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.
Subdomain for ticketing of a client website (how to solve SEO problems caused by the subdomain/domain relationship)
-
We have a client in need of a ticketing solution for their domain (let's call it www.domain.com) which is on Wordpress - as is our custom ticket solution. However, we want to have full control of the ticketing, since we manage it for them - so we do not want to build it inside their original Wordpress install.
Our proposed solution is to build it on tickets.domain.com. This will exist only for selling and issuing the tickets.
The question is, is there a way to do this without damaging their bounce rate and SEO scores?
Since customers will come to www.domain.com, then click the ticketing tab and land on tickets.domain.com, Google will see this as a bounce. In reality, customers will not notice the difference as we will clone the look and feel of domain.comShould we perhaps have the canonical URL of tickets.domain.com point to www.domain.com? And also, can we install Webmaster Tools for tickets.domain.com and set the preferred domain as www.domain.com?
Are these possible solutions to the problem, or not - and if not, does anyone else have a viable solution?
Thank you so much for the help.
-
Hi Adam,
Are the ticket pages on the sub domain the same as the event pages on the main domain except with the ticketing system included? If yes it would make more sense to canonical each event ticketing page back to the same event page so: tickets.domain.com/event1 -> domain.com/event1.
If the ticketing pages are not meant to be indexed at all then I would put the robots no index tag on them also (or a robots file on the whole subdomain) and keep an eye on GWT to make sure none of them creep in. Canonical tags are a 'recommendation' not a rule so if your plans are for these pages to not be indexed at all best to ensure that as completely as possible.
-
Hey Leo!
Thanks for the taking the time to answer me. I am going to set this up exactly as you recommend.
1. I will install the same GA code from domain.com on tickets.domain.com
2. Do you think I need to set the canonical URL on the various ticketing pages all back to the main domain?
e.g. tickets.domain.com ---> canonical to domain.com
e.g. tickets.domain.com/event1 ---> canonical to domain.com
e.g. tickets.domain.com/event2 ---> canonical to domain.com
e.g. tickets.domain.com/event3 ---> canonical to domain.com
and so on?3. We did make all the header links of tickets.domain.com point straight back to their counterpart on domain.com.
Does this seem like I basically got it all correct?
Thanks again
Adam -
HI,
If technically that is the best solution for your needs then a couple of things to keep in mind:
1. If you are using Universal Analytics subdomain tracking is included by default so if you put the same analytics code on your subdomain pages then you should not be seeing any 'bounces' - google should be able to figure this out also.
2. You can install GWT for the subdomain also. I dont think you can set the preferred domain for a subdomain setup but you can use GWT to monitor issues and make sure that duplicate pages for the subdomain are not getting indexed.
3. To avoid indexing of the subdomain pages (which I assume you don't want) you could canonical them to their equivalent on the www domain. You could also meta robots no-index them all. If they creep in anyway you can use GWT to remove them.
If the subdomain is a complete clone and the experience is seamless then why not make all links on the subdomain go back to the www domain pages. That way the only pages available on the subdomain would be the ticketing pages and the rest would be on the www as normal.
Hope it 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
-
Is there any way to report a website that is not complying with webmaster guidelines to Google?
Like how we can "suggest an edit" in Google Business Listings, is there any way to report Google about the webmaster guidelines violation?
Local Website Optimization | | Alagurajeshwaran0 -
I have a client in Australia that is going to set up a website that is in Chinese to service their Asian customer base (Indonesia, Singapore, HK, China). What domain should they use?
They're website is hosted on a .com.au domain. Should they host their Chinese language pages under their current domain (.com.au) using a subdirectory (i.e. /asia) or should they use another separate domain that they own that is a regular .com? Or does it really not matter?
