Moving Hubspot Sub-domain to a Sub-folder

[MatShepSEO]

Hi Moz community,

I have a client that moved their existing blog from a sub-directory to a sub-domain so that they can use Hubspot's blogging features. I let them know that there are some SEO risks in making this move (this has been discussed at length in the Moz and Inbound community). We are now seeing those risks play out with organic search traffic (other than that which went to the blog) and rankings for the main www domain slowly decreasing.

I'm now exploring solutions to have the Hubspot blog appear as if it is served from a sub-folder i.e. www.site.com/blog. Ordinarily a reverse proxy can be used to achieve this but Hubspot states this cannot but be set up within Hubspot at this time:

http://help.hubspot.com/articles/KCS_Article/COS-General/Can-I-set-up-a-reverse-proxy-on-HubSpot

However, this help article also makes reference to a potential workaround using an external server, but there isn't much more detail. I asked the Hubspot tech support team and they say they don't have any additional information to offer.

I'm wondering if anyone in the Moz community knows anything further about this workaround and if anyone has managed to implement a Hubspot blog in a sub-folder, without recreating the whole site in Hubspot's COS.

Any guidance appreciated!

Matthew

[KaneJamison]

The way they say "workaround" makes this sound like they're simply iframing the page or something.

Alternatively, they might simply be saying that you should use the Hubspot blog subdomain as normal and set up your own reverse proxy, but that there's nothing the Hubspot platform can do to assist with that. The wording "a reverse proxy cannot be set in HubSpot at this time" makes me think this is what they mean.

[MatShepSEO]

Thanks Kane. Yes, I'm hoping there is a way to set up a reverse proxy outside of Hubspot to achieve this. Having never set up a reverse proxy, now I just need to figure out how and to see if the process is likely to work with a Hubspot subdomain.

[KaneJamison]

My understanding is that you're going to be setting it up on the client's server, not the Hubspot subdomain, so it shouldn't make any difference if the subdomain is Hubspot or Shopify or Heroku or any other hosted platform. You're basically telling the www. server to rewrite part of the request for anything inside of /blog/ and present it as content hosted on that subfolder.

But, I've only heard ugly feedback from the people I've talked to who have set one up, so, best of luck and take good backups...

[Everett]

I know some businesses who decide to just use the Hubspot plugin for Wordpress instead of actually installing it on a subdomain. You lose some reporting features and probably a few other features, but it could be a good compromise if you already have a lot of blog content.

[MatShepSEO]

Thanks for the suggestion Everett. I suggested that before the move, but the client really wanted the full benefit of the Hubspot blogging system, despite the potential SEO risks of moving an existing blog to a new subdomain.

It could be a case of waiting, keeping on doing what we are doing, and watching to see if things pick up. I like to be proactive in finding solutions for such issues though

[nicoley]

I'd take the Simon Sinek approach to this -- to ask you

• why is you/your client interested in this workaround for Hubspot?
• What do you gain by keeping it on the subdomain?
• What would you lose?

Assuming most people here would agree the important factors (as SEO technologists) in order are:

1. Is the site reachable?
2. Is the site readable? (googlebot et al)

To date, (from what Hubspot has communicated with us)  there is yet to be any way to set up Google Webmaster tools legitly, without creating two sites (seemingly competing for the same keywords) for both the 'blog.website.com' and the 'website.com' as one would do for a typical 'www.website.com' sub-domain (google has you choose the primary and it's also indicated in analytics).

Assuming it's similar to my client work/experience, your client wants wants:

• Hubspot data
• CTA buttons
• landing pages

Thus far, I don't see any reason any site should use the Hubspot platform w/ subdomain.  The true alternative is setting up wordpress as one normally would, then installing the Hubspot plugin.  So far (about six months) this has done the job.

Before we made this change for our clients we were constantly running into issues which caused me to question the legitimacy of a tool, even a company, that encourages site set-up / blog settings, that contradict what GWC (Google Webmaster Central) has advice their community.  Furthermore, seemingly sees no issue/s with all the above, including the challenge of setting up a site with a secure cert added after a site has been set up on Hubspot.  Again, 'httpS' causes issues with their 'sub-domain' approach to the blogging aspect, even to the extent they have told my client that they would have to re-purchase the secure cert from them to make the 'marketing' subdomain also secure.  So far, their organic search traffic is up by 7,000+%.

Interested in what others are doing as well.  It has been quite a journey but certainly a learning experience. 
Cheers to learning!