Subdomain and domain authority
-
I have Domain A (main content site, lots of content), with a domain authority of 91, and Domain B (blog of the first site, lots of content), with a domain authority of 82. I'm merging the blog into the main domain. Would it be best to keep it as a subdomain, or under a directory?
-
Thank you, Marcus. That was my initial thinking as well, but I've been hung up on how the existing domain authority and inbound links to the blog -- which is currently on its own domain -- will impact the main site's domain authority if we move it to a subdomain or to a folder of the main site.
Since the blog has solid domain authority now, and many quality inbound links, will my main site suffer when all of those now-external links from the blog become internal links, or will it benefit from the external links that once pointed to the blog on its own domain?
About 12% of the blog's traffic comes from the main site, whereas 1.5% of the main site's traffic comes from the blog. So I could assume that the main site would benefit from the link juice of all of those new inbound links -- right?
Put another way, if we combine content from two sites having a 10 point difference in domain authority, do you think the resulting domain authority will go up or down?
-
In general terms, your blog is always better off on the main site as that is where all your linkable content is likely to live so the main site benefits from the link juice from the blog. That is a high level view from like 10,000 feet but as a general rule of thumb, always do
Hope that helps!
Marcus
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
-
Gradual Increase in Domain Authority After Domain Migration But No Improvement in Organic Traffic Yet
We migrated our domain in early April and simultaneously added an SSL certificate. Everything was done by the books. All redirects implemented perfectly, very few errors. Google notified via Search Console. Despite all steps being done perfectly our domain authority dropped from 24 to 8. Organic traffic dropped from about 80 per day to about 10. Each month domain authority increases by 2 or 3. We are now back up to a DA of 16. But no improvement in organic traffic yet. At what point should organic traffic start to return? Hopefully the consistent improvement in DA is a good sign. I have been told that adding SSL and moving the domain at the same time was a very bad idea. We are starting link building next week. Hopefully that will help further. Any ideas as to when this situation will improve? Needless to say it has been awful for our business.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
Domain transfer
Hi Everyone! I work for a company that had a new website built through a digital agency and that website went live 2 months ago. I have only been with the company for 2 months and find myself under the gun, because they are not coming up in organic search results that they used to. The old domain was 301'ed to point to the new domain. There were also 1 to 1 redirects set up to transfer the old page authority to the new, equivalent pages. In everyone's experience, how long does it take for a domain to start populating for search terms that it used to? I know there are mixed reviews on 301 transfers and how much of the old domain authority is preserved when you take this route. What is your experience? Just looking for some answers. Thanks in advance! John
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdvisGroup0 -
My Domain authority dropped 9 points... Does anyone have any suggestions to fix this significant drop.
My domain authority dropped by 9 points and I haven't done anything differently since the last scan. What is going on?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | infotrust20 -
Do links to a domain that re-directs to my domain pass link equity?
Hi guys. We've recently taken control of a third-party site and we're going to set up a domain re-direct so any traffic comes to our site. With any existing links that the third-party site has, will these pass link equity to our main site through the redirect? Thanks, Paul
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kevinliao0 -
No Domain Authority after 6 weeks
Hi, We have just launched a new e-commerce site and 301'd a lot of the products and categories to the new site. I have also added a link or 2 from other domains. We launched it on 10th of June - but still using site explorer, there is no domain authority showing - just a 1. Why is that? Any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs20100 -
Our main domain has thousands of subdomains with same content (expired hosting), how should we handle it?
Hello, Our client allows users to create free-trial subdomains and once the trial expires, all the domains have the same page. If people stick, their own websites are hosted on the subdomain. Since all these expired trials subdomains have the same content and are linking towards the Homepage, should they be nofollows? Has anyone dealt with something similar? Thanks very much in advance,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SCAILLE0 -
Is it safe to 301 redirect old domain to new domain after a manual unnatural links penalty?
I have recently taken on a client that has been manually penalised for spammy link building by two previous SEOs. Having just read this excellent discussion, http://www.seomoz.org/blog/lifting-a-manual-penalty-given-by-google-personal-experience I am weighing up the odds of whether it's better to cut losses and recommend moving domains. I had thought under these circumstances it was important not to 301 the old domain to the new domain but the author (Lewis Sellers) comments on 3/4/13 that he is aware of forwards having been implemented without transferring the penalty to the new domain. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/lifting-a-manual-penalty-given-by-google-personal-experience#jtc216689 Is it safe to 301? What's the latest thinking?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ewan.Kennedy0 -
Page Authority Issue
My home page http://www.musicliveuk.com has a domain authority of 42 and page authority of 52. However I have set up other pages on the site to optimise for one keyword per page as I thought this was best practice. For example http://www.musicliveuk.com/home/wedding-bands targets 'wedding band' but this has a page authority of 24 way below my competitors. Having used the keyword difficulty tool on here it appears that is why I am struggling to rank highly (number 9). This is the same problem for several of my main keywords. I am building links to this and other pages in order to increase their authority and eventually rank highly but am I not better off optimising my home page that already has a good page authority and would probably out rank my competitors? Or am I missing something?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0