Does anyone know if there are traffic difference between URLs in the header of a url?
(Example: http://winterjam.hearitfirst.com and http://www.hearitfirst.com/winterjam)?
Do you search engines and traffic sites still see them both as traffic to the inherent site hearitfirst.com or is there something I can do to maximize this?
Thank you.
Answers (6)
Martijn B
IT Consultant @ Getronics Consulting
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Check the link supplied
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Mark M
Operations Supervisor at Endurance International Group
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I would also suggest that if you're doing a subdomain redirect to a local directory within your website, that you use an htaccess rewrite rule to ensure that people only see either the subdomain or the directory (I prefer subdomain.)
There are several good utilities out there that would help you write one (see link.) Additionally you wouldn't have to worry about a duplicate content issue or where your traffic is coming to. Good Luck
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Bryan O
Project Manager | User Experience Designer | Information Architect
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The short answer is that search engines typically treat http://subdomain.domain.com as a different site from http://www.domain.com (including any subdirectories therein). (The same may or may not apply to the relationship between http://www.domain.com and http://domain.com, depending on your DNS settings, what you’ve told the search engines via their webmaster tools, etc.)
Assuming that the traffic-trackers (Alexa, etc.) treat it the same way (which may not be the case), if you want to maximize “perceived” traffic to http://www.domain.com, you should set it up as a subdirectory vs. a subdomain. However, this may serve no practical purpose, depending on the traffic-tracking site in question, how the query is entered, etc. For example, if someone goes to Alexa.com to check your site’s traffic, will they enter it as “www.domain.com” or simply as “domain.com”? If the latter, it’s possible that subdomain.domain.com will be included. Or maybe not. You should find some examples and run some experiments.
In any case, are you more concerned with perceived traffic already received, or increasing traffic in the future? The conventional wisdom is that you get SEO benefits by cross-linking between http://subdomain.domain.com and http://www.domain.com.
This is purely speculative but I would imagine that the subdomain would carry more weight since it is "inside" the TLD (top level domain). If you want the most leverage then submit HIF with a Google site map. Then break off that subdomain inside of it. I think in this scenario it is 6 of one half dozen of another.
Links:
http://www.hearitfirst.com and http://hearitfirst.com will be treated as same sitr but
http://winterjam.hearitfirst.com will be treated as different site.
Search engines will see them as two distinct sites by default. The weighting will be better (all other things equal) for the subdomain because it will be the TLD root.
There are many ways of SEO for this environment. If you are keeping the subdomain layout then insuring crosslinking occurs is the easiest way to help increase the main domain weighting.
-Dave
-Dave
