Sub-domains for keyword targeting? (specific example question)
-
Hey everyone, I have a question I believe is interesting and may help others as well.
Our competitor heavily (over 100-200) uses sub-domains to rank in the search engines... and is doing quite well. What's strange, however, is that all of these sub-domains are just archives -- they're 100% duplicate content! An example can be seen here where they just have a bunch of relevant posts archived with excerpts.
How is this ranking so well? Many of them are top 5 for keywords in the 100k+ range. In fact their #1 source of traffic is SEO for many of the pages.
As an added question: is this effective if you were to actually have a quality/non-duplicate page?
Thanks! Loving this community.
-
No, they did all of their research just about that. Trust me, they can tell. Try to limit the number of ads, don't remove them, just limit to no more than 2 per page.
-
Thanks a lot, Kate.
This makes a lot of sense, and I really do need to re-visit my advertising format.
I was under the impression that since the sidebar ads are simply images that Google may not see them as purely advertisements? These ads are the entirety of our current income so it is a confusing situation as to how to work this issue.
Thanks for your answer & future contributions.
-
The one piece of feedback I can give is that your pages have way too much advertising. If Panda didn't affect you before I can see it doing it in the future. This competitor has tons of resources on the topic and seems to be a better result for broad terms like aspartame. If you want to rank for broad terms like that, I'd work at developing a resource center for searchers of that term. They could be looking up that broad of a word for many reasons, answer those and don't focus on the ads. Focus on being the best answer for the query.
-
Thanks for this great reply, Kate.
It appears that they actually must be editing the excerpts from the originals so that it isn't duplicate. This site, on their sub-domains specifically, dominates a large number of terms such as aspartame, kirll oil, gmo, etc. -- sometimes multiple times on the front page.
We have a few modest pages competing for many terms, including this one for aspartame and this one for 'genetically modified foods' -- this one getting quite a few linkbacks.
On a side note, we have a page that is the 10th most shared in 2011 with over 236,000 shares and it's still not ranking hardly at all.
Thanks a ton for any feedback, it is very much appreciated.
-
While this is not the best use of their time and something that as a consultant I'd recommend against, the content on that page is not duplicated from what I can tell. The page is about aspartame and links to other articles on the subject. It looks like the content is on other sites, but I can't determine who scraped whom. Can you tell me what page you have that is competing against this one? I'd be happy to give some advice. But for right now, I can't see an issue here.
And no, generally putting things on subdomains is not effective but done right it can be. I don't want to say it isn't overall but we traditionally recommend against it.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
General Question: Linking Root Domains 0
Hi, we have several subpages with PA 1. We try to figure out why. The link metrics show 0 Linking root domains, but shouldnt there be at least the own domain like 1 linking root domain or are we getting it already wrong here? The subpages have following link metrics: 0 External followed Links. 8416 subdomain and 8421 Root Domain, Linking Root Domains 0, 299 Subdomain, 302 Root Domain (From Mozbar). The pages seem to be crawled. We are suspecting techincal reasons. What would be the impact of the linking root domain to the PA 1? Thank you in advance
Technical SEO | | brainfruit0 -
Parked Domains
I have a client who has a somewhat odd situation for their domains. They've been really inconsistent with how they've used them over the years, which makes for a slightly sticky situation. The client has two domains: compname.com and fullcompanyname.com. Right now, their website is just HTML (no CMS) and all of the URLs are relative, so both domains work. Since the new website will be in WordPress, they need to commit to one domain as the primary. Right now, it looks like compname.com is the one they've used the most in ads and such, so I'm going to recommend they go with that. However, the client has also used fullcompanyname.com a lot. They don't want to have to setup individual 301 redirects for everything. I think it's ridiculous, but you can lead a horse to water... Our developer has done some research and he may have found a solution that will satisfy the client. I just want to find out if there are any SEO implications. The possible plan is to us compname.com as the primary domain and to park fullcompanyname.com. That way, if someone visits fullcompanyname.com/products/my-favorite-product, it will still work without having to setup 301 redirects. Since the domain is parked, Google won't recognize it as duplicate content, correct? Just to be clear on the whole situation, I'm insisting that all of the website URLs need 301 redirects, regardless of the domain. The primary concern is with a lot of other stuff on the server that isn't related to the site (email campaign landing pages, image files, assets that are pulled in by the client's software, etc.). The client's concern is about redirecting all that other stuff (and there is a lot of it--thousands of files). The parked domain would seem to fix that, but I want to make sure that the client won't get Google slapped.