Local Website Optimization | | 100yards1 -
Country/Language combination in subdirectory URL
Hello, We are a multi country/multi lingual (English, Arabic) website. We are following a subdirectory structure to separate and geotarget the country/language combinations. Currently our english and arabic urls are the same: For UAE: example.com/ae (English Site) For Saudi Arabic: example.com/sa (Saudi Arabia) We want to separate the English and Arabic language URLs and I wanted to know if there is any preference as to which kind of URL structure we should go with : example.com/ae-en (Country-Language) example.com/en-ae (Language-Country) example.com/ae/en (Country/Language) Is there any logic to deciding how to structure the language/country combinations or is is entirely a matter of personal preference. Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | EcommRulz0 -
Improving SEO with no blog
I have a client who understands the value of content for SEO - however getting them to provide some content has proven an impossible task. I've tried every way to make it easy for them. I've offered to come over to their office myself and see if I can just take 15 minutes of their time and record their answers to a few questions. The response is that's a great idea, we'll set up a time...and no time is ever good. So I've thought, what can I do without them? Unfortunately, their industry is so technical and so niche I'd need to have a law degree to even begin to understand exactly what they do, and as they are in law it's probably better to have no content than content with something even slightly incorrect in it. For now, all I can do is summarize and share news from a government website to their social media accounts. It's not highly effective. Their on-page SEO for the main site is completely optimized. I've placed them in every free listing I can possibly find - both industry and local sites. I have them update me on any local events, conferences and/or trade shows they attend for possible backlinks. What else can I do? I suppose I fear that if I can't provide them any additional results, they will stop seeing the value in SEO services, and I'd have a hard time disagreeing as I can't think of what else to do for them. Thanks for any help!
Local Website Optimization | | everestagency1 -
Local SEO - Adding the location to the URL
Hi there, My client has a product URL: www.company.com/product. They are only serving one state in the US. The existing URL is ranking in a position between 8-15 at the moment for local searches. Would it be interesting to add the location to the URL in order to get a higher position or is it dangerous as we have our rankings at the moment. Is it really giving you an advantage that is worth the risk? Thank you for your opinions!
Local Website Optimization | | WeAreDigital_BE
Sander0 -
Sub domain for geo pages
Hello Group! I have been tossing the idea in my head of using sub domains for the geo pages for each of my clients. For example: one of my clients is a lawyer in a very competitive Atlanta market http://bestdefensega.com. Can I set his geo page to woodstock.bestdefensega.com? Is this a viable option? Will I get penalized? Thoughts or suggestions always appreciated! Thanks in Advance
Local Website Optimization | | underdogmike0 -
Same blog, multiple languages. Got SEO concerns.
Hi, My company runs a small blog in swedish. Most of the visitors are our customers/prospects. We will write about generic concepts regarding our business and the occasional company news story. However, I have quite a few ideas for articles that could be interesting to a lot of people, and I'm tempted to write those in english for better exposure. I would love it if that exposure could boost my companies authority. How should I go on about this? Can I somehow tell search engines that a certain part or page of the site is in another language? Should I translate our entire site to english and post the english post in a separate blog feed? Any insight is welcome. Thanks in advance!
Local Website Optimization | | Mest0 -
Does building multiple websites hurt you seo wise? Good or bad strategy?
HI,rategy. So I spoke to a local Colorado seo company and they suggested to find whatever keywords is the most searched under my GWT's and put .com behind it and build other sites for other keywords. I was curious about this type of strategy. Does this work? This seo guy said I could just get a DBA bank account and such for each domain name etc. I am not wanting to mislead anyone, but I am curious if for the sake of promoting other services, if creating other websites with partial and EMD's are worthwhile? Another issue I worry about is if I put my companies phone number, then next thing you know there is 3 or 4 sites that use that same phone number. To me this does not build trust with Google. But being I am learning, maybe this is a common strategy, or doomed from the start. Just curious what you think. Would you build other sites to try and rank for other services? Or keep one sites and maximize it? Thank you for your thoughts. I just do not want to pay $3000 per site if it will hurt not help.
Local Website Optimization | | Berner0