Gain SEO benefit for your main website domain after publishing a support portal or Knowledge Base

How do I make sure my main website domain benefits from publishing a support portal or Knowledge Base via a subdomain?

To maximize SEO benefit, you want to ensure that Google considers the subdomain for your support portal or Knowledge Base (e.g. support.example.com) as part of your main website.

Google will automatically treat subdomains as part of the main site when:

  • They have related content
  • They are written by the same person or company
  • They link to each other

From Vanessa Fox, an ex-Google employee:

Google is no longer treating subdomains (blog.widgets.com versus widgets.com) independently, instead attaching some association between them. The ranking algorithms have been tweaked so that pages from multiple subdomains have a much higher relevance bar to clear in order to be shown.

Here is a list of things you can do from Do subdomains help/hurt SEO?:

  • Link between the subdomain and the main site in the navigation menu, and visa-versa.
  • Put the same copyright statement on the bottom of each
  • Link each to the same terms of service, privacy policy, and contact page
  • Use the same logo on each
  • Use the same look and feel: colors, fonts, and layout
  • Add the subdomain to the same account in Google Search Console
  • Use the same Google Analytics and adversiting accounts (such as AdSense) on each

As always, let us know if you have any questions. 

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