Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Can you redirect specific sub domain URLs?
-
ello!
We host our PDFs, Images, CSS all in a sub domain. For the question, let's call this sub.cyto.com. I've noticed a particular PDF doing really well, infact it has gathered valuable external links from high authoritative sites. To top it off, it gets good visits.
I've been going back and forth with our developers to move this PDF to a subfolder structure.
For example: www.cyto.com/document/xxxx.pdfIn my perspective, if I move this and set up a permanent redirect, then all the external links the PDF gathered, link juice and future visits will be attributed to the main website. Since the PDF is existing in the subdomain, I can't even track direct visits nor get the link juice. It appears in top position of Google as well.
My developer says it is better to keep images, pdf, css in the subdomain. I see his point and an idea I have is to:
- convert the pdf to a webpage.
- Set up a 301 redirect from the existing subdomain to this webpage
- Upload the pdf with a new name and link to it from the webpage, so users can download if they choose to.
This should give me the existing rank juice. However, my question is whether you can set up a 301 redirect for just a single subdomain URL to a folder structure URL?
-
"Do you recommend scrapping the subdomain in such an instance and hosting them all in the main domain in a folder?"
Yes.
"Would that impact on page load and speed?"
No.
This PDF is a perfect example of why not to do this, but the same can be said for images. Say you create an awesome infographic that people start linking to/sharing, and it's sitting on your subdomain. There goes your SEO benefit, much like you're experiencing with this PDF.
If you have the right hosting service, none of this should impact performance. Looking into a CDN will help for sure. I've heard good things about cloud flare, for example.
-
Thanks for the response Jesse.
Our site is an ecommerce one, and every product page is supported with a pdf. This is expected from our customers and it basically is the product page in a PDF format with tweaks. We have 10,000s of these and for speed, we store files such as pdfs and images locally in a subdomain.
For content delivery network purposes, I heard it was better to keep pdfs, images separate as well? We haven't got a CDN but it's something we will look into next year.
Do you recommend scrapping the subdomain in such an instance and hosting them all in the main domain in a folder? Would that impact on page load and speed?
Also is it possible to redirect individual subdomain URLs to a main domain one?
-
"My developer says it is better to keep images, pdf, css in the subdomain. I see his point"
You do? I sure don't. That sounds ridiculous to me and I see absolutely no reason why this should ever be necessary. I'd be surprised if anyone else did.
Your original plan was the right one; move that pdf to your main domain in a pdf folder or whatever and redirect the original URL right to it. That's the way to go, for sure. If you want to build it as an HTML page that's fine too. I personally would do that if it were an option mainly because I can't stand PDFs. But that's me.
No reason you need to have pdf, css, and images in a subdomain. That's silly.
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
-
When creating a sub-domain, does that sub-domain automatically start with the DA of the main domain?
We have a website with a high DA and we are considering sub-folder or sub-domain. One of the great benefits of a sub-folder is that we know we get to keep the high DA, is this also the case for sub-domains? Also if you could provide any sources of information that specify this, I can't see to find anything!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Saba.Elahi.M.0 -
Move domain to new domain, for how much time should I keep forwarding?
I'm not sure but my website looks like is not getting it's juice as supposed to be. As we already know, google preferred https sites and this is what happened to mine, it was been crawling as https but when the time came to move my domain to new domain, I used 301 or domain forwarding service, unfortunately they didn't have a way to forward from https to new https, they only had regular http to https, when users clicked to my old domain from google search my site was returned to "site does not exist", I used hreflang at least that google would detect my new domain been forwarding and yes it worked but now I'm wondering, for how much time should I keep the forwarding the old domain to the new one, my site looks like is not going up, I have changed all the external links, any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Fulanito1 -
What are best page titles for sub-domain pages?
Hi Moz communtity, Let's say a website has multiple sub-domains with hundreds and thousands of pages. Generally we will be mentioning "primary keyword & "brand name" on every page of website. Can we do same on all pages of sub-domains to increase the authority of website for this primary keyword in Google? Or it gonna end up as negative impact if Google consider as duplicate content being mentioned same keyword and brand name on every page even on website and all pages of sub domains? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Multiple 301 redirects for a HTTPS URL. Good or bad?
I'm working on an ecommerce website that has a few snags and issues with it's coding. They're using https, and when you access the website through domain.com, theres a 301 redirect to http://www.domain.com and then this, in turn, redirected to https://www.domain.com. Would this have a deterimental effect or is that considered the best way to do it. Have the website redirect to http and then all http access is redirected to the https URL? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jasondexter0 -
Robots.txt: Can you put a /* wildcard in the middle of a URL?
We have noticed that Google is indexing the language/country directory versions of directories we have disallowed in our robots.txt. For example: Disallow: /images/ is blocked just fine However, once you add our /en/uk/ directory in front of it, there are dozens of pages indexed. The question is: Can I put a wildcard in the middle of the string, ex. /en/*/images/, or do I need to list out every single country for every language in the robots file. Anyone know of any workarounds?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IHSwebsite0 -
Merging Domains... Sub-domains, Directories or Seperate Sites?
Hello! I am hoping you can help me decide the best path to take here... A little background: I'm moving to a new company that has three old domains (the oldest is 10 years old), which get a lot of traffic from their e-letters. Until recently they have not cared about SEO. So the websites have some structural, coding, URL and other issues. The sites are indexed, but have a problem getting crawled and/or indexed for new content - haven't delved into this yet but am certain I will be able to fix any of these issues. These three domains are PR4, PR4, PR5 and contain hundreds of unique articles. Here's the question... They want to move these three sites **to their main company site (PR4) and create sub domains for each one. ** I am wondering if this is a good idea or not. I have merged sites before (creating categories and/or directories) and the end result is that the ONE big site, is much for effective than TWO smaller, less authoritative sites. But the sub domain idea is something I am unsure about from an SEO perspective. Should we do this with sub domains? Or do you think we should keep the sites separate? How do Panda and Penguin play into this? Thanks in advance for the help! SD P.S. I'm not a huge advocate in using PR as a measurement tool, but since I can't reveal the actual domains, I figured I would list it as a reference point.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | essdee0 -
Can penalties be passed via 301 redirect?
I have a well established domain that's been hit with some penalties. It hasn't been nuked off the map, just downgraded, especially on short-tail, one word type queries. I'm planning on redirecting this domain to another well established domain. The domains already have a history of lots of interlinking and are very similar from a subject matter standpoint. I feel that the penalized domain has been hit with an "over-optimization" of link anchor text penalty (I'm hoping it's algorithmic, but it could be manual). My question is if anyone has ever heard of a penalty like this being transferred to another domain through a 301 redirect. My hope is that the penalty just puts a cap on how much juice the redirect can pass, rather than transferring the penalty to the other domain itself. Any thoughts on this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOMG1 -
Can I Improve Organic Ranking by Restrict Website Access to Specific IP Address or Geo Location?
I am targeting my website in US so need to get high organic ranking in US web search. One of my competitor is restricting website access to specific IP address or Geo location. I have checked multiple categories to know more. What's going on with this restriction and why they make it happen? One of SEO forum is also restricting website access to specific location. I can understand that, it may help them to stop thread spamming with unnecessary Sign Up or Q & A. But, why Lamps Plus have set this? Is there any specific reason? Can I improve my organic ranking? Restriction may help me to save and maintain user statistic in terms of bounce rate, average page views per visit, etc...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit1
