Moz's official stance on Subdomain vs Subfolder - does it need updating?

[Piotr_Stopa]

Thanks Rand for detailed answered.

[Shop-Sq]

Hi, Rand - 1 year later. Do you still recommend strongly folder over subdomain?

I have three separate websites that I have planned on merging into one. I recently acquired a strong domain ( stronger than my existing ones ) & after much deliberation, I have decided to move them together into one domain.

Site 1) 1 Forum - Around since 2007 - Originally VBulletin, last year migrated to discourse.

Site 2) E-commercece Magento Site - Around since 2010

Site 3) WordPress - Blog & Articles - Around since last year - Currently using the new ( Main Domain I want to use )

After a lot of research and White Board Fridays, I was thinking this would be my best bet:

• newdomain.com  - Merged WordPress & Magento CMS Page.
• newdomain.com/ forum <-- Will move my forum content & Install to the new domain.
• newdomain.com/ store <-- Will move my Ecommerce content & Install.

Between my developer and I, we have our heads around how to handle the technical aspect of the move, 301s to the new location etc.

But one area we want to research before pulling the trigger ( we haven't found much data on this )

My Main Question:   What is the possible penalty coming for shopping websites vs. content-driven websites, and possibility that forum-based content hosted on the same domain might cause another penalty to be applied to the other content on the domain.

My Developer Says: In recent years, we noticed that forum content had been penalized in favor of editorially reviewed content when this is identified by search engines.     
What big hiccups would / could we encounter from  combining these 3 types of platforms into one site?     Many thanks for any direction or insight.

[randfish]

Hi Shop-Sq,

A) I think merging the domains is almost definitely the right move, so long as you do it right (get the redirects nailed, don't have any performance issues, update the links correctly, etc).

B) I don't believe there's any penalty coming for shopping sites that also happen to host forum content or blog content. The only risk is if a lot of the site becomes (or is) cruft, meaning low-engagement/low-value content Google doesn't want in its index or searchers never click on/stay on.

C) We have not seen what your developers describe. Some forums haven't done well, others have done quite well (e.g. Moz's Q+A has benefited a lot over the last few years). I don't believe any hiccups you encounter will be because the types of content are unique, but rather because of technical issues, missteps, or content that doesn't help searchers and doesn't perform in Google (and all three should be avoidable).

D) Yes. We/I still recommend subfolders over subdomains. More strongly than ever actually. We've got some new evidence that Google judges content on a subfolder level, hence subdomains may not inherit all the rankings abilities of subfolders/other subdomains on the same domain.

[Diarmuidod]

Hey Rand,
For international geotargeting would you recommend NOT using Sub Folders?

My website lists internships in 60 different countries which are divided into 60 Sub Folders......example:
www.example.com/us/ and www.example.com/de/ Would it be better to change all 60 Sub Folders over to Top Level Domain extensions or even Sub Domains? (Website currently has 15,000 pages divided into 60 sub folders. Has a DA 44)

Thanks for the great advice in this post

[randfish]

Either can work well - subfolders are a fine solution for many. There's a slight bit more advantage in country-targeting with TLD extensions, but you lose a lot in link equity and ranking ability, so it's a tradeoff you'll have to choose between.

[Diarmuidod]

Thanks,

That's what I had hoped. I will stick with the sub folders for now.

[Trone]

Rand,

Will search engines penalize a slow moving migration from subdomain to subdirectory, where a site had both blog.domain.com and www.domain.com/blog, even if there was no duplicate content? Thought being, all new blogs get posted under the subdirectory and we slowly migrate blogs from the subdomain.

Thanks.

[znotes]

Does anyone have insight into the session percentage lift for their blog or their site after making the move from a subdomain blog to a subfolder? I'm seeing a lot of people talk about improvements in rankings for keywords on their blog and site but haven't seen anyone list out session numbers to go with that data.

Thanks

[simplynutrients]

I'm on a hosted cart solution where their blog is lame, so lame that its really unusable. I have the option of either a subdomain or creating my blog on another separate domain completely. Any thoughts on which would be better?

[randfish]

Hi SimplyNutrients! A subdomain will still beat an entirely separate domain. Sometimes it can even be treated the same as a subfolder on the main domain. For the best shot at that, do what you can to make the navigation, the footer, the design, the UX, etc. match the main site -- some combination of those seem to be what matter to Google on this front.

Best of luck!

[markdoel]

hi. how can I Redirect my sub domain " https://mag.safarestan.com/ " to subfolder "https://www.safarestan.com/" ??

Note: one of this Host is windows and one of them is Linux

[sh.shirdel012]

Hi, I also decided to move the https://toptourist.ir/ site to the https://www.top-travel.ir/ site. How should I do this?

[sh.shirdel012]

Hi, I also decided to move the https://toptourist.ir/ site to the https://www.top-travel.ir/ site. How should I do this?

[sh.shirdel013]

you can ask me on گردشگری