Getting the SEO right for blog on different server

[Raptor-crew]

Hi There

This must be a common scenario but there's very little help on it.  Right now I have:

www.domain.com hosted on a Windows dedicated server.

I have blog.domain.com hosted on a separate hosted Wordpress server and I use an A Record at the DNS level to make sure the sub domain works.  Easy peasy!

However we want to move our blog so its at www.domain.com/blog as we're definitely seeing an issue with the sub domain hosting of the blog in terms of SEO.

My problem is that I cannot install WP onto the windows server, its' just not feasible as too much is going on with it, so i can;t simply redirect my blog.subdomain.com to www.domain.com/blog as it won't exist.

How do I do this and maintain the SEO/link juice?

Any help much appreciated!

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi,

Have you had a look at installing Wordpress under Windows? There are also alternatives to Wordpress if you wish to look at these.

I'm not aware of a workaround otherwise - it isn't something I have ever had to do, but someone else might chip in with ideas.

-Andy

[Raptor-crew]

Cheers for the reply.

The trouble is that we have a lot of mission critical services running on this server, add to that we have limited PHP, mySQL etc skills as we're Microsoft bods here.  Installing all of this onto our server is not really an option, more a recipe for complete disaster!

One idea we had was creating some kind of folder in IIS on the main server www.domain.com that then redirected/re-wrote to blog.domain.com.  THe principle is that same as people visiting friendly URLs that actually map to .aspx pages but on a domain level, not page level.  My head's exploded a bit so i'm not sure if that would work at all with correct link juice being passed.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

I really don't know because I know the square root of nothing about IIS I'm afraid.

Sorry, not an awful lot else I can help with on this one.

-Andy

[Carson-Ward]

Alright, well my advice runs counter to common wisdom: don't worry so much about whether it's on a sub-domain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MswMYk05tk

https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/subdomains-and-subdirectories/

My feeling is that you should worry a lot more about what the blog is linking to.

I've personally had access to look into 2 of the most-cited subdomain examples. In one of them the company moved into a subdomain, but broke a massive document up into about 7 pieces - and each piece started getting organic traffic. This happened at the same time, so I don't think it can be attributed to the sub-domain movement. In another case the blog logo linked back to the blog home, and there were almost no links to the sales pages. Changing the header resulted in more links to the root domain, so yes - rankings improved.

I've heard other anecdotes of people moving to sub-folders and seeing big boosts in their non-blog rankings due to the links from the blog. For the last 5 years, though, I've seen no credible evidence. I've been in a good position to see the opposite. One more story: a friend of mine just moved a MASSIVELY-cited blog (blog PA 75) off the sub-domain, but his nav was already mirroring the www version (which has 1/15th the links). Impact on rankings: absolutely none.

I'd still install on the same server if I could, just for the sake of maintenance, but if you can't find a technical solution just make sure you link architecture makes sense.