Subdomain, what is it and what is it for?

What is a subdomain?

Let’s start with domain names to understand. They usually have the following construction –domain.com. “Domain” – second-level domain (domain name), “.com” – first or top (domain zone).

The following restrictions apply to the creation of such structures:

• No more than 127 levels of subdomains.
• The subdomain name cannot be longer than 63 characters.

Why are subdomains needed?

Subdomains can be used in the following cases:

• Website promotion in highly competitive niches, where you need to use several pools of main keywords that cannot be placed within one main page. Domains and subdomains will allow you to create multiple homepage variations and promote them separately from each other.
  
• You can put different categories of goods on subdomains, for example, like Aliexpress:
• Jewelrypalace.de.aliexpress.com.
• Xiaomionline.de.aliexpress.com.
• Vovotrade.de.aliexpress.com.
  
• Complex site structure, for example, focused on several countries. It would be logical to create a separate subdomain for each language group. This will allow you to promote such sites for local keywords.
  
• The company has offices in several regions of the country. In this case, the complexity of using one domain may arise due to Yandex.Webmaster restrictions on the number of assigned regions – no more than one per domain. Regional subdomains solve this problem.
  
• On a subdomain, you can post content that is not directly related to the main site. For example, a forum, a blog, various directories, personal accounts, and more.
  
• In some cases, the mobile version of the site is placed on the subdomain.
  

Subdomains and SEO promotion

The main feature of promoting subdomains is that the main site and sites on subdomains are different resources.

Webmaster Panels

Each of the subdomains can be added to the webmasters panel separately, this allows monitoring and analytics for each site individually. As mentioned above, in Yandex.Webmaster, regionality should be set for each site. If the company operates in multiple regions, then using subdomains will help with this setup.

Link Profile

A site’s link profile is one of the most important ranking factors, so you need to understand that subdomains do not inherit its influence from the domain. Therefore, you should build your own link profile for each subdomain.

If the sites of a domain and subdomains are promoted along the same semantic core, then they will compete with each other. This can even bring under the filters from the search engines (affiliates).

Content

The content on the main site and subdomains should be unique, if you neglect this, then duplicate pages will appear in the eyes of search engines. If the situation requires placing the same text content on different subdomains, then the rel = “canonical” meta tag should be used to indicate the canonical page.

If this is an online store, then product cards on subdomains can be uniqueized in the following ways:

• In the name of the product, make a postscript indicating the location, city.
• In the block or on the page with information about the delivery, indicate the data on work in a specific region.
• In the contact block and on a separate page, we indicate regional phone numbers and addresses.
• Prices may differ in regions – we indicate unique values.
• The testimonial block can contain the opinions of people who bought the product directly in a particular region.

Internal linking of a subdomain

You should adhere to some principles when organizing linking on a subdomain website:

• Links should go from the domain to the subdomains.
• It is recommended to use keywords from the semantics of the subdomain in the anchors of links located on the domain site and leading to the subdomain.
• It is necessary to think over the logic of the interface inside the subdomain site, for example, when clicking on the logo, the user should navigate to the main site of the subdomain, and not the main one.

Technical settings

As mentioned above, sites on subdomains for search engines are independent resources in terms of SEO promotion. Therefore, you need to understand:

• Each of the sites must have its own separate configured robots.txt file – a configuration file responsible for indexing permissions for files and resource directories.
• The same goes for XML sitemap files, they will have to be created and updated separately for each resource.
• It is recommended to link subdomains and domains with each other, which should positively affect the indexing speed. It also gives some weight distribution between pages.

Analytics

In general, there are two options for conducting data analytics from a domain and subdomains:

• In one account, for example, Yandex.Metrica. In this case, subdomains can be weeded out by the login page.
• Create your own account in the analytics system for each subdomain. Thus, you can get detailed information on each resource, but in some moments it will complicate data aggregation.

Also, for each of the sites on subdomains, different e-commerce settings and separate call tracking may be required.

How do I create a subdomain?

The process of creating subdomains is pretty straightforward. We will clearly show for three popular hosting, the rest are configured by analogy.

How to add a subdomain to Reg.ru

There are two options for creating subdomains on Reg.ru: as an independent domain and as an auto-subdomain. The first option, as the name implies, allows you to add subdomains as independent of the domain, but in this case, you need to take into account the parameters of the tariff plan and restrictions on the number of domains. Auto subdomain – creating subdomains for the main domain name, this is the most logical and convenient option.

