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Our main website is on a Windows server. We're migrating our Blogger blog to WordPress and I think I want to use a Linux-based webhost instead of our Windows server for this, just because I understand Wordpress is a pain in Windows environments.

However, I want my blog permalinks to reflect that the blog is on the same domain as our main website (not a subdomain). 

www.mymainsite.com/articles/article-number-one

Is this even possible if it’s on a completely different server? And if it is, are there any SEO penalties for this?

Our blog is currently on a subdoman, but I'd like to move away from this.

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  • What is the URL format of the source site & what is the URL format of the destination?
    – Giacomo1968
    Commented May 10, 2014 at 1:31
  • right now I have the blog set up at blog.mymainsite.com. Ultimately i want to rewrite that so the posts read www.mymainsite.com/articles/
    – JPD
    Commented May 13, 2014 at 20:26

2 Answers 2

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If it is on a different server, the easiest course of action is to use a subdomain like blog.mymainsite.com/articles/article-number-one There is very little SEO difference between hosting your blog on a subdomain or as a folder in the main domain.

Since you state that you don't want to use a subdomain, it is possible but it requires significantly more configuration. You will need to use a "reverse proxy" on your your Windows server to make it appear as if the documents from your Linux server were actually a subdirectory on your Windows server. Here is a Microsoft blog post that tells you how to set it up.

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  • I think OP will migrate his entire site to a new server and at root level. May not need to be too technical in that case.
    – Abu Nooh
    Commented May 10, 2014 at 15:33
  • @StephenOstermiller yes, I think the reverse proxy is what I'm looking for, although I'm concerned about the seo impact of this. I know it's a lot easier to keep it hosted on a subdomain, but I feel pretty confident it will improve SEO to have the content in subfolders on the main site. You seem to think it won't matter. Any evidence of this one way or another? All I see online is speculation.
    – JPD
    Commented May 13, 2014 at 20:35
  • We have lots of questions here that address the issue. Here is one. It certainly isn't definitive, but I've seen both subdirectories and subdomains ranking well.
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Commented May 13, 2014 at 22:04
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Yes it is absolutely possible. Use mod_rewrite module on Apache to rewrite the URLs.

And if the old URL is on a sub domain and different to the new URLs use .htacess to redirect permanently. If both URLs exist then use the canonical tag to tell the search engines which one to index. That is the standard practice and no penalties involved.

Also change the category base to articles if need be.

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  • mod_rewrite does not typically work across servers. Without additional modules, URLs can only be rewritten on the local filesystem.
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Commented May 10, 2014 at 2:05
  • @StephenOstermiller depends where the site is hosted I guess. But in most cases those are standard.
    – Abu Nooh
    Commented May 10, 2014 at 15:33

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