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Ooh, look, an on-topic location to ask Patrick questions. ;) So, about that whole "subdomain" thing, as mentioned in this article. The problem in SEO is that s

Ooh, look, an on-topic location to ask Patrick questions. ;) So, about that whole "subdomain" thing, as mentioned in this article. The problem in SEO is that separate subdomains accrue separate Google scores, correct? So if I was to serve my whole site from a third-tier domain, like "www.example.com", that would be okay? Provided I were not foolish enough to also put stuff on "example.com" and "other.example.com" and expect links to that content to contribute to the reputation of "www.example.com"? Basically I'm looking for confirmation that the classic old "www" prefix is okay, if used carefully. (Lots of people hate it for aesthetic reasons, and I used to agree with them, and then I had to dig into the rules for DNS CNAMEs, and the terrifying results have made me fall in love with "www" again. Unless you tell me it's bad, in which case I guess I'll just have to take to drink.)

bmelton 15y ago
I'm not Patrick, and hopefully he'll chime in to answer as well, but one thing to note is that you CAN specify the preferred URL (e.g., www.example.com or just example.com) in Google's Webmaster Tools[1] to let Google know which one you prefer. Obviously, if you set it to be just example.com, don't have all your promotional materials link to the other, and somewhat less obviously, please be aware that what you set as preferred for Google doesn't necessarily mean squat to Yahoo, Bing, AltaVista or whomever. I'm not as qualified to touch on the rest, but thought this might be at least a little useful. [1] - http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/
randfish 15y ago
Yes, you're totally cool to use either site.tld or www.site.tld. I'd recommend using a 301 redirect of one to the other (Google and Bing are pretty good at automatically canonicalizing these, but not perfect). The trouble comes when you segment content to subdomain.site.com. The domain authority engines assign to a root domain may not always pass to all the subdomains, so you end up with subpar rankings to what you could earn. As an example, we launched the Beginner's Guide to SEO on guides.seomoz.org and moved it after a few months to www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo (where it currently lives). It had earned tons of links prior to that move, but the day after the 301 back to the main domain (away from the guides subdomain), it jumped to #1 rankings for all sorts of terms, including "seo guide" (recently got beat out by Google's SEO guide and is now #2). This was a good illustration of the power of keeping content in a single sub/root domain location for us.
- patio11 15y ago
  What Rand said. #include <ndaed_client_anecdote.h>
  - davidw 15y ago
    So you think it's worth the move to example.com/blog even if you already have an established blog.example.com?
    - randfish 15y ago
      That's been my experience. Not only will the blog's pages rank better by being on the main domain, they'll also help the rest of the site's content rank better by bolstering that location's authority. That said, I don't want to suggest this is always true all the time or that Google/Bing never group subdomain authorities together, just that we've seen inconsistency and thus I'd recommend keeping them together.
  - jplewicke 15y ago
    If anyone else is wondering how to do this on Heroku, http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6179398/how-can-i-use-a-subdirectory-instead-of-a-subdomain http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6179398/how-can-i-use-a-s... seems to be the canonical Stack Overflow question. I'm going to try the Rack::ReverseProxy suggestion myself sometime soon.
- franze 15y ago
  one other thing why www is good for SEO. shitty URL parsers. lets say you make a press release. there is a high chance that www.example.org gets automatically parsed into a clickable link (sometimes it's nofollow, sometime it isn't) - on the other side, there is a high chance that example.org does not get parsed into a clickable link, so you would have to write http://example.org http://example.org to make sure that it get parsed into a link, which is just ugly - and - most of the PR stuff are reluctant to do. some URL parsers have caught up to non-www domains if you have a .com domain, but try it with an .io domain. it fails most of the time. that means there are some interesting hipness tradeoffs * if you have a cool .io domain * you should have an uncool www on other thing about non www domains. journalists always get it wrong: whatever you do, whoever you pitch, as soon as you end up in a big and might print newspaper (that also has a website) you will see your domain with www again.
bodegajed 15y ago
I think Google is smart enough to identify the www and without. Because it is now smart enough to identify bad grammar and spelling. On the other hand, I think I disagree with the buying a new domain to target an exact match. That will just give signal to Google that it's a new domain and it was unnaturally optimized.
- richardw 15y ago
  On your last point: If true, that would mean a temporary hit but over time it would provide a permanent benefit. Great tradeoff. A user searching for exactly what your website is offering, using the words that make up your website url, should at the very least have a strong opportunity to arrive at your website. If Google did anything else it would offer an opportunity for Bing et al.
- ednc 15y ago
  The exact match domain 'trick' died in early 2011 updates. Prior to that I had done exactly what the article suggested - Exact Match Domain, 3-5 page site with optimized keywords, and boom the site would be on page 1 with no backlinks in 2-5 weeks. Today this does not work if there is any competition at all for a word. (I've still seen it work for long tail terms with no competition). Long story short - you need good content to rank well :-)
mechanical_fish 15y ago
Thanks to everyone for the excellent replies.

