Microsite Subfolder URL vs Redirected TLD for best SEO

[IT-dmd]

We have a healthcare microsite that is in a subfolder off a hospital site.They wanted to keep their TLD and redirect from the subfolder URL. Even with good on-page SEO, link building, etc., they're not organically ranking as well as we think they should be.

ie. They have http://our-business-name.com vs. http://hospital.org/our-business-name/

For best SEO value, are they better off having only their homepage as TLD and not redirect any interior pages but display as subfolder URL?

ie. Keep homepage as http://our-business-name.com but use hospital urls for interior pages http://hospital.org/our-business-name/about/

Or is there some better way to handle this?

[OlegKorneitchouk]

What is your goal here? What is on the businessname.com? What is in hospital.com/businessname/?

Off the bat, I think canonicals will be involved.

[IT-dmd]

The goal with adding as a subdirectory off the hospital site rather than as a stand-alone site was to gain the benefit of the weight of the hospital seo which ranks on the 1st page of search for more than 1,500 keywords.

The healthcare site has stiff competition with a similarly named local business that one of the drs previously worked for. He has now created this new business, which is affiliated with the local hospital. When his name is typed in search, the hospital site which has a bio page on him comes up first, then his previous business which, at least by site search, no longer has his name on their site (rather than his business), and his site doesn't even show on the 1st page.

The content is one and the same. The hospital.com/businessname/ redirects to the businessname.com

If you mean how are the URLs structured, they are friendly.

[OlegKorneitchouk]

In that case, I would ask the hospital.org to canonical to the new site, not redirect.

Recently had a similar case but in reverse... microsite was ranking really well for a term that they wanted ranking for their main website. We set up canonicals from microsite to main site and the main site started ranking for the term within a week.

[IT-dmd]

Thanks so much for taking the time to help! I really appreciate it!