Also, the auto-subdomain has two options for creating file directories: separately for each, its own is created or subdirectories are added for the main domain. It is most convenient to create a separate directory for each subdomain.

To create a subdomain, log into the Reg.ru account, go to the ISPmanager panel in the “WWW-domains” section. Here we select the main domain and click the “Change” button.

Step 1

In the additional features section, select the option “in a separate directory” and save the settings.

Step 2

Next, in the main menu of the panel, select the item “File manager” and create a directory.

Step 3

In the settings, select the “Directory” type, here we also enter the name of the subdomain.

Step 4

Without leaving the “File Manager” create another subcategory, but instead of the “Catalog” select the type “Link”. Here, in the “Name” field, specify the name of the subdomain with WWW, while the value specifies the name without WWW.

Step 5

After creating a subdomain, add a record to the DNS servers of the main domain. If it uses DNS servers like “ns1.hosting.reg.ru” and “ns2.hosting.reg.ru”, then the subdomain entry will be automatically added.

If not, then go to the domain settings in the Reg.ru account, select “DNS servers and zone”, click “Change”.

Step 6

And add the required A-record.

After the performed manipulations, the subdomain directory and the subdomain itself connected to it will be created in the file system.

How to bind a subdomain on Beget?

Here subdomains are added from the user’s personal account:

• In the general menu we find the item “Domains and subdomains”, in the field “Add domains and subdomains” we enter the construction: newsubdomain.domain.ru. And click add.

Create a subdomain on Beget

When adding, you will be prompted to create a new subdomain directory, link it to the existing one or not link it. Here you should create a new directory and link the subdomain to the main domain.

DNS servers will be registered automatically, but if you need to change them, then go to the subdomain settings. At the same time, Beget does not limit the number of created subdomains, but this condition does not apply to free domains.

Timeweb.com

Binding a subdomain to Timeweb.com follows the same scheme as with previous hosting providers: in the “Domains and Subdomains” section, attach a subdomain to the required domain. Here you will be prompted to create or select a file directory. DNS records will be registered automatically. In the same section, the entries can be changed if necessary.

How do I delete a subdomain?

Subdomains are removed from the panels in which they were created. For example, in Reg.ru this is ISPmanager. Also, go to the domains section, select the desired one and disable the “Auto subdomains” item in the settings.

If the subdomain was created as a separate domain, then select it in the general list, and click “Delete” on the toolbar.

Removing a subdomain on Reg.ru

On other hosting services, we act in a similar way.

How to exclude a subdomain from search engine results?

Recall that the subdomain for search engines is a separate site, therefore, it can be closed from indexing:

• Using the robots.txt file, specifying the Disallow directive for the entire subdomain site.
• Via HTML code, specifying the robots meta tag, but here we use the noindex directive.
• Close access to the site or make it through user authorization.

However, if the site has already been included in the index of search engines and you want to remove it from the search results, then follow these steps:

1. Close the site or page from indexing in the above ways.
2. Next, in the Yandex.Webmaster panel, go to the “Tools – Removing pages from search” section.
3. Select the “By URL” radio button.
4. Enter the URL of the site or page and click Remove.

After that, in the Webmaster’s panel, you can track the status of the deleted page. The tool does not allow you to delete more than 500 URLs per day. If the entry “Rejected” appears, then the status of the page is different from 404 or 403.

Google usually quickly removes pages and sites that are blocked from indexing, but in some cases its bots do not follow the general guidelines in the robots.txt file. Therefore, it is necessary to prescribe personal restrictions for googlebot crawlers. With Yandex, the process can drag on, sometimes old subdomains can hang in the search results for more than one month.

How to find out all subdomains of a site?

The main reason you might need to find all subdomains is because of ranking issues in finding a site on the primary domain. They arise, as a rule, due to duplicate content and are often affiliated resources, which is not welcomed by search engines.

Searching for subdomains will help to identify the SEO strategy of competitors, as well as find its regional offices.

You can find subdomains of the studied site in the following ways:

• Using operators for a search engine like Google:
• “Site:” – restricting the search results to the primary domain.
• “-Inurl” – exclude the main domain.
  
• Using services:
• Pentest — Tools… The paid version of the tool allows you to select additional search options, such as iterating over DNS records from a prepared list.
• Netcraft – the service operates on its own database for existing domain names. It also collects public information about the owners.
• SubBrute Is not an online service, but an application for a Linux server. Detailed instructions for use can be found with the developer.

So, we have answered the question of how to create subdomains on popular hosting, and also described the most common reasons why they are created, we hope the article was useful to you.