UTM tracking on a mapped subdomain, is it OK? (DA bonus question)
-
Hi,
This is a technical question. OK, two technical questions. Please bear with me and I'll do my best to explain...
We have a WordPress blog (business account, hosted by WordPress). We use it to blog and send traffic to our separate e-commerce site. We use UTM tracking to see which blog posts perform best.
Our e-commerce site has a high domain authority. Our blog, not so much.
In an effort to increase the domain authority of the blog we have mapped a subdomain of the e-commerce site to the Wordpress blog (still hosted by WordPress).
Q1. Will this actually raise the blog's DA?
If the blog does get a DA boost, I guess it'll be because Google now sees it as part of a powerful domain.
But if it is technically part of the powerful domain...
Q2. Should we remove the UTM parameters from the blog?
I've read that you should never use UTM on internal links because it messes with your Google Analytics data. But I'm unsure if links on a mapped subdomain count as 'internal links'.
Any help would be gratefully appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
J
-
Hi again,
I have just checked and you have a redirect chain which is not good.
Status Code URL IP Page Type Redirect Type Redirect URL
301 http://blog.example.com/ server_redirect permanent https://blog.humankinetics.com/
301 https://blog.example.com/ server_redirect permanent https://humankinetics.me/
200 https://example.com/ normal none noneI have removed any identifying data but trust me it's from your link.
I would work to get the 301 pointing straight from both the first two links to the third so there is no extra step in the middle required.
and now back to your original questions.
Did the links I provided earlier help with the UTM question?
As for adding DA/PA to your blog have you seen any increase since you made the change? You may get some from it but as I said earlier I don't think you will get much. Monitoring is the only way you will know for sure.
-
Hi JabeKay,
Apologies for the delay in replying its been a busy day.
I need to have a read over the info you have provided and digest it, I will then come back with what I can to help.
By the way, you may want to check the link at the bottom of your last post
Steve
-
Does it show the new URL in the browser or the original URL when the page has stopped loading?
Yes, once the page has loaded it displays the old URL.
Perhaps this exchange from our tech team might shed some more light.
On 5/15/19, at 8:21 am, James wrote:
Mike, We need to create and register a subdomain named blog.example.comPer the instructions, we will need to our NS records to network solutions. The current site that blog will map to is https://example.me/ in which is hosted via wordpress in which that is going to stay there as well as the name. The instructions for non-wordpress domain registrar customers is linked below:
https://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/map-subdomain/#adding-a-mapping-subscription
On 5/15/19, at 12:18 pm, Mike wrote:
The records for blog.humankinetics.com have been added to internal and external DNS. Someone still needs to add a "mapping subscription" to the Wordpress site to enable it.I believe I added the "mapping subscription."
-
I'm not sure but if you type the newly created subdomain URL into a browser it redirects to the WordPress blog at its usual address.
Does it show the new URL in the browser or the original URL when the page has stopped loading?
I don't think so. Wouldn't that create some kind of loop where the new subdomain redirects to the usual blog URL then that redirects back to the new subdomain?
It depends on which method you have used. If you have done a DNS mapping for the new subdomain then redirecting the old URLs will be fine in theory. If when you load the page you see the original URL then there is no need to do this. (see my earlier post for info on things to be aware of when redirecting).
If you are not sure if it will create a loop test it on one URL that is nested deep in your site and has little to no traffic.
It all depends on the setup that has been put in place. If you can find out the answer to that then I can give you a clearer answer.
I can't see much point in redirecting the new subdomain to the original URL though, I wouldn't have thought much link juice would be passed via this method. I could be wrong it's not a situation I have found myself in. I would definitely advocate lots of monitoring and testing to see the results.
-
Thanks again,
When you say mapping I assume you mean via DNS so that the subdomain for the blog is pointing straight to the host server and you are not redirecting?
I'm not sure but if you type the newly created subdomain URL into a browser it redirects to the WordPress blog at its usual address.
If you have done this have you redirected the old domain for the blog to the new subdomain with 301? if not you need to do this to preserve what you can of the link juice.
I don't think so. Wouldn't that create some kind of loop where the new subdomain redirects to the usual blog URL then that redirects back to the new subdomain?
-
I haven't tried it but I am pretty sure you can run Shopify and WordPress on the same domain. You may have to use subfolders but that would be better than a separate domain.
If you can't run the two together, running it on a subdomain is ok, but it will probably be treated as two different domains by Google. When you say mapping I assume you mean via DNS so that the subdomain for the blog is pointing straight to the host server and you are not redirecting?
If you have done this have you redirected the old domain for the blog to the new subdomain with 301? if not you need to do this to preserve what you can of the link juice.
See my responses here for more on large redirects https://moz.com/community/q/301-redirects-large-htaccess-file-question
I haven't really looked at UTMs on internal pages, however, subdomains are normally considered separate domains as far as I am aware.
These links may help
https://moz.com/community/q/subdomains-or-separate-domains-for-dealers
https://chrisberkley.com/blog/subdomains-for-seo/
https://www.analyticsmania.com/post/transfer-utm-parameters-google-tag-manager/
https://penguinwp.com/common-utm-campaign-url-tracking-mistakes-to-avoid/
-
Thanks Steve,
What you recommend would be ideal but sadly this is not an option.
The e-commerce site is on the Shopify platform and the blogging functionality is not as good as WordPress.
Also, the native Shopify blogging feature is currently being used to host book excerpts.
Finally, our tech team has said that this is the only configuration they will green light.
J
-
Hi JabeKay,
Is there a reason the blog is on a different domain?
It seems to me like you are working to build the strength of two separate domains when you could put all your efforts into one.
I would seriously consider moving the blog to the e-commerce site domain and 301 redirecting the old blog domain to the e-commerce domain.
