.com while doing comment backlink. Thank You so much  

                      White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | kamishah
                      1
                    • Joseph-Vodafone

                      Sub Domain rel=canonical to Main Domain

                      Just a quick one, i have the following example scenario. Main Domain: http://www.test.com Sub Domain: http://sub.test.com What I am wondering is I can add onto the sub domain a rel=canonical to the main domain. I dont want to de-index the whole sub domain just a few pages are duplicated from the main site. Is it easier to de-index the individual sub domain pages or add the rel=canonical back to the main domain. Much appreciated Joseph

                      White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Joseph-Vodafone
                      0
                    • RizwanAkbar

                      Dfferent domains on same ip address ranking for the same keywords, is it possible?

                      Hello, I want to ask if two domains which r hosted on the same server and have the same ip ( usually happens with shared hosts ) tries to rank for the same keywords in google, does the same ip affects them or not.

                      White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RizwanAkbar
                      0
                    • Sir

                      Why does expired domains still work for SEO?

                      Hi everyone I’ve been doing an experiment during more than 1 year to try to see if its possible to buy expired domains. I know its considered black hat, but like I said, I wanted to experiment, that is what SEO is about. What I did was to buy domains that just expired, immediately added content on a WP setup, filled it with relevant content to the expired domain and then started building links to other relevant sites from these domains.( Here is a pretty good post on how to do, and I did it in a similar way. http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2297718/How-to-Build-Links-Using-Expired-Domains ) This is nothing new and SEO:s has been doing it for along time. There is a lot of rumors around the SEO world that the domains becomes worthless after they expire. But after trying it out during more than 1 year and with about 50 different expired domains I can conclude that it DOES work, 100% of the time. Some of the domains are of course better than others, but I cannot see any signs of the expired domains or the sites i link to has been punished by Google. The sites im liking to ranks great ONLY with those links 🙂 So to the question: WHY does Google allow this? They should be able to see that a domain has been expired right? And if its expired, why dont they just “delete” all the links to that domain after the expiry date? Google is well aware of this problem so what is stopping them? Is there any one here that know how this works technically?

                      White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Sir
                      0
                    • Ryguy87

                      Are expired domains for Godaddy backlinks already reset by googel ?

                      When does Google actual reset backlinks to a domain. If i am buying expired domains from godaddy action for linking purpose am i wasting my time.Also if that the case whats the point of buying expired domains with many links pointing to them. If the backlinks to the expired domain still show up under my Google webmaster tool window does that mean Google counts that link?

                      White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Ryguy87
                      0
                    • phatride

                      Can you block backlinks from another domain

                      Wondering if this is somehow possible. A site got hacked and created a /data folder with hundreds of .php files that are web pages selling all sorts of stuff. We deleted the /data folder and blocked Google from indexing it. Just noticed in Webmaster Tools that the site has 35,000 backlinks from other sites that got hacked with the same way. Is there a way to block these sites? I am assuming there isn't, but wanted to see if anyone ran into the same problem. It is a wordpress site is that helps.

                      White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | phatride
                      0

                    Get started with Moz Pro!

                    Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                    Start my free trial
                    Products
                    • Moz Pro
                    • Moz Local
                    • Moz API
                    • Moz Data
                    • STAT
                    • Product Updates
                    Moz Solutions
                    • SMB Solutions
                    • Agency Solutions
                    • Enterprise Solutions
                    • Digital Marketers
                    Free SEO Tools
                    • Domain Authority Checker
                    • Link Explorer
                    • Keyword Explorer
                    • Competitive Research
                    • Brand Authority Checker
                    • Local Citation Checker
                    • MozBar Extension
                    • MozCast
                    Resources
                    • Blog
                    • SEO Learning Center
                    • Help Hub
                    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                    • How-to Guides
                    • Moz Academy
                    • API Docs
                    About Moz
                    • About
                    • Team
                    • Careers
                    • Contact
                    Why Moz
                    • Case Studies
                    • Testimonials
                    Get Involved
                    • Become an Affiliate
                    • MozCon
                    • Webinars
                    • Practical Marketer Series
                    • MozPod
                    Connect with us

                    Contact the Help team

                    Join our newsletter
                    Moz logo
                    © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                    • Accessibility
                    • Terms of Use
                    • Privacy

                    Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.