Trying to avoid splitting Search Engine juice, need advice
-
We currently have a political issue with one microsite we're trying to promote. The group that created the website, created it without the consent of the rest of the company and now, although it's allowed to live, we've been given a few restrictions. They main restriction is that when the microsite is linked from the main corporate website it needs to be referenced as a subdomain so http://microsite.company.com. We've been promoting the site as http://www.microsite.com (I'd include the actual websites but don't want to air their dirty laundry). The problem is that a lot of the listings in google are starting to show up using the http://microsite.company.com url instead of the actual url we're about to start promoting and I'm sure that's going to split rankings. Is there a way to appease both sides here. Keep the subdomain from the main site but transfer the juice from that main link to the microsite url?
To be clear, I can't just use a 301 redirect because that will change the url from the subdomain to the microsite url (unless i'm wrong) and corporate doesn't want that.
Does any of this make sense? Any help would be greatly appreciated
-
Hi, I know this is an old thread but I have a similar issue. The company I'm currently working with used to have 30+ subdomains all going to different versions of the same website, many with duplicate content. This was creating 30+ different google analytics accounts to look through and all sharing the same ink juice.
Now I have come on board, I have rebuilt the website so that it is one main website with franchisee pages like www.mainsite.com/uk/franchisee-location
Now what should be the best option for the 30+ subdomains that are left? At the moment they are all pointing to their respective page on the new website but I have a developer in the team that is adamant that Google is going to penalise us for having the 30+ subdomains pointing back to urls on the main.com website. I'm not convinced as I think this is a much cleaner way and a better user experience.
My question really is, what is the best action to take with the franchisee subdomains that are out there still in the Google index? Should I keep redirecting them to their new url (www.mainsite.com/uk/frachisee-location) or should they stay as franchiseelocation.mainsite.com and will Google penalise the domain for this?
Many thanks for any advice.
-
Hi Kalvin, can you share with us how things are going and what you decided? Are there any nuggets you can share that might help out the next person in a similar situation, and/or do you have more questions you'd like to throw out to the group? Don't forget that you can use private Q&A with just staff members as well.
-
I think his problem is that the department that created the microsite.com site wants to keep it seperate and brand it independantly while the whole company wants to bring it under their umbrella so doing a sub folder wouldn't actually really work at all, I suppose you could use URL redirection to get the microsite domain to pull up for the subdirectory.
-
Unfortunately the subfolder won't work either because they are on two separate platforms.
Chris: I've leaning towards Canonical option as well but wanted to pick the brains of a few experts (like yourself) to see if that was my only option or not. Thanks.
-
Well you could always use rel=canonical to declare that the canonical version of the page is microsite.com even when you link to it from microsite. company. com.
It would help Google understand that the proper version of the site is the microsite address while leaving links from the main company site pointing and rendering at microsite .company. com.
-
Unfortunately that won't solve it because the sub group that developed the site want to promote their own url. It's all a political issue where I have to keep both types of URLs visible but get all the rankings to flow to the microsite url.
-
What you may want to consider is doing a 301 of microsite.com to microsite. company. com if that's permissible. I'm assuming that you can't just 301 the link from company.com to microsite. company. com but you may be able to do it the other way around?
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
-
How to get 'Links to you site' via the google search console API?
hey! Any idea how I can download backlinks via the sear console API? This page from Google has a few commands but not the back links one - https://developers.google.com/apis-explorer/#p/webmasters/v3/ Has anyone collected backlinks data in the past? Apprrciate your help! Thanks Arjun
Link Building | | BaselineTry0 -
We are moving to HTTPS and wanted to know if our link building efforts were in vain or will the link juice pass to HTTPS?
We are switching to HTTPS and want to make sure the links we've gotten in the past will still transfer since they are pointing to HTTP? I'd hate to go back through and ask people to please add an s to the link.
Link Building | | bryant25560 -
Self linking - loss of link juice?
There are 10 links on page that point to this page where they exist (link to the page itself). Does it influence on ranking? And what's happening to link juice? How does it spread? Is there any loss of it?
Link Building | | templatemonster0 -
What is the best way to pass link juice?
We have an e-commerce site that, according to Moz, has too many on page links. The main navigation has top level links and about 45 sub-category links. Our question is -- Should we keep the main navigation and top level categories as do follow and change the sub-category navigation to no follow? Or, should we make the top level categories no follow and keep the sub-category navigation do follow?
Link Building | | MountainMedia0 -
Do footer links pass less link juice?
One of my best inbound links for PA and DA happens to be a footer link, curious if it's less valuable or has any value at all.
Link Building | | Theskimonster0 -
Are reputable local directories effective link building resources for high rankings in local search?
I'm working on a local search campaign. Generally, the first thing I do is add the site to all of the local directories that I know of. I'm curious, with penguin updates, whether or not this is still an effective strategy for local search.
Link Building | | GuyFromHouston0 -
Link Building Strategy Advice
Hi, I was wondering what everyone's general strategy is for link building. We're doing it all ourselves manually (i.e. not paying $5 for 100,000 links) and are using the Site Explorer tool to find links to competitors and related websites. The majority of sites are blogs and directories which ask for payment ($50 per month for example). We're obviously looking for free links as well but we're finding that pretty much every site wants something in return (cash or reciprocal link) - unless the content is amazing, why would anyone link to another site without an incentive? We're focussing heavily on content and writing articles, blogs, press releases every week but the subject matter isn't always exciting enough for someone to really want to link to it naturally. Thoughts?
Link Building | | AndyMediaLounge0 -
Does Linkedin still pass link juice?
It looks like LinkedIn's links are using the http://www.linkedin.com/redirect?url= prefix for the external Websites links and is recently using 302 redirects.
Link Building | | explorionary0