Need advice badly domain rank loss

[megapixall]

I have a main domain and a sub domain that both were  doing very well and after looking at the Moz history its obvious that panda and penguin affected my site considerably. My keywords are holding rank but my search results and traffic are way down.

My question is if I just take my subdomain (which is really my bread an butter shopping cart) and I consolidate my sub domain with my main domain would this help?

I would basically make my main domain the shopping cart and make them one site.

This should change the links to all the sites. The problem is I will lose the backlinks if I do not do a 301 but I do not want to bring bad links over and my keywords are holding rank.

What to do?

[mihaiaperghis]

Hey Francisco,

First and foremost, you should check why your traffic has dropped.

Check whether it has dropped on a certain search engine or on a certain set of keywords or landing pages, or is it a blanket drop everywhere.

Check whether your other sources of traffic have tanked as well (direct, referral, etc.) to see if you maybe have a website problem (Webmaster Tools can help you diagnose that as well).

Also check some of the Moz reports available. Moz cannot read Google penalties, so your Domain Authority (as well as your traffic) might have dropped due to a sudden removal of a portion of your backlinks.

As a side note, if your subdomain has been penalized due to spammy backlinks, there's a high likelihood your whole domain has been penalized as well.

[Chris.Menke]

It looks like you may need some hands on help.  Moz has a list of list of recommended SEO consultants you could contact for additional assistance--you could go that route.

[megapixall]

Hey Chris,

I am just at a loss. Based on my Moz reports my keywords are maintaining their rank but I have seen a massive drop in traffic and my domain authority and rank has tanked. I cant explain how my keywords maintain their rank but I continue to drop in traffic. Yes it could be that other keywords where driving the traffic but all of this is just driving me nuts.

I do not know if the Pinguin and Panda updates will continue to hurt me going forward and this is why I was considering consolidating the sites and removing any old links that could possibly be harming me.

I do not know how to proceed.

[Chris.Menke]

Francisco,

The info you provide isn't really enough to help you with any insight other than something sounds strange when you say that your rankings are the same but your traffic is going down and based on that, you are ready to start combining domains based on this information.

It would be important to have a clearer understanding of what is happening with your traffic.  If your rankings are the same. why is your traffic falling? Use your analytics to isolate which keywords may be bringing in less traffic now than a month or  two ago and which landing pages are receiving less traffic.  Based on this information there may be a different set of options to investigate other than consolidating domains.