Domain and subdomain comparison - a deeper look into the subdomain metrics
-
Hi all,
As I'm doing an analysis on our site and our main competitor (both sites are quite big, with active forums), who is much larger than we are, I have found out that :
-
Our site has the strongest domain authority: 34, competitor: 33.
-
Competitor beats us on 6 out of 8 areas in the sub categories for the "domain authority" category
-
We beat our competitor in 8 out of 8 sub categories for the category "sub domain metrics"
Now, as the title for this question suggests, I would like to hear what your thoughts is on this. Remember that our competitor is way bigger than us - how can they do so bad on the sub domain metrics, compared to us (and everybody else, I guess)?
What are your thoughts on this?
Please be aware that the domain shown to the left in the screen shot is our competitor.
Thanks a lot - all comments are very much appreciated!
-
-
Hi MPO,
The competitor has a lot of points pointing to his root domain, but for whatever reason they do not point to the subdomain that you are comparing.
For example, if I point a link to example.com (no www), then the root domain metrics for the url www.example.com would be strong, but for the specific subdomain www.example.com they would be weaker.
(boy, this is so confusing when you try to explain it on paper. Here's a post from Rand on subdomains - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites
Does it matter? Probably not much. It depends where exactly those links are pointing, and what's ranking in the search results. Keep doing what you're doing - getting good links from good sources, and you'll come out on top either way.
-
I wouldn't worry about it to much to be honest, your better off spending your time building great content and getting people to link to it rather than watching what your competitions stats say. Focus on getting your own stuff right, and you'll soon be leaving the competition wondering what happened.
-
From what I have read, I don't disagree. We have always (until very recently) been focusing solely on "honest" links (links that real people actually make on their site or in a forum), in comparison to "links that you build" / pay for / do something to get - that philosophy (or lack of philosophy, one might say) has changed, and slowly we are starting to get (build) better and more links.
To be honest, I'm not sure if your reply answered my question: Why has our competitor such a weak score on the "sub domain metric" and does this matter (at all)?
Or put in another way, the question simply is: does it make any sense to spend time on wondering about this?
-
To be honest a DA in the 30's is pretty low. If you concentrate on getting a 30-50 good quality links you should easily get into the 40's.
-
Hi, and thanks for your answer - you are right about that, yes. When you look at the example shown in my initial post, what do you think about those two site-profiles. Does it tell whether one of the sites is in "good" or "bad" shape, does it really not say anything, etc.? Also: Is it important to beat your competitor on the "sub domain metrics", or does this question really not make much sense to ask?
Any one who has an opinion about this?
-
It all depends on where links are pointing to - remember a www. is also 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
-
How defined does the anchor text need to be for a domain url?
Ok, I'm looking to clean up my domain with irrelevant Anchor text linking to specific URL's. Whether, it's my root domain or a particular product URL. I'm finding a wide variety of terms (anchor text) pointing to my homepage, category and finally my product pages. Example, the Anchor text "Paragon Print Systems" is pointing to my homepage "barcodefactory.com" does this hurt my homepage enough to either have the link/anchor text removed from linking to my homepage? thanks much!, Warren
On-Page Optimization | | Warren.W0 -
Wordpress & trailing slash on domain name
Hi recently changed my site so it is based on Wordpress, got my preferred domain set in Google webmaster as www.domian.co.uk but since moving to wordpress my domain is now having a slash put on the end of it like www.domain.co.uk/ Most of the links going to my homepage do not have the slash on the end so am I right in thinking I should get rid of the slash from my site so I have one consistent url? If so any ideas how to banish the slash? Cannot seem to do it through the Wordpress general settings (despite preferred domain being set as www.domain.co.uk !) Thanks T
On-Page Optimization | | Jon-C0 -
Product pages optimization impact on sub level domains.
How great of an impact will the optimization of product pages have an impact on a sub level domains?
On-Page Optimization | | Martin_Harris0 -
404 crawl errors with all url+domain
We have 187 crawl 404 errors. All urls on web make a 404 error that this http://www.domain.com/[.....]l/www.domain.com all errors added to the url, the url domain I put an example gestoriabarcelona.com/www.gestoriabarcelona.com
On-Page Optimization | | promonet
gestoriabarcelona.com/tarifas/www.gestoriabarcelona.com
gestoriabarcelona.com/category/noticias/page/7/www.gestoriabarcelona.com
gestoriabarcelona.com/2012/08/amortizacion-de-unaconstruccion/
www.gestoriabarcelona.com
[..] I don't know where can i find to solve errors Anyone can help me? Thanks0 -
Blog on Subdomain vs. Subdirectory - Best Practices
Hi, I have recently been told that it no longer impacts authority or rankings if a blog is set up on a subdomain (blog.domain.com) rather than a subdirectory (/blog). However, I am reluctant to do so because I remember learning how blog subdomains did not adhere to SEO best practices. Would anyone be able to shed some light on the latest SEO best practices regarding this topic? Many thanks, Erin
On-Page Optimization | | HiddenPeak0 -
Www1 and www domain
hi, I have a client who has an e-commerce business. My client does not want to fill the pages with too much content and has set up a www1 version with the same domain-name as the www. The plan is to create a lot of content and push www1 in ranking and then sending users (via links) to the www for ordering. Although there will be no duplicate content published on www and www