Subdomain cannibalization
-
Hi,
I am doing the SEO for a webshop, which has a lot of linking and related websites on the same root domain. So the structure is for example:
Root domain: example.com
Shop: shop.example.com
Linking websites to shop: courses.example.com, software.example.com,...Do I have to check which keywords these linking websites are already ranking for and choose other keywords for my category and product pages on the webshop? The problem with this could be that the main keywords for the category pages on the webshop are mainly the same as for the other subdomains.
The intention is that some people immediately come to the webshop instead of going first to the linking websites and then to the webshop.
Thanks.
-
Hello Mat,
I don't think I'm seeing the same SERPs as you. Is there any way you could give me an example of one of these subdomains?
And yes, you're absolutely right that the same problem of keyword cannibalization would apply to subdirectories as well.
If it's the woltersk....lu domain I am getting non-secure warnings from Firefox when I try to access it.
How many different subdomains are there / will there be? Is it just shop.domain.lu and www.domain.lu or are there others? I didn't see any for "courses." or "software." in the SERP example you provided with the link. If it's just one, I think that's manageable. For example, maybe www. could focus on informational queries (e.g. JavaScript course) and shop. could focus on transactional ones (e.g. Buy Acme JavaScript course). Maybe one could focus on reviews and comparisons, or long-tail queries while the other focuses on short-tail queries. Without knowing more about the domains and your business, it is difficult for me to say. If you have three or four subdomains all going after the same keywords, that's definitely a problem and I don't think you can avoid cannibalization. At that point, it would be best to choose the strongest domain/subdomain and focus your efforts on ranking one of them instead of watering down your efforts over several.
-
Thanks for your answer Everett.
The structure was indeed created some years ago, when ranking with different subdomains wasn't really a problem. It is quite normal that there is an overlap between the webshop subdomain and other subdomains. The subdomains dive deeper into a specific part of the business (tax, legal, formations,...) but on the webshop all of these different products from the subdomains are sold.
However, for some search terms, some of the subdomains all rank on the first page. For example: https://www.google.com/search?q=successierekenaar&oq=successierekenaar&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j0.3257j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
As you can see, the root domain as well as two subdomains and a link to an app, take the first four positions in the SERP.Key question is: if there is a possible search term to rank for, but one of the subdomains already ranks for this term, can it still be used? Otherwise, it won't be easy to find a unique search term with a high enough search volume for each product, since it is a market with very specific products.
On the other hand, if subdirectories were used, it basically comes down to the same: never try to rank two pages for the same search term. -
Also, don't forget to use Google Search Console's "Property Set" feature. However, I think they're about to start auto-created property sets by aggregating subdomains soon anyway: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-console-domain-property-26645.html
-
The short answer to your question is: Yes, you should know what keywords each of your subdomains rank for and should adjust strategy accordingly.
The long answer is that I want to see this website because it doesn't sound like something I'd recommend doing in the first place. It used to be that subdomains were treated completely differently from the parent domain and you could, theoretically, take up the entire first page of results with your subdomains. Content mills like About.com took this to the extreme and Google responded so you don't tend to see that happen much anymore. As I understand it, Google also attempts to make a determination as to whether this is the same "site" or multiple, unrelated sites, such as site.blogspot.com subdomains and treats them accordingly.
These days, the general consensus is that you should be using subdirectories/folders instead of subdomains for a variety of reasons, unless the subdomain is for a different site, or something you don't really need to have indexed, like a closed app.
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
-
Backlink from same domain but different subdomain? any juice here?
will i be able to get the link juice from same domain but different subdomain, if I have a backlink lets say there is a website, which is featuring my topic on multiple subdomain any benefit? or it will considered one link?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SIMON-CULL0 -
301 Redirecting from domain to subdomain
We're taking on a redesign of our corporate site on our main domain. We also have a number of well established, product based subdomains. There are a number of content pages that currently live on the corporate site that rank well, and bring in a great deal of traffic, though we are considering placing 301 redirects in place to point that traffic to the appropriate pages on the subdomains. If redirected correctly, can we expect the SEO value of the content pages currently living on the corporate site to transfer to the subdomains, or will we be negatively impacting our SEO by transferring this content from one domain to multiple subdomains?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chris81980 -
Best method for blocking a subdomain with duplicated content
Hello Moz Community Hoping somebody can assist. We have a subdomain, used by our CMS, which is being indexed by Google.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KateWaite
http://www.naturalworldsafaris.com/
https://admin.naturalworldsafaris.com/ The page is the same so we can't add a no-index or no-follow.
I have both set up as separate properties in webmaster tools I understand the best method would be to update the robots.txt with a user disallow for the subdomain - but the robots text is only accessible on the main domain. http://www.naturalworldsafaris.com/robots.txt Will this work if we add the subdomain exclusion to this file? It means it won't be accessible on https://admin.naturalworldsafaris.com/robots.txt (where we can't create a file). Therefore won't be seen within that specific webmaster tools property. I've also asked the developer to add a password protection to the subdomain but this does not look possible. What approach would you recommend?0 -
Keyword Self Cannibalization and E-Commerce
I run a Magento shop - let's imagine a situation where the category landing page, is about "Joe Bloggs Kettles" Then on that page, we have the products listed ; so we would have links to products pages - these links will be called something like:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs2010
Joe Bloggs Red Kettle
Joe Bloggs Yellow Kettle
Joe Bloggs Purple Kettle Can someone please tell me if this is ok or should we rework our strategy? Thanks0 -
301 redirect subdomain to path and 301 for popular pages
We have very popular pages that have many backlinks. www.chezmaya.com/jeux/game33.htm have so many backlinks and it's very popular. Now If i'm moving this page to a new path like : http://www.chezmaya.com/jeux/component/mtree/Défouloir/Game33/details.html with a 301. Your SEOmoz toolbar is now giving a very low PA:1 and mR:0.00 for this new page. My question is after you crawl my site again would you change the values to what /jeux/game33.htm got before ? We used to have jeux.chezmaya.com and moved to www.chezmaya.com/jeux/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SocialGeekMedia
Same here PA:1 and mR:0.00 for this page. Also Matt Cutts say that Google does transfer the juice from the old page to the new one. I already saw one url changed in a search for puzzle, it's at the same position it was before, but it say's 6 days ago beside. So I wonder if this is temporary and it will move with time? Thanks0 -
Moving popular blog from root to subdomain. Considerations & impact?
I'd like to move the popular company blog from /ecommerce-blog to blog.bigcommerce.com.WordPress application is currently living inside the application that runs the .com and is adding a large amount of files to the parent app, which results in longer deployment times than we'd like. We would use HTTP redirection to handle future requests (e.g. HTTP status code 301). How can this be handled from a WP point of view? What is the impact of SEO, rankings, links, authority? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fullstackmarketing.io0 -
Flat vs. subdomain web structure
I am building a site which sells a product in 50 states and in each state we will have independt partners. From an SEO perspective, what are the tradeoffs in using a single domain vs. having each state a subdomain? Each state also has varying regulatory issues that are specific to that state.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | uwaim20120