Redirecting .edu subdomains to our site or taking the link, what's more valuable?
-
We have a relationship built through a service we offer to universities to be issued a .edu subdomain that we could redirect to our landing page relevant to that school. The other option is having a link from their website to that same page.
My first question is, what would be more valuable? Can you pass domain authority by redirecting a subdomain to a subdirectory in my root domain? Or would simply passing the link equity from a page in their root domain to our page pass enough value?
My second question is, if creating a subdomain with a redirect is much more valuable, what is the best process for this? Would we simply have their webmaster create the subdomain for us an have them put a 301 redirect to our page? Is this getting in the greyer hat area?
Thanks guys!
-
I would recommend getting the link from their root domain(s) to the service hosted on your own domain as that wold most likely be more valuable. This would do a few things.
- Referral visits. You could see pretty quickly how many people are coming from the university site to your site using the link.
- Endorsement strength. By having the link and university's explanation of your service on their site, they're providing additional trust based on people's past interactions with the university. This is partially an SEO thing, but also a conversion factor, i.e., "I trust my Uni's opinion so this is probably a worthwhile service."
- Simpler. You'll be managing fewer domains (just you're own) and won't have to worry about technical changes on the uni's side regarding the redirection and subdomain.
There's all that, plust the newly created subdomain wouldn't carry nearly as much trust and authority as the root domain. It's why Wordpress.org doesn't get in trouble in Google if someone creates: reallyspammysite.wordpress.org. Hope that clears it up. If someone else has compelling reasons for the other method, I'll let them expand on 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
-
I have a question about the impact of a root domain redirect on site-wide redirects and slugs.
I have a question about the impact (if any) of site-wide redirects for DNS/hosting change purposes. I am preparing to redirect the domain for a site I manage from https://siteImanage.com to https://www.siteImanage.com. Traffic to the site currently redirects in reverse, from https://www.siteImanage.com to https://siteImanage.com. Based on my research, I understand that making this change should not affect the site’s excellent SEO as long as my canonical tags are updated and a 301 redirect is in place. But I wanted to make sure there wasn’t a potential consequence of this switch I’m not considering. Because this redirect lives at the root of all the site’s slugs and existing redirects, will it technically produce a redirect chain or a redirect loop? If it does, is that problematic? Thanks for your input!
Technical SEO | | mollykathariner_ms0 -
Removing site subdomains from Google search
Hi everyone, I hope you are having a good week? My website has several subdomains that I had shut down some time back and pages on these subdomains are still appearing in the Google search result pages. I want all the URLs from these subdomains to stop appearing in the Google search result pages and I was hoping to see if anyone can help me with this. The subdomains are no longer under my control as I don't have web hosting for these sites (so these subdomain sites just show a default hosting server page). Because of this, I cannot verify these in search console and submit a url/site removal request to Google. In total, there are about 70 pages from these subdomains showing up in Google at the moment and I'm concerned in case these pages have any negative impacts on my SEO. Thanks for taking the time to read my post.
Technical SEO | | QuantumWeb620 -
Can I redirect a link even if the link is still on the site
Hi Folks, I've got a client who has a duplicate content because they actually create duplicate content and store the same piece of content in 2 different places. When they generate this duplicate content, it creates a 2nd link on the site going to the duplicate content. Now they want the 2nd link to always redirect to the first link, but for architecture reasons, they can't remove the 2nd link from the site navigation. We can't use rel-canonical because they don't want visitors going to that 2nd page. Here is my question: Are there any adverse SEO implications to maintaining a link on a site that always redirects to a different page? I've already gone down the road of "don't deliberately create duplicate content" with the client. They've heard me, but won't change. So, what are your thoughts? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Rock330 -
Why are only PDFs on my client's site being indexed, and not actual pages?
My client has recently built a new site (we did not build this), which is a subdomain of their main site. The new site is: https://addstore.itelligencegroup.com/uk/en/. (Their main domain is: http://itelligencegroup.com/uk/) This new Addstore site has recently gone live (in the past week or so) and so far, Google appears to have indexed 56 pdf files that are on the site, but it hasn't indexed any of the actual web pages yet. I can't figure out why though. I've checked the robots.txt file for the site which appears to be fine: https://addstore.itelligencegroup.com/robots.txt. Does anyone have any ideas about this?
Technical SEO | | mfrgolfgti0 -
SEMRush's Site Audit Tool "SEO Ideas"
Recently SEMRush added a feature to its site audit tool called "SEO Ideas." In the case of specific the site I'm looking at it with, it's ideas consist mostly of suggesting words to add to the page for the page/my phrase(s) to perform better. It suggests this even when the term(s) or phrases(s) it's looking at are #1. Has anybody used this tool for this or something similar and found it to be valuable and if so how valuable? The reason I ask is that it would be a fair amount of work to go through these pages and find ways to add the select words and phrases and, frankly, it feels kind of 2005 to me. Your thoughts? Thanks... Darcy
Technical SEO | | 945010 -
301 redirect of one site version to new domain
Hello all. I today have domain.com that has 10 language versions and the structure is by folders: domain.com/ru/
Technical SEO | | Gregos
domain.com/pl/ etc. Soon I plan redesign,new CMS and I plan to register 9 new ccTLDs. My question is: Can I 301 redirect domain.com/ru/ to domain.ru without having some bad effect on domain.com? I mean,the main domain,com is not going to be affected by permanent redirect of one url to completly new domain right?0 -
Redirect old URL's from referring sites?
Hi I have just came across some URL's from the previous web designer and the site structure has now changed. There are some links on the web however that are still pointing at the old deep weblinks. Without having to contact each site it there a way to automatically sort the links from the old structure www.mydomain.com/show/english/index.aspx to just www.mydomain.com Many Thanks
Technical SEO | | ocelot0 -
Isapi rewrite syntax for partial link redirects
I need to redirect a number of partial (incomplete) redirects. The listing in Google Webmaster Tools looks like this: learn/how_to_dr learn/howtodrea/a learn/ingredie.. learn/step_by_step_instruc When I try and use Isapi to redirect these, It does not work. Is there a specific syntax I need to do to accomplish this?
Technical SEO | | dreadmichael0