Post by sumiseo558899 on Nov 9, 2024 22:35:34 GMT -5
Over the past year, we have implemented more than 30 projects with regional subdomains. In this article, we will try to tell you about all the intricacies of creating subdomains. Let us immediately stipulate that the solution works well mainly for Yandex. The situation with Google is described at the end of the article.
Let's start with an overview of all the methods of regional promotion in Yandex.
Regional ranking
Search engines ensure that the user is given a relevant answer to his request. One of the factors of relevance is regionality. The product or service is of interest to the potential client in the region in which he is located.
Methods of assigning regionality
When promoting a website locally, the region is assigned in all possible ways: by specifying contact information on the website, through Yandex.Webmaster and Yandex.Directory. If you want to attract users from other regions, various options are possible:
1. Specifying the region "Russia" in Yandex.Webmaster. A classic mistake of incompetent specialists. Not only will this not bring additional traffic, but it will also reduce traffic from the main region.
2. Adding all desired regions to Yandex.Directory. This
content writing service method can really improve ranking in the regions. But in this case, several problems arise. Firstly, it is not always possible to confirm information about a new regional representative office. All requests in Yandex.Directory are moderated, and for providing deliberately false information, you can forget about this tool forever. Secondly, there is no possibility of promoting geo-independent queries with a toponym (example: "buy concrete in Samara"). The reason is that a large number of regions in the main areas of the document (title, meta-description, text) will reduce the relevance of the entire document, and can also be regarded by search engines as spam.
3. Specifying several regions in Yandex.Webmaster. This is possible only if you have retained such rights from Yandex.Catalog.
4. Creating subfolders for regions. With this method, the site structure is cloned into folders like example.ru/samara/, example.ru/saratov/, etc. This strategy is successfully used by many sites, but has some limitations:
in Yandex.Webmaster it is impossible to assign each folder its own region;
Accordingly, we can only rely on the automatic assignment of regions to the site, which can take several months.
5. Creating subdomains for regions. This also includes creating separate domain names for each city (example-samara.ru, example-saratov.ru, etc.). At the same time, allocating regions to separate second-level domains is usually impractical due to additional financial costs and a decrease in the connection of sites with one brand. Therefore, creating regional subdomains is the best option for a number of reasons:
relatively simple technical implementation;
the ability to easily specify a region for each subdomain in Yandex.Webmaster (you can also assign a region to each subdomain via Yandex.Directory);
preserving all the developments of the main site - in fact, it is cloned with a number of conditions, and then each subdomain is promoted as a separate site for one region.
The right way is up to you. You can always do a competitor analysis and see what strategy they have chosen. But in most cases, the optimal solution is to create subdomains, with which we help our clients enter other regions.
Steps to create subdomains
1. We define the regions (or more precisely, regional centers) necessary for promotion. These can be all million-plus cities, or all Russian cities with a population of over 100,000 people (there are about 200 of them), or only the regions required by the client. In any case, creating additional subdomains if there are existing ones that work is not a problem, since all the conditions for replacing content will already be configured for you.
2. Naming subdomains. In some cases, the question of the correct transliteration of the city name or its abbreviation may arise - in this case, we analyze competitors in the region.
news
Transliteration and abbreviation options do not play a significant role.
3. Create subdomains and make them aliases of the main domain. At this stage, the information on all domains is no different, the sites are complete copies. You can immediately glue each subdomain with its www version using a 301 redirect. We strongly recommend using the non-www version for subdomains, since using www may cause problems with the SSL certificate for all subdomains (even if you do not plan it now, it is better to provide for this in advance).
4. To avoid gluing subdomains, as soon as possible after completing the previous point, you need to close them from indexing by writing in robots.txt:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
5. On all subdomains, the city mention in the title and meta-description must be replaced with a variable that will be replaced with the city name depending on the subdomain. If necessary, create several variables with cities in different cases. On pages where the toponym is not used in the title and meta-description, it is recommended to create an addendum indicating the current city depending on the subdomain. If for some reason you use meta-keywords in promotion, do not forget about toponyms in them as well.
Examples of tags for subdomains:
title: Buy concrete in {IN_CITY}, prices per 1 cubic meter with delivery
meta-description: We offer to buy concrete at the best prices in {IN_CITY}. Fast delivery, own production.