Technical SEO | | BopDesign0 -
How should I set up a domain redirect
A client has 2 domains that he wants to use for the same site. At the moment one domain is just an abbreviation of the main domain (not sure why) as follows: www.mygreatpropertycompany.com
Technical SEO | | davidmaxwell
www.mgpc.com (just redirects to the above) He is complaining that when he searches for 'mpc' there are no results (at all) so I'm wondering what the best approach is.There is currently nothing on the main domain that refers to 'mgpc' in it's abbreviated sense - the only place it's being used is the company's email addresses (info@mgpc.com). The redirect is simply a html file in the root of www.mgpc.com as follows: Is there anything I can do to help him out? (this is one of those 'doing a friend a favour' tasks!) Thanks!0 -
No Keyword in URL
SEOMoz (and other platforms) advise that I need to add my keyword to the page URL, however as far as I'm concerned it has been, so why don't these platforms see it. My home page URL is www.salesandinternetmarketing.com, but apparently I haven't added the keyword internet marketing to the URL, what advice can you give me please? Lindsay
Technical SEO | | lindsayjhopkins1 -
What is the advantage of using sub domains instead of pages on the root domain?
Have a look at this example http://bannerad.designcrowd.com/ For each category of design, they have a landing page on the sub domain. Wouldn't it be better to have them as part of the same domain? What is the strategy behind using sub domains?
Technical SEO | | designquotes0 -
New small business.. brand or keyword rich domain?
With so many keyword rich domains in circulation is there actually little option for small business right now other than to use keyword rich domains themselves e.g. (businessname)(keywords).com instead of brand e.g. (businessname.com) where competitors are using keyword rich domains and ranking high? It could be a mis-perception on my part, but, unless you have a very old non keyword domain name, if you don't have a keyword rich domain name in a competitive market you will struggle to succeed unless you have a serious SEO budget. Unless you are the next Google/Facebook/Pepsi isn't branding just a load of BS ? We are ourselves are in a predicament about which domain to use for our own website design business. We have a brand name domain name which is a 4 char domain but we also have a brand+keyword domain and are not 100% which one to use as our primary domain. Perhaps we can use the brand domain as our primary domain and then use the brand+keyword domain as an appropriately constructed single page promotional site, perhaps with unique content which links back to the brand domain? Good idea / Bad idea? I guess the overriding question is, if the content is good enough is the domain name you choose irrelevent to some extent?
Technical SEO | | NeilD0 -
Domain Masking with New Keyword-Rich Domains
Hello, friends. We have an ecommerce site and we also own several keyword-rich domains but haven't done anything with them yet. Is there any value in using domain masking to point them to either product pages or special landing pages on our primary ecommerce site? Here's an example: Primary site is widgetzone.com Keyword rich URL is acmewidget.com (which is totally blank and isn't indexed) It could point to our category page for Acme Widgets: widgetzone.com/category/acme-widgets or it could point to a new landing page: widgetzone.com/acme-widgets My concern is that because the keyword-rich URL hasn't been utilized at all there's really no point in redirecting it. I'm of the mind that it's either going to be ineffective at best or a duplicate content issue at worst. What do you guys think? As a follow-up, if we don't redirect these domains, what should we do with them? Just try to sell them off rather than create totally new sites?
Technical SEO | | jbreeden0 -
Domain Relocation
My client is running a online news website, which is running for 4 years. He's now looking to change the site into a new domain. I would like to know what are the factors to look out for when changing the site into new domain (In SEO point of view)
Technical SEO | | augmoz110