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.
Is there any benefit in using a subdomain redirected to a single page?
-
For example if we have a domain www.bobshardware.com.au and we setup a subdomain sydneysupplies.bobshardware.com.au and then brisbanescrewdrivers.bobshardware.com.au and used those in ad campaigns. Each subdomain being redirected back to a single page such as bobshardware.com.au/brisbane-screw-drivers etc.
Is there a benefit ?
Cheers
-
Thanks Rick. When you say unless links are involved what do you mean?
-
There will be only a single benefit, which is tracking. Separate subdomains will allow you track visitors properly. No positive or negative result - unless links are involved.
-
Having looked at that white board Friday I did find it helpful.
I did just go look at wotif.com.au and lastminute.com.au one of which I do recall using subdomains to divide their sites with. Neither appear to be using it any more. Which would be another indication that subdomains are in fact bad.
Seems to be subdomains are not really the way to go which from my point of view is a shame. It makes more sense to work that way.
-
Hi David,
Rand covered this very topic in a white board friday. Perhaps you may find it helpful and provide insight on what can happen and why he thinks the way he does.
Hope it helps,
Don
-
The main reasoning behind wishing to use a subdomain is more organisational.
Simply looking at having the subdomain house information on a particular topic or item, for instance screwdrivers in Brisbane. Any deals, latest arrivals etc could be found on that particular subdomain. And further to that thinking being able to redirect to a different page for 2 weeks and then bring the original page back with out changing or adding a new url on which it can be found.
Possibly just me and the way I like things organisationally but the idea appealed and I was wondering if there were any benefits or for that matter negatives to running a particular section that way.
-
Hi David. The benefits associated with 301 redirection come from either relocating your site, combining sites, cleaning up 404 pages, aligning page names within your site architecture, things of that nature. If you have links or visits to those third level pages and want to house all pages on your root domain instead of third levels, then 301 redirection would be the way to go. Cheers!
-
There would not be a direct SEO benefit for doing this. There maybe however a benefit in tracking. If you only used that sub-domain for X ad campaign than you would know all traffic from referral sub-domain would be coming from that ad campaign.
There may be some slight non-optimization for doing it this way. Sub-domains are treated as their own domains to a degree, so you are in affect giving the ad-campaign's link to juice to a new domain entirely. Then forwarding that to a specific page. Opposed to just directly giving the link juice an ad campaign can generate to the actual page.
A couple things here depending on the type of ad campaign there may not be any link juice to worry about, like Google's ad words don't pass link juice. However, if you purchased direct advertisement on certain sites you may get some link juice from those ads running.
The second thing is actually a question. What is the purpose of creating a sub-domain to point to a sub directory? Is it just for tracking? Or were you wondering if you could benefit from a sub-domain being treated as a new domain linking to you? If for tracking; I would think there are other tracking methods that could handle referring traffic. If it were in hopes of gaining a new backlink from a different domain than I would say it isn't helpful this way. First because it is simply forwarding to the sub-directory and secondly even it weren't forwarding the link would be considered from the same server and not very helpful anyway.
So in short, no benefit other than a potential way to help with tracking.
Hope that makes sense and helps,
Don
edit some grammar
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
-
Does the use of a unicode character high up on page adversely affect SEO?
I work for a company in the travel industry and we are currently in the process of building out a 360-degree video landing page to inspire travel to our destination. There is some desire from individuals on my team to use the unicode degree symbol ( ° ) after 360 to ensure clarity. We currently have the ° symbol in the Page Title and H1 tag. Does the use of a unicode character adversely affect SEO? Our concern is that it is very unlikely that people are searching for 360-degree videos using the unicode symbol. We also have it fully written out as well. Just want to make sure we won't get dinged for this. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | smontunnas1 -
Blogger /blog Folder level redirect setup using .htaccess
We have a blog currently powered by the free blogger.com website. We have set it up as blog.example.com we wish to seti it up as example.com/blog how can we do this using .htaccess file? we understand how to update htacess, but we don't know what code we should enter to achieve what we want our website is hosted on Apache servers with plesk control panel
Technical SEO | | Direct_Ram0 -
How do I redirect the Author archive page in Wordpress?
If you do a search for my name on Google, the first result is the author archive page of my Wordpress blog. I would like to redirect the author page to my "about me" page but cannot add a 301 as the author page is created dynamically in Wordpress. Anyone know how I can do this?
Technical SEO | | richdan0 -
Does a subdomain benefit from being on a high authority domain?
I think the title sums up the question, but does a new subdomain get any ranking benefits from being on a pre-existing high authority domain. Or does the new subdomain have to fend for itself in the SERPs?
Technical SEO | | RG_SEO0 -
Why is Google Webmaster Tools showing 404 Page Not Found Errors for web pages that don't have anything to do with my site?
I am currently working on a small site with approx 50 web pages. In the crawl error section in WMT Google has highlighted over 10,000 page not found errors for pages that have nothing to do with my site. Anyone come across this before?
Technical SEO | | Pete40 -
When creating parent and child pages should key words be repeated in url and page title?
We are in the direct mail advertising business: PrintLabelAndMail.com Example: Parent:
Technical SEO | | JimDirectMailCoach
Postcard Direct Mail Children:
Postcard Mailings
Postcard Design
Postcard Samples
Postcard Pricing
Postcard Advantages should "postcard" be repeated in the URL and Page Title? and in this example should each of the 5 children link back directly to the parent or would it be better to "daisy chain" them using each as parent for the next?0 -
Can you 301 redirect a page to an already existing/old page ?
If you delete a page (say a sub department/category page on an ecommerce store) should you 301 redirect its url to the nearest equivalent page still on the site or just delete and forget about it ? Generally should you try and 301 redirect any old pages your deleting if you can find suitable page with similar content to redirect to. Wont G consider it weird if you say a page has moved permenantly to such and such an address if that page/address existed before ? I presume its fine since say in the scenario of consolidating departments on your store you want to redirect the department page your going to delete to the existing pages/department you are consolidating old departments products into ?
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Rel=Canonical on a page with 302 redirection existing
Hi SEOMoz! Can I have the rel=canonical tag on a URL page that has a 302 redirection? Does this harm the search engine friendliness of a content page / website? Thanks! Steve
Technical SEO | | sjcbayona-412180