6. On all promoted pages, it is necessary to replace the toponym in the text content. It is possible to create a text fragment for all pages using a template using the city variable. If your texts do not contain toponyms (nothing to change), and you do not want to form a new text fragment - no big deal. In this case, problems with uniqueness are not so important, since each page on each subdomain is oriented to its region. They are not complete duplicates due to different contact information in the header and footer of the site. At the same time, there is a possibility that non-unique content will be ranked poorly in Google, but, again, subdomains are a solution primarily for Yandex.
7. Working with the site header:
we change contact information depending on the subdomain;
If the current header template does not explicitly indicate the city anywhere, it is recommended to add an element indicating the city (for example, in the footer or next to the phone number).
news
8. Similarly, we replace all the information in the site footer. It is recommended to display the variable with the city name in text form at least once in both the header and footer for correct ranking in the region.
news
9. At this stage, it is necessary to check all commercial information on the site and make the necessary changes, for example:
in the delivery details on the product card;
region in the order form;
region in the Cart;
"Delivery" page data. The information here should reflect the actual details of delivery to this region. This is not so much for promotion, but for your customers.
It would not be a bad idea to go through the entire path on the subdomain from the visitor to the buyer and check whether all the necessary replacements have been made.
10. On the "Contacts" page, it is necessary to display information for the current city. If there are no representative offices here, it is necessary to inform about the possibility of delivery to the specified region and a contact phone number. Information about existing representative offices in other regions is added at will.
11. In the sitemap.xml for each subdomain, you need to replace the domain in the links to the corresponding subdomain. There is no need to generate a separate sitemap for each subdomain. The structures of all subdomains are identical, and on the main domain, the sitemap is up to date (right?). Just replace the domain.
12. It is necessary to check all links on the created subdomains. The code may use absolute links, which will remain absolute on the subdomain and will lead to the main domain. They should be replaced with relative ones. It is also recommended to check the rel=canonical attribute if it contains absolute links. The current subdomain should be specified everywhere. To automate the check, you can use any parser (Screaming Frog, Comparser, Netpeak).
13. If you have successfully completed all the previous steps, robots.txt from the main domain is inserted instead of each subdomain's robots.txt, replacing the domain with the corresponding subdomain in the sitemap address. If your robots.txt still contains the Host directive, this is a great time to remove it ( more about this in the Yandex blog).
14. A window with a city selection and a click-through to the corresponding subdomain must be added to the site header. It is not recommended to do this earlier, since curious users and robots will be able to get to unfinished subdomains.
news
There are two things to consider here:
— It is necessary to implement a transition from the corresponding internal page of one domain to the corresponding page of another. Agree, if your client finds a suitable product on the site, decides to switch the region and ends up on the main page, his desire to continue working with your site will sharply decrease.
— All links in the city selection window must be in indexable format. This means that implementation using the "select" tag or any other method using JavaScript will not work, since subdomain indexing will be noticeably worse.
15. At this stage, the technical side of implementing subdomains is complete. You need to add all subdomains to Yandex.Webmaster. If you have verified the rights to the main domain, a simplified scheme for verifying rights is used for subdomains (no need to place a file or meta tag). For each subdomain, you need to specify: region and link to the site map. To speed up indexing, you can add several main pages to "Page re-crawl".
We also recommend adding all subdomains to the Google Search Console panel and specifying a sitemap link for each of them.
After that, all you have to do is wait. Depending on your server speed, crawling budget, and the number of pages on the site, the time for full indexing of subdomains can vary greatly. On average, a site with 10,000 pages is indexed in 1 month.
Cases
Subject – building materials
The main region is Moscow.
Additional regions: 22 subdomains for the largest cities of the European part of Russia.
news
Total traffic from the regions has already exceeded traffic from Moscow, its share is 55%
Theme - Elite Jewelry
The main region is Saint Petersburg.
Additional regions: 11 subdomains for the largest cities of the European part of Russia, including Moscow.
news
The creation of a Moscow subdomain and increased demand from the capital became the reason for the creation of the company's Moscow office, and not vice versa, as is often the case
Subject – production of industrial equipment
Main region – Samara
Additional regions: 13 subdomains for delivery cities
news
Total traffic increased by 40%
The graphs show that creating subdomains helps increase search traffic. This approach has proven effective in other agency projects as well.
A quick checklist
Let's check the sequence of stages for creating subdomains:
We selected the necessary cities.
We have decided on the names of the subdomains.
Created subdomains.