This way new content is in the right place and building traffic for the place you want it.
If this is not an option let me know.
Steve
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
-
Cross-domain / subdomain tracking in GA?
Hi there, My client has a site website.com and a booking engine, booking.website.com They are currently tracking the main site and the booking subdomain as two separate properties in the same GA account. The issue is we can't see where users are originating on the subdomain property; it's all being counted as referral. My understanding is we need to set up subdomain tracking using Google Tag Manager in order for GA to pass the user data between the two subdomains. This is fine, except for this one line I am reading on Google's guide to cross-domain tracking: Subdomains If you have updated your tracking code to analytics.js, then no additional configuration is required to track subdomains. You can use cross domain tracking to collect data from a primary domain, like www.example.com, and a subdomain, like www.subdomain.example.com, in a single Analytics account property. That last line makes it sound like we should be using cross-domain tracking for this purpose. Are we correct in setting up subdomain tracking and NOT cross-domain tracking to be able to track users across subdomains on the same domain?
Reporting & Analytics | | FPD_NYC0 -
How does Google Maps/G+ traffic show up in Analytics?
Hi Moz Community, I've been trying to figure out how traffic from Google Maps (and G+) shows up in Google Analytics and am struggling to find a good answer online. If someone finds a business through Google Maps and then clicks on the website in the Maps listing, does that show up as a referral from Google Maps? Our site shows virtually zero traffic from Google Maps even though we have a number of listing. Two related questions: if someone clicks through to a G+ page from a Maps result and then visits our website from the G+ page, does that show up in Analytics as a referral from G+? Is traffic from Google Maps or G+ ALSO counted as organic traffic? (Would it be possible to accidentally double-count a visit as both organic and a referral from Maps/G+? Thanks everybody!
Reporting & Analytics | | JohnGroves0 -
Page Name Tracking - Without UTM links
Hello, Our current site is fully html with no cms. We're moving to a newer version today with a typo 3 cms. My one worry is as follows; On some pages an internal link opens a jquery lightbox, inside the lightbox will be a video or download link. I cannot simply add a standard event url like I wanted to (utm_ link) as the pages are linked via the cms pointing to different pages, not the url's. We really need the following appearing in Analytics, whether its an event or landing page; The click of the light-box link The click of the video OR download link inside the lightbox. I would really, really appreciate any help on this as the new website is going live today, regardless whether this has been resolved. Thank you very much in advance of any replies. twY8s8B.jpg
Reporting & Analytics | | Whittie0 -
Cross Domain Tracking for multiple sub-domains with multi-lingual and culture versions
Hi, I have a question regarding cross-domain tracking that I haven't seen answered completely elsewhere. A client has a main domain, we'll say www.example.com and 4 or 5 sub-domains e.g. shop.example.com, support.example.com, account.example.com and service.example.com. The different sub-domains are managed by different third parties, with just www.example.com and account.example.com under our control. To add a further dimension, these sites all have multi-lingual versions as folders and in some cases multi-cultural versions e.g. www.example.com/de/ for Germany and www.example.com/ch-de/ for German-speaking Swiss. Not every language/culture has an equivalent site in place for each of the sub-domains e.g. the UK support site serves Denmark and Swiss-German users will use the German site: www.example.com/dk/ links to support.example.com/uk/ for support-based content
Reporting & Analytics | | Nobody1565908128979
www.example.com/ch-de/ links to support.example.com/de/ At present, they use different analytics tracking codes and accounts. Moving forward, they would like to consolidate the data together to be able to see the collective and separate performances. They would also like to be able to see goal completions from referrals when someone clicks from the main domain to the sub-domain or across sub-domains or potentially across language and culture too. I have several questions I would really appreciate some guidance on: What will be the best way to configure Google Analytics to achieve this? Will we need to decorate the HTML links in between each of the sites? Will we need to use a new Google Analytics property? It may not be easy to answer this based on the information above, so I'm happy to provide additional information if required. Thanks in advance for your help.0 -
Universal Analytics & Google Tag Manager - Track URLs that include hashes
Does anyone have any experience tracking URLs that include hashes (#) using Universal Analytics and Google Tag Manager? Can it be done using GTM's container for UA, using the "more settings" options? Or building another tag to work with the GTM UA container? The fallback I'm considering is implementing the UA code in GTM for every page as Custom HTML with the "ga('send', 'pageview', location.pathname + location.search + location.hash);" solution, rather than GTM's specialized UA tag. I'm not yet sure what problems may arise from that, if any. Thanks in advance.
Reporting & Analytics | | 352inc0 -
An initial set up question - linking to GA
when viewing campaign it indicates there is a problem linking to our GA account but the details entered are correct. Any ideas what the problem might be - nothing on the campaign settings page gives me a clue. There is a highlighted box saying disconnect from GA but nothing else. The only thing i can think of is that the GA account was set up by a third party and we have access to view it - could it be a permissions problem?
Reporting & Analytics | | GreatGifts4Kids0 -
Tracking visits who entered the site via subdomain in GA
Hello, Does anybody know how I can segment visits who entered my site via subdomain? For example: I want to know people who entered via subdomain.example.com/***** and not include people who entered via www.example.com Thanks in advance!
Reporting & Analytics | | A_Q0 -
Track Google/Bing Shopping as Referrer
Is there a way to track Google & Bing Shopping referrals independent of standard Google/Bing tracking? It would be nice if we could see the difference between Google PPC, Google Organic & Google Shopping. I notice in analytics that we get some traffic from google/ppc, some from google/organic, some from google.com/referral (not sure what this is), and some from googlebase/cse (I know this is Google shopping, but I don't think it's tracking all shopping referral visits as this).
Reporting & Analytics | | JerDoggMckoy0