Impact of Non SEO Subdomains
-
My company has several subdomains whose specific purpose is to act as a landing page/site for our paid search and/or email program.
One of the things I've noticed on these subdomains is that they are not being excluded from the SEObots.
Could the lack of proper SEO techniques on these subdomains impact our main www subdomain?
What is the proper configuration we should use to make sure these sites are not considered for SEO?
-
It is _possible _that a subdomain-based landing page could be cannibalizing rankings for specific terms from another page on your site. But if that landing page is actually that good for the term, its not necessarily a bad thing to have it ranking. If its ranking better than the pages you optimized for organic then maybe you should look at why that is (i.e. is it getting good/better links, are people sharing it around, is it better targeted than the organic page, is it more intuitive or has a better call to action, etc. etc.).
Now, if you really don't want thoe pages to rank in organic in place of optimized pages you created then you can very easily add a NoIndex tag to the page or exclude it from being crawled in Robots.txt
-
I am wondering what exactly you mean by "not considered for SEO"?
For many purposes, subdomains are considered as independent domains. If they are excellent landing pages for a specific search, I see no reason to exclude them from appearing in organic search; else a noindex might be wise. But I cannot really imagine a good page deserving that, assuming linking to your regular page and no cannibalisation.
In general I would slap on the basics - proper description, title, maybe social media data and be done with it unless I have a really good reason to assume they are actively harmful somehow.
Regards
Nico
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
-
SEO of Social Media Pages
I have noticed something odd about how Google ranks social media pages, and was hoping someone would have a good explanation. When I search for a particular name in Google, the first two results are Twitter pages of two people who share the same name. #1 is an older account with more Tweets, but it has fewer followers, no external backlinks, and the URL is unrelated to the name #2 is a newer account, but it has more followers, a few external backlinks, and the name itself is in the URL. It has fewer overall Tweets, but has Tweeted more frequently over the past several months. #2 is also happens to be in the same City as I am. Given my understanding of Google's ranking factors, I would not have expected #1 to outrank #2. In fact, I would not have expected #1 to even be on the first page. What could be causing #1 to rank so highly? Does it make sense that the age of the account or the number of Tweets would affect SEO at all? Really, I am just trying to understand what are the main factors that determine the ranking of social media profile pages. Thanks
Technical SEO | | timsegraves0 -
SEO quandary advice needed
I'm in a bind, I've been working on my SEO for a while now and have finally landed on the top page for [fishing kayak reviews] in Google US. The problem is it's not the page I want to be ranked! I've recently updated my reviews component to a more robust system but the url is slightly different. Looking currently [Reviews without Images] http://www.yakangler.com/fishing-kayak-reviews is ranking in Google but I would like [Reviews with Images] http://www.yakangler.com/fishing-kayak-review to rank instead. What would be the best solution for this problem? Adjust the url for [Reviews with Images] so it take the place of [Reviews without Images]? Do you think I will get any negative impacts from this?
Technical SEO | | mr_w0 -
How to start more deep seo.
Okay, lets say that I already fixed all my technical seo stuff. All my crawl errors and warnings are gone. Now I really want to start seo so I have a few questions. 1. I know I should work based on a page and not on a domain, so it means I should choose which keyword to optimize each page for? only one keyword per page? or it might be more? 2. Some keywords are very competitive for me, example for my site www.theprinterdepo.com, the best keyword to rank would be printers, but it would take years a beginner to do that, what should I do? 3. If highly competitive keywords are not an option, which keywords shuold I use? the ones that have more global monthly searches? Thanks
Technical SEO | | levalencia10 -
Good Seo Titles
Hi. Mybsite is www.theprinterdepo.com and I am trying to find a good template for my product/page titles. Many users search our products by the product model: something like Q2121X. Some other users search by: hp 1320 printer or just 1320 printer. They will almost never search for hp 1320 new, or hp 1320 refurbished. My website is developed in magento, and we have a SEO plugin in which I can put a template for the URL and also a template for the product title. I was thinking for title and URL. title + condition + productmodel However many users search for: "refurbished printers" and maybe its better that our products say something like this: HP 1320 Refurbished Printer, instead of: HP 1320 Printer - Refurbished - Q2121X Please let me know your suggestions.
Technical SEO | | levalencia10 -
Www to non www
Hi, Is this the correct code for redirecting www to non www version on Apache server RewriteEngine OnRewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.example.com RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L] Thanks
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050 -
Subdomains & SEO
Exact match domains are great for ranking but what about domains which contain just half of the full phrase being targeted? eg. If you owned the domain rentals.co.uk but wanted to target the search term "car rentals" Regarding backlinks, would it be best to link back to your rentals.co.uk homepage (using anchor text "car rentals") or to one of the following: a) www.rentals.co.uk/car-rentals b) car.rentals.co.uk AND 301 redirect to www.rentals.co.uk c) car.rentals.co.uk AND 301 redirect to www.rentals.co.uk/car-rentals
Technical SEO | | martyc1 -
Domain Forwarding and SEO
I have looked around and only saw older and contradicting responses to this question but what effect does having a domain with VALUABLE-KEYWORD.com forward to MAINSITE.com or COMMON-MISSPELLING.com forward to MAINSITE.com in terms of SEO and is it considered spammy or looked down upon
Technical SEO | | treytt0 -
ECommerce Platform Switch and SEO Loss
Hi - We're switching eCommerce platforms, and naturally we're worried about losing organic search ranking. From what I've read on the message boards, I understand it's important to try to minimize as many 301 redirects as possible. Here's my problem: Our Product URLs are like this (ex: http://www.stupid.com/fun/TOLMG.html). On the new platform, URLs cannot contain capital letters. 😞 According to the new eCommerce platform's design team: "Google and other search engines do not see that as a change in URL, they are not case sensitive and will not affect search listings" How accurate is this? And how come on our current platform, if I use an all lowercase URL, it get a 401? (ex: http://www.stupid.com/fun/tolmg.html) Will we be fine switching our Product URLs to lowercase on the new platform? One thing also to note: Our Category URLs will remain the same. Are there any other areas of a typical eCommerce store that I should avoid changing URLs if I want to prevent SEO loss? Thanks! -Justin
Technical SEO | | JustinStupid0