Subdomains have been closed from indexing.
Replaced toponyms in the title and meta-description of pages.
Replaced toponyms in page content.
Replaced the information in the site header.
Replaced the information in the site footer.
Replaced information in all commercial elements and pages of the site.
We have set up the Contacts page.
Configured sitemap.xml.
We checked the site with a parser, replaced absolute links in the site code and in rel=canonical.
Replaced robots.txt and opened subdomains for indexing.
We have configured the city selection menu.
Added the site to Yandex.Webmaster and Google Search Console with the corresponding actions.
Most popular questions
We would like to share solutions and conclusions – the quintessence obtained through practice and analytics.
1. Are subdomains suitable for all types of websites?
It would be more correct to ask about the readiness of the business, not the site. Will you be able to provide quality services to clients from other regions? If yes, there are no restrictions on creating subdomains. Very rarely, a more effective solution will be another method of regional binding, but in most cases, subdomains give the fastest and highest quality effect.
2. And that's all? What about user care and individual conditions for each region?
The article examines the technical side of business expansion to other regions within the framework of search engine promotion. In addition to this, it is possible to work out and specify special delivery conditions to each city, connect the definition of the city by the user's geoIP, change the range and prices of goods and services in each region. All this is worked out individually depending on the site and the tasks it solves.
Constant analysis of subdomain user behavior will help identify and implement the necessary improvements. Yes, you should always think about customers first, not about traffic. Especially since in conditions of strong influence of behavioral factors on the site's position, these indicators are closely related. You need to be prepared for the fact that conversion from other regions will be lower, at least because you begin to compete with local sites. But there are exceptions to this rule. Here is an example of the conversion of an online gift store with delivery from Moscow (although, it would seem, gifts can be bought anywhere):
news
3. We don’t have phones/offices in the regions, what should we do?
The presence of phones with the code of the promoted city and real representative offices is desirable, but not mandatory. For the correct assignment of cities to subdomains, you do not even need an 8-800 number. However, all these factors will significantly increase user loyalty and conversion and, as a result, behavioral factors and positions of subdomains.
4. Does it make sense to create subdomains for entire regions or, conversely, for very small cities?
A subdomain for a region will not give good positions either in a regional center or in district centers. It is easier and more effective to cover a district center with a subdomain for a regional center. The exception is small but quite competitive cities. For example, the practice of creating subdomains for cities in the Moscow region is widespread:
himki.example.ru – Khimki
lobnya.example.ru — Lobnya
5. All content will not be unique! My site will be banned! Sites will be affiliated!
They won't ban you. The importance of uniqueness is greatly exaggerated. If sufficient changes have been made (according to the plan above) to avoid gluing subdomains, then there is nothing to worry about. Agree, if you sell corrugated sheets with properties that do not change from region to region, why invent a new description of the same product for each subdomain? At the same time, you have your own delivery conditions and contact information for each city, which makes the offer unique for that city.
All subdomains can and most likely will be affiliated, but this only means that in each specific city, for each specific request from a group of sites of one owner, only one site will be shown. Since we have one subdomain made for one region, it will always be shown, which will in no way affect the final overall visibility of the site in all regions. There is no need to bring it to the point of absurdity and try to make the design, layout and font unique - there is no need to hide the site's belonging to one owner, which is even written in Yandex.Help.
news
6. What to do with a site on the https protocol?
If your site uses the HTTPS protocol, you should take care of purchasing a Wildcard SSL certificate in advance to transfer all subdomains to a secure protocol at once.
7. How quickly will traffic from the regions appear?
As mentioned earlier, the speed of subdomain indexing and, as a result, traffic to them strongly depend on the parameters of the site itself. As a rule, you will receive the first visitors from search engines in 2-3 days after adding subdomains to Yandex.Webmaster.
8. How to track traffic from subdomains?
We use and recommend using one counter for all subdomains. You can divide search traffic depending on the subdomain using the grouping parameter in the Metrica "Domain of the landing page". For example, in order to track the amount of traffic from search engines to each subdomain, you can set the following groupings in the "Sources, summary" report:
news
By setting other necessary groupings, you can get comprehensive statistics for each subdomain (entry pages, phrases, etc.).
9. I did everything according to the instructions. Traffic from the regions is growing. Can I relax?
Not much. Especially in the first few months, it is worth carefully analyzing the site's positions in the promoted regions, conversion, bounce rate and total traffic volume. This will allow you to quickly correct technical errors, as well as improve the user experience when working with your subdomains.