bmelton 15y ago

I'm not Patrick, and hopefully he'll chime in to answer as well, but one thing to note is that you CAN specify the preferred URL (e.g., www.example.com or just example.com) in Google's Webmaster Tools[1] to let Google know which one you prefer. Obviously, if you set it to be just example.com, don't have all your promotional materials link to the other, and somewhat less obviously, please be aware that what you set as preferred for Google doesn't necessarily mean squat to Yahoo, Bing, AltaVista or whomever. I'm not as qualified to touch on the rest, but thought this might be at least a little useful. [1] - http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

randfish 15y ago

Yes, you're totally cool to use either site.tld or www.site.tld. I'd recommend using a 301 redirect of one to the other (Google and Bing are pretty good at automatically canonicalizing these, but not perfect). The trouble comes when you segment content to subdomain.site.com. The domain authority engines assign to a root domain may not always pass to all the subdomains, so you end up with subpar rankings to what you could earn. As an example, we launched the Beginner's Guide to SEO on guides.seomoz.org and moved it after a few months to www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo (where it currently lives). It had earned tons of links prior to that move, but the day after the 301 back to the main domain (away from the guides subdomain), it jumped to #1 rankings for all sorts of terms, including "seo guide" (recently got beat out by Google's SEO guide and is now #2). This was a good illustration of the power of keeping content in a single sub/root domain location for us.

patio11 15y ago
What Rand said. #include <ndaed_client_anecdote.h>
- davidw 15y ago
  So you think it's worth the move to example.com/blog even if you already have an established blog.example.com?
  - randfish 15y ago
    That's been my experience. Not only will the blog's pages rank better by being on the main domain, they'll also help the rest of the site's content rank better by bolstering that location's authority. That said, I don't want to suggest this is always true all the time or that Google/Bing never group subdomain authorities together, just that we've seen inconsistency and thus I'd recommend keeping them together.
- jplewicke 15y ago
  If anyone else is wondering how to do this on Heroku, http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6179398/how-can-i-use-a-subdirectory-instead-of-a-subdomain http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6179398/how-can-i-use-a-s... seems to be the canonical Stack Overflow question. I'm going to try the Rack::ReverseProxy suggestion myself sometime soon.
franze 15y ago
one other thing why www is good for SEO. shitty URL parsers. lets say you make a press release. there is a high chance that www.example.org gets automatically parsed into a clickable link (sometimes it's nofollow, sometime it isn't) - on the other side, there is a high chance that example.org does not get parsed into a clickable link, so you would have to write http://example.org http://example.org to make sure that it get parsed into a link, which is just ugly - and - most of the PR stuff are reluctant to do. some URL parsers have caught up to non-www domains if you have a .com domain, but try it with an .io domain. it fails most of the time. that means there are some interesting hipness tradeoffs * if you have a cool .io domain * you should have an uncool www on other thing about non www domains. journalists always get it wrong: whatever you do, whoever you pitch, as soon as you end up in a big and might print newspaper (that also has a website) you will see your domain with www again.

bodegajed 15y ago

I think Google is smart enough to identify the www and without. Because it is now smart enough to identify bad grammar and spelling. On the other hand, I think I disagree with the buying a new domain to target an exact match. That will just give signal to Google that it's a new domain and it was unnaturally optimized.

richardw 15y ago
On your last point: If true, that would mean a temporary hit but over time it would provide a permanent benefit. Great tradeoff. A user searching for exactly what your website is offering, using the words that make up your website url, should at the very least have a strong opportunity to arrive at your website. If Google did anything else it would offer an opportunity for Bing et al.
ednc 15y ago
The exact match domain 'trick' died in early 2011 updates. Prior to that I had done exactly what the article suggested - Exact Match Domain, 3-5 page site with optimized keywords, and boom the site would be on page 1 with no backlinks in 2-5 weeks. Today this does not work if there is any competition at all for a word. (I've still seen it work for long tail terms with no competition). Long story short - you need good content to rank well :-)

mechanical_fish 15y ago

Thanks to everyone for the excellent replies.