Moving forum to subfolder
-
Hi,
we're thinking of moving our very well established forum to a subfolder on our main domain. I have read that this would be much better for seo reasons/domain authority rather than using a sub domain. Is this correct?
Our forum has 15,000 users and gets roughly over 502,087 impressions from 101,147 visits a month.
Thanks,
James
-
Forums are open ended so you can easily end up with pages that are low in quality content and with post-panda google this could have a negative effect on the whole domain. Forums are also targeted for link building schemes which, unless actively moderated, could end up with you linking to lots of illegal sites that could end up penalising you.
-
Hi Daylan,
Thanks for the link, it was interesting reading.
"Perhaps check your numbers for your current forum first. See if you can notice anything that may be harming or improved with the current forum site and fix those before you migrate in."
How would I go about this?
Thanks,
James
-
Thanks Steven,
Why would our forum get penalised for spam? I've never heard of this happening to us. What would be the cause?
Our forum is on a full domain www.weddingideaschat.com. I am thinking of putting it on our website www.weddingideasmag.com so it looks like www.weddingideasmag.com/forum
James
-
As Steven mentioned, you gotta be careful when doing this. As there is often a very long 'leash' as far as content on forums, i've heard of instances where adding a forum to the main domain has harmed popular SERPs for keywords and domain authority. Especially since Panda.
Perhaps check your numbers for your current forum first. See if you can notice anything that may be harming or improved with the current forum site and fix those before you migrate in.
There was a conversation about this earlier in the week that might help you out a little more:
Good luck
-
Yes it will be better as a sub-domain will be treated separately. Where is the forum currently located though, on a sub domain? If so make sure you keep the old URLs active with canonical tags or redirects to the new locations so that users and bots get pushed over.
The downside is that if your forum is likely to be penalised for spam, then it will start to effect the ranking of your whole site rather than just the subdomain.
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
-
Moving content from 1 site to another
Hi Moz'ers I have recently taken over the company I work for (www.prendas.co.uk) and want to migrate approx 200 pages from my hobby site to my company's eCommernce website on Shopify Plus. The content (text/photos) are highly relevant to the company, is unique & written by me and will hopefully generate some sales. I have a plan to gradually move them all over (I intend on doing 2-5/day) into a specific blog section to house them all. I'll then create an Apache perm. redirect to the old site too. Source: cycling-jersey-collection.com D/A 21
Technical SEO | | andystorey
Destination: prendas.co.uk D/A 35 The plan is to eventually shut the old site down. Does anybody have any best practice/and/or recommendations? Thanks in advance. Andy0 -
Move from 4 Domains to 1
Hey Moz Community We are running 4 domains at the moment. www.rapturecamps.com www.surfcamp.travel www.surfcampbali.com www.surfcampinportugal.com We started of our business with 1. after a view years in business we got the option to buy the other 3 domains which have ranked quite well with certain keywords. As its quite allot of work maintaining all these websites with two languages, we where thinking of actually moving number 2, 3 ,4 all to number 1. All domains receive still some good rankings as well as daily hits. So we kinda like would like to keep the SEO Juice. Therefore we where researching for some time what would be the best practice todo so. For us there are two possible options We go trough all posts/pages on the domain 2,3,4 and copy the content over to domain 1. After thats done we create 301 redirects on the domains 2,3,4 linking them back to domain 1 posts/pages. We do do so by manually adding the 301's into the htaccess file, so we are able to delete the Wordpress installations. Our we just copy the Pages/Posts from the domains 2,3,4 to the domain 1 and then kill the 2,3,4 domains afterwords, and let google index these Pages/Posts on the new domain. This way we think we would loose the whole SEO Juice from the old domains. The reason we are asking this one here, we have been reading that this method could lead to red flags at google if we redirect to much Pages/Post back to Domain 1. Hopefully someone here can help us answer that question.
Technical SEO | | 5Gates0 -
International architecture: Country specific subfolders > domain mapping to tld
Hi Ive got a clients dev saying they are setting up with country/language specific subfolders (as i recommended) BUT now they are saying they want to set up on network.domain.com (for example) and then each language will have its own sub-folder BUT will be domain mapped to the TLD as and when they get them. I have asked them to clarify since sounds a bit strange since thought best to have domain.com then /uk and /us etc etc and sure ok to forward country specific TLD's to these subfolders. Its this new subdomain (network.) thats concerning me and mapping rather than forwarding (or is it the same thing) but anyone know off hand if above sounds ok or also thinks a bit strange or know issues with such a set up ? many thanks dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Changing a blog url from subdomain to subfolder
I am abou to change my company blog from a subdomain (blog.mydomain.com) to a subfolder (mydomain.com/blog), from suggestions from this awesome community! Not only that though, because the current blog is on another server than the main site I have to move my blog between servers as well. This will be a big hassle for me, and means a big risk for errors as I don't have a clue what I am doing on the development part. Hint: I'm no developer. My blog is fairly new, having posted 18 blog posts so far. There is no major linking to or from the blog as it has been basically no activity on the blog. It has been fairly good optimized for SEO, with custom plugin settings for Wordpress SEO plugin and similar. Also followed advice from Rand regarding wordpress SEO. So I guess my question is: Would it be a big loss for me to just start over with a new blog on the subfolder domain? And move content over from the old blog manually (and then deleting the old one). Or would It be plain stupid taking that route? Thankfull for all help I can get!
Technical SEO | | danielpett0 -
Moving Old Site to New
Dear SEO Gurus, I have been working on #2 site for a couple of months and I think it is a good idea to redirect #1 (old site) to #2 (new site) below, yes? What is the most effective way of doing this? Do I have to 301 Redirect one page from the old site to a relevant page on the new site and do this for every page.... or can I do a 301 redirect for the whole old site to the new site? Thank you for your time in advance for helping me out! Sheryl | | 1 | Gazpachos - Restaurnte Y CantinaExplore http://www.gazpachorestaurant.com/ |
Technical SEO | | TOMMarketingLtd.
| 2 | Gazpacho's RestaurantExplore http://www.restaurantsdurango.com/ | Page Authority | Page Linking Root Domains | Domain Authority | Root Domain Linking Root Domains |
| 42 | Check_big_gray 36 | 30 | 37 |
| 21 | 1 | 6 | 1 |0 -
Subfolder to Root Domain, Should i or not?
Dear All, I am kinda of stuck and need your helps, I have major client's site which is located in subdirectory. Instance: http://www.majorclient.com.cn/cn/ and as you can see domain name is already localized and they are not planning to make any english version of the site, So there will be no /eng/ folder but clients whole website is /cn/ subdirectory which is totally unnecessary and i would like to 301 whole site to **http://www.majorclient.com.cn ** But the problem is that this site has been /cn/ folder forever since the beginning and lot of trusted links are pointing to www.majorclient.com.cn/cn/ So should i move it or just configure 301 www.majorclient.com.cn to www.majorclient.com.cn/cn/ leave it there and don't bother. Help?
Technical SEO | | DigitalJungle0 -
Moving Blog to Custom Domain
Hi All - I am currently attempting to move a blog (companyname.blogspot.com) that has a 2/10 GPR to a custom domain name so that I can get my targeted keywords in the domain name. The new domain will just be www.targetedkeyword.com. There are easy instructions for doing this with the A record and CNAME changes in the Blogger help, but I am worried about losing rank and links if I do this. Can you guys help me understand what the ramifications would be, and how I can accomplish this without losing the 2/10 mojo? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Bandicoot0 -
When moving my ecommerce website from one host to another should I also 301 all my image urls?
I'm going to be 301'ing a lot of pages, but should i also 301 my image URLS? Any other helpful hints would be awesome too, as this will be my first move online ever. We've been with our host 3 years. Thanks! Paul Serra STbands.com, Owner
Technical SEO | | Hyrule0