Example from practice.
The creation of subdomains was carried out by the client according to our technical specifications. A typo was made in the spelling of a variable of one city in one case. Due to the use of this case in the title of the pages, the name of the city with the typo was not perceived by search engines as the name of the city. An analysis of the traffic to the subdomains helped to quickly identify the error: the traffic from cities of similar size was significantly higher than the traffic from this city.
10. What about Google?
Traffic from Google to subdomains is significantly lower than traffic from Yandex. Subdomains are also indexed much worse in Google. The main reasons are as follows:
young age and lack of link mass, both factors have a big influence in Google;
Google does not have a distinct regionality, like Yandex, and it is impossible to manually set a region for each subdomain;
Poor ranking of duplicate content on subdomains in Google.
However, subdomains do not have any negative impact on the overall traffic from Google to the entire site. Provided that subdomains still provide traffic from Google, there is no need to close them from indexing in Google. It is also worth noting that if the service or region is not highly competitive, then a few months after subdomains are indexed in Google, you can expect a gradual increase in traffic.
For increasing traffic from Google, the promotion scheme using regional subfolders is more suitable. With this method, we save the values of the age and link mass factors. You can also write unique content for each regional folder - this is quite expensive, but will significantly increase traffic from this search engine.
11. What to do with website pages that are targeted at geo-independent queries without a toponym (blog, articles, news)?
These sections can, but do not necessarily, be closed from indexing. The main domain will participate in the search for such queries due to its stronger host characteristics.
12. We are located in the region, and we have/will have a representative office/subdomain in Moscow. What region should the main domain be aimed at?
If you already have good positions and traffic in your main region, you should leave it on the main domain. Then you should create a subdomain like msk.example.ru for Moscow. Yes, in this case it will be difficult to compete with Moscow sites, but this will allow you not to lose your existing positions. With little or no search traffic, the optimal solution would be to orient the main domain to Moscow and create a subdomain for your region. The option of redefining the main domain to Moscow and creating a subdomain for your region in the presence of search traffic is possible, but, as a rule, entails a drawdown of at least 1 month.
We hope this article will help your business or your clients' businesses! If you have any questions or ideas on how to get even more traffic using subdomains, we'll be happy to discuss them in the comments.
Let's start with an overview of all the methods of regional promotion in Yandex.
Regional ranking
Search engines ensure that the user is given a relevant answer to his request. One of the factors of relevance is regionality. The product or service is of interest to the potential client in the region in which he is located.
Methods of assigning regionality
When promoting a website locally, the region is assigned in all possible ways: by specifying contact information on the website, through Yandex.Webmaster and Yandex.Directory. If you want to attract users from other regions, various options are possible:
1. Specifying the region "Russia" in Yandex.Webmaster. A classic mistake of incompetent specialists. Not only will this not bring additional traffic, but it will also reduce traffic from the main region.
2. Adding all desired regions to Yandex.Directory. This
content writing service method can really improve ranking in the regions. But in this case, several problems arise. Firstly, it is not always possible to confirm information about a new regional representative office. All requests in Yandex.Directory are moderated, and for providing deliberately false information, you can forget about this tool forever. Secondly, there is no possibility of promoting geo-independent queries with a toponym (example: "buy concrete in Samara"). The reason is that a large number of regions in the main areas of the document (title, meta-description, text) will reduce the relevance of the entire document, and can also be regarded by search engines as spam.
3. Specifying several regions in Yandex.Webmaster. This is possible only if you have retained such rights from Yandex.Catalog.
4. Creating subfolders for regions. With this method, the site structure is cloned into folders like example.ru/samara/, example.ru/saratov/, etc. This strategy is successfully used by many sites, but has some limitations:
in Yandex.Webmaster it is impossible to assign each folder its own region;
Accordingly, we can only rely on the automatic assignment of regions to the site, which can take several months.
5. Creating subdomains for regions. This also includes creating separate domain names for each city (example-samara.ru, example-saratov.ru, etc.). At the same time, allocating regions to separate second-level domains is usually impractical due to additional financial costs and a decrease in the connection of sites with one brand. Therefore, creating regional subdomains is the best option for a number of reasons:
relatively simple technical implementation;
the ability to easily specify a region for each subdomain in Yandex.Webmaster (you can also assign a region to each subdomain via Yandex.Directory);
preserving all the developments of the main site - in fact, it is cloned with a number of conditions, and then each subdomain is promoted as a separate site for one region.
