Ranking drop after sub domain to sub directory migration. Usual?

[vtmoz]

Hi all,

We had our help articles on sub-domain help.website.com. Then we moved it to sub directory website.com/help/. We expected ranking improvement of website.com as there is a wide saying of benefiting from sub domain to sub directory migration. We have noticed that ranking improvement of new sub directory pages (website.com/help/) but not for any main website pages (website.com). I presume that link juice from main website has benefited new sub directory pages but main website lost ranking due to the page rank dilution. Do you agree? Any ideas?

Thanks

[JamesCrossland]

Hmmmm - that is interesting then

I'd of done exactly what you've done. I take it you mean you're home page has dropped in rankings? Are the sub domains outranking it?

How's your internal link structure/navigation back to the home page.

As I say I don't think you've done anything wrong - A link building campaign to the home page might benefit you but even then I'd be tempted to ignore it and focus on the sub domains - ask yourself as a user - When was the last time you used a home page as a landing page as opposed to a page that served your specific request?

[vtmoz]

I can say the website got affected in between not benefited and suffered.

Main website pages are around 130 where new sub directory have almost 1000 pages. But we do have other sub domains and sub directories. Especially, we have blog as sub directory which have hundreds of pages.

[JamesCrossland]

If it's a sub directory and it's been migrated correctly and the old sub domain has been removed/redirected then yes it will be considered part of the new website.

It sounds like the sub directory has has benefited (albeit eventually)  are you saying the main website a. hasn't benefited or b. actually suffered?

Whilst from an SEO standpoint the main site should have benefited as a whole from  the new sub directory from a UX standpoint I probably would only expect the sub directories to massively change.

How big is the website?  did the sub directories double the amount of content? Or just add a few pages - What you've done is right, from an SEO and UX perspective (in my opinion) but I think you might be hoping for too much from it.

There isn't always a silver bullet when it comes to rankings... just a lot of hard slog

[vtmoz]

Eventually new sub directory pages gained the ranking improvement, but not main site pages. I can say that the fall hasn't happened overnight. I actually expected to be performing better but main website didn't pick up as per the estimation. This is what concerns me more. And competitors have almost stable rankings over the period.

One confident answer I been expecting from you is, if the sub domain has been migrated to sub directory, Google will consider it as a pert of the website. So the traffic of the sub directory will fall into website. Then the visits of the new sub directory will benefit the website or not?

[JamesCrossland]

Has you're traffic and rankings actually dropped or remained static over that top?

Is that to the main site or the sub directory?

and don't forget - ranking factors aren't always down to what you've done. You could be doing everything fine but if you're competitors are doing something better you'll still be doing everything right and experience a drop.

[vtmoz]

Hi James,

Thanks for such response. You made it almost clear. But the migration to new sub directory happened months back and we don't see any other reason for our main website drop or not improving as expected. Most of the keywords people land on new sub directory are brand related searched as it's all about help guides of our product. I just wonder why main site hasn't benefited when new sub directory even after months. So, do you agree with my expectation that more number of visitors from different IP addressed to our website or sub directory will benefit in rankings? And you mentioned that you need more detail to answer this question. Please let me know the exact details you need for better understanding of the scenario.

Thanks

Satish

[JamesCrossland]

I'm not sure there's enough detail here to answer the question correctly

You say the sub directory has benefited which for me would have been the main goal of this exercise - I wouldn't have expected much short term benefit to the main site. You're right, in the long term the extra content/traffic will help (assuming the sub directory is serving peoples searches) but I'd assume the Homepage and the sub directory will have different key words with the sub domains being more specific or long tail.

If the sub directory has benefited I'd just sit back and wait for the rest to happen - that won't be overnight though as Google builds up a view of people using those pages

You may have been hoping for a bit too much overnight I'm afraid.

[vtmoz]

Hi Becker,

Thanks for the response. As I told, sub directory pages are ranking good. That's because they are now part of our main website and root domain is influencing them. But I thought this migration will help as the visitors of new sub directory counts as visitors of website and that's how we gonna benefited from Google. But seems like it didn't workout as expected. I think main reason is because of more internal links increased, PR got diluted.

[paints-n-design]

There are not a lot of reasons for a better ranking root domain.  Möge dir improvement of the help content. Why did u expected a better ranking for the Rest? There was "No" change, Just some new internal links. They have been there before, nur from another URL.

Main Website lost? Thats the Strange Part, if true.