The right way is up to you. You can always do a competitor analysis and see what strategy they have chosen. But in most cases, the optimal solution is to create subdomains, with which we help our clients enter other regions.
Steps to create subdomains
1. We define the regions (or more precisely, regional centers) necessary for promotion. These can be all million-plus cities, or all Russian cities with a population of over 100,000 people (there are about 200 of them), or only the regions required by the client. In any case, creating additional subdomains if there are existing ones that work is not a problem, since all the conditions for replacing content will already be configured for you.
2. Naming subdomains. In some cases, the question of the correct transliteration of the city name or its abbreviation may arise - in this case, we analyze competitors in the region.
news
Transliteration and abbreviation options do not play a significant role.
3. Create subdomains and make them aliases of the main domain. At this stage, the information on all domains is no different, the sites are complete copies. You can immediately glue each subdomain with its www version using a 301 redirect. We strongly recommend using the non-www version for subdomains, since using www may cause problems with the SSL certificate for all subdomains (even if you do not plan it now, it is better to provide for this in advance).
4. To avoid gluing subdomains, as soon as possible after completing the previous point, you need to close them from indexing by writing in robots.txt:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
5. On all subdomains, the city mention in the title and meta-description must be replaced with a variable that will be replaced with the city name depending on the subdomain. If necessary, create several variables with cities in different cases. On pages where the toponym is not used in the title and meta-description, it is recommended to create an addendum indicating the current city depending on the subdomain. If for some reason you use meta-keywords in promotion, do not forget about toponyms in them as well.
Examples of tags for subdomains:
title: Buy concrete in {IN_CITY}, prices per 1 cubic meter with delivery
meta-description: We offer to buy concrete at the best prices in {IN_CITY}. Fast delivery, own production.
6. On all promoted pages, it is necessary to replace the toponym in the text content. It is possible to create a text fragment for all pages using a template using the city variable. If your texts do not contain toponyms (nothing to change), and you do not want to form a new text fragment - no big deal. In this case, problems with uniqueness are not so important, since each page on each subdomain is oriented to its region. They are not complete duplicates due to different contact information in the header and footer of the site. At the same time, there is a possibility that non-unique content will be ranked poorly in Google, but, again, subdomains are a solution primarily for Yandex.
7. Working with the site header:
we change contact information depending on the subdomain;
If the current header template does not explicitly indicate the city anywhere, it is recommended to add an element indicating the city (for example, in the footer or next to the phone number).
news
8. Similarly, we replace all the information in the site footer. It is recommended to display the variable with the city name in text form at least once in both the header and footer for correct ranking in the region.
news
9. At this stage, it is necessary to check all commercial information on the site and make the necessary changes, for example:
in the delivery details on the product card;
region in the order form;
region in the Cart;
"Delivery" page data. The information here should reflect the actual details of delivery to this region. This is not so much for promotion, but for your customers.
It would not be a bad idea to go through the entire path on the subdomain from the visitor to the buyer and check whether all the necessary replacements have been made.
10. On the "Contacts" page, it is necessary to display information for the current city. If there are no representative offices here, it is necessary to inform about the possibility of delivery to the specified region and a contact phone number. Information about existing representative offices in other regions is added at will.
11. In the sitemap.xml for each subdomain, you need to replace the domain in the links to the corresponding subdomain. There is no need to generate a separate sitemap for each subdomain. The structures of all subdomains are identical, and on the main domain, the sitemap is up to date (right?). Just replace the domain.
12. It is necessary to check all links on the created subdomains. The code may use absolute links, which will remain absolute on the subdomain and will lead to the main domain. They should be replaced with relative ones. It is also recommended to check the rel=canonical attribute if it contains absolute links. The current subdomain should be specified everywhere. To automate the check, you can use any parser (Screaming Frog, Comparser, Netpeak).
13. If you have successfully completed all the previous steps, robots.txt from the main domain is inserted instead of each subdomain's robots.txt, replacing the domain with the corresponding subdomain in the sitemap address. If your robots.txt still contains the Host directive, this is a great time to remove it ( more about this in the Yandex blog).
14. A window with a city selection and a click-through to the corresponding subdomain must be added to the site header. It is not recommended to do this earlier, since curious users and robots will be able to get to unfinished subdomains.
news
There are two things to consider here:
— It is necessary to implement a transition from the corresponding internal page of one domain to the corresponding page of another. Agree, if your client finds a suitable product on the site, decides to switch the region and ends up on the main page, his desire to continue working with your site will sharply decrease.
— All links in the city selection window must be in indexable format. This means that implementation using the "select" tag or any other method using JavaScript will not work, since subdomain indexing will be noticeably worse.
15. At this stage, the technical side of implementing subdomains is complete. You need to add all subdomains to Yandex.Webmaster. If you have verified the rights to the main domain, a simplified scheme for verifying rights is used for subdomains (no need to place a file or meta tag). For each subdomain, you need to specify: region and link to the site map. To speed up indexing, you can add several main pages to "Page re-crawl".
We also recommend adding all subdomains to the Google Search Console panel and specifying a sitemap link for each of them.
After that, all you have to do is wait. Depending on your server speed, crawling budget, and the number of pages on the site, the time for full indexing of subdomains can vary greatly. On average, a site with 10,000 pages is indexed in 1 month.
Cases
Subject – building materials
The main region is Moscow.
Additional regions: 22 subdomains for the largest cities of the European part of Russia.
news
Total traffic from the regions has already exceeded traffic from Moscow, its share is 55%
Theme - Elite Jewelry
The main region is Saint Petersburg.
Additional regions: 11 subdomains for the largest cities of the European part of Russia, including Moscow.
news
The creation of a Moscow subdomain and increased demand from the capital became the reason for the creation of the company's Moscow office, and not vice versa, as is often the case
Subject – production of industrial equipment
Main region – Samara
Additional regions: 13 subdomains for delivery cities
news
Total traffic increased by 40%
The graphs show that creating subdomains helps increase search traffic. This approach has proven effective in other agency projects as well.
A quick checklist
Let's check the sequence of stages for creating subdomains:
We selected the necessary cities.
We have decided on the names of the subdomains.
Created subdomains.
Subdomains have been closed from indexing.
Replaced toponyms in the title and meta-description of pages.
Replaced toponyms in page content.
Replaced the information in the site header.
Replaced the information in the site footer.
Replaced information in all commercial elements and pages of the site.
We have set up the Contacts page.
Configured sitemap.xml.
We checked the site with a parser, replaced absolute links in the site code and in rel=canonical.
Replaced robots.txt and opened subdomains for indexing.
We have configured the city selection menu.
Added the site to Yandex.Webmaster and Google Search Console with the corresponding actions.
Most popular questions
We would like to share solutions and conclusions – the quintessence obtained through practice and analytics.
1. Are subdomains suitable for all types of websites?
It would be more correct to ask about the readiness of the business, not the site. Will you be able to provide quality services to clients from other regions? If yes, there are no restrictions on creating subdomains. Very rarely, a more effective solution will be another method of regional binding, but in most cases, subdomains give the fastest and highest quality effect.
2. And that's all? What about user care and individual conditions for each region?
The article examines the technical side of business expansion to other regions within the framework of search engine promotion. In addition to this, it is possible to work out and specify special delivery conditions to each city, connect the definition of the city by the user's geoIP, change the range and prices of goods and services in each region. All this is worked out individually depending on the site and the tasks it solves.
Constant analysis of subdomain user behavior will help identify and implement the necessary improvements. Yes, you should always think about customers first, not about traffic. Especially since in conditions of strong influence of behavioral factors on the site's position, these indicators are closely related. You need to be prepared for the fact that conversion from other regions will be lower, at least because you begin to compete with local sites. But there are exceptions to this rule. Here is an example of the conversion of an online gift store with delivery from Moscow (although, it would seem, gifts can be bought anywhere):
news
3. We don’t have phones/offices in the regions, what should we do?
The presence of phones with the code of the promoted city and real representative offices is desirable, but not mandatory. For the correct assignment of cities to subdomains, you do not even need an 8-800 number. However, all these factors will significantly increase user loyalty and conversion and, as a result, behavioral factors and positions of subdomains.
4. Does it make sense to create subdomains for entire regions or, conversely, for very small cities?
A subdomain for a region will not give good positions either in a regional center or in district centers. It is easier and more effective to cover a district center with a subdomain for a regional center. The exception is small but quite competitive cities. For example, the practice of creating subdomains for cities in the Moscow region is widespread:
himki.example.ru – Khimki
lobnya.example.ru — Lobnya
5. All content will not be unique! My site will be banned! Sites will be affiliated!
They won't ban you. The importance of uniqueness is greatly exaggerated. If sufficient changes have been made (according to the plan above) to avoid gluing subdomains, then there is nothing to worry about. Agree, if you sell corrugated sheets with properties that do not change from region to region, why invent a new description of the same product for each subdomain? At the same time, you have your own delivery conditions and contact information for each city, which makes the offer unique for that city.
All subdomains can and most likely will be affiliated, but this only means that in each specific city, for each specific request from a group of sites of one owner, only one site will be shown. Since we have one subdomain made for one region, it will always be shown, which will in no way affect the final overall visibility of the site in all regions. There is no need to bring it to the point of absurdity and try to make the design, layout and font unique - there is no need to hide the site's belonging to one owner, which is even written in Yandex.Help.
news
6. What to do with a site on the https protocol?
If your site uses the HTTPS protocol, you should take care of purchasing a Wildcard SSL certificate in advance to transfer all subdomains to a secure protocol at once.
7. How quickly will traffic from the regions appear?
As mentioned earlier, the speed of subdomain indexing and, as a result, traffic to them strongly depend on the parameters of the site itself. As a rule, you will receive the first visitors from search engines in 2-3 days after adding subdomains to Yandex.Webmaster.
8. How to track traffic from subdomains?
We use and recommend using one counter for all subdomains. You can divide search traffic depending on the subdomain using the grouping parameter in the Metrica "Domain of the landing page". For example, in order to track the amount of traffic from search engines to each subdomain, you can set the following groupings in the "Sources, summary" report:
news
By setting other necessary groupings, you can get comprehensive statistics for each subdomain (entry pages, phrases, etc.).
9. I did everything according to the instructions. Traffic from the regions is growing. Can I relax?
Not much. Especially in the first few months, it is worth carefully analyzing the site's positions in the promoted regions, conversion, bounce rate and total traffic volume. This will allow you to quickly correct technical errors, as well as improve the user experience when working with your subdomains.
Example from practice.
The creation of subdomains was carried out by the client according to our technical specifications. A typo was made in the spelling of a variable of one city in one case. Due to the use of this case in the title of the pages, the name of the city with the typo was not perceived by search engines as the name of the city. An analysis of the traffic to the subdomains helped to quickly identify the error: the traffic from cities of similar size was significantly higher than the traffic from this city.
10. What about Google?
Traffic from Google to subdomains is significantly lower than traffic from Yandex. Subdomains are also indexed much worse in Google. The main reasons are as follows:
young age and lack of link mass, both factors have a big influence in Google;
Google does not have a distinct regionality, like Yandex, and it is impossible to manually set a region for each subdomain;
Poor ranking of duplicate content on subdomains in Google.
However, subdomains do not have any negative impact on the overall traffic from Google to the entire site. Provided that subdomains still provide traffic from Google, there is no need to close them from indexing in Google. It is also worth noting that if the service or region is not highly competitive, then a few months after subdomains are indexed in Google, you can expect a gradual increase in traffic.
For increasing traffic from Google, the promotion scheme using regional subfolders is more suitable. With this method, we save the values of the age and link mass factors. You can also write unique content for each regional folder - this is quite expensive, but will significantly increase traffic from this search engine.
11. What to do with website pages that are targeted at geo-independent queries without a toponym (blog, articles, news)?
These sections can, but do not necessarily, be closed from indexing. The main domain will participate in the search for such queries due to its stronger host characteristics.
12. We are located in the region, and we have/will have a representative office/subdomain in Moscow. What region should the main domain be aimed at?
If you already have good positions and traffic in your main region, you should leave it on the main domain. Then you should create a subdomain like msk.example.ru for Moscow. Yes, in this case it will be difficult to compete with Moscow sites, but this will allow you not to lose your existing positions. With little or no search traffic, the optimal solution would be to orient the main domain to Moscow and create a subdomain for your region. The option of redefining the main domain to Moscow and creating a subdomain for your region in the presence of search traffic is possible, but, as a rule, entails a drawdown of at least 1 month.
We hope this article will help your business or your clients' businesses! If you have any questions or ideas on how to get even more traffic using subdomains, we'll be happy to discuss them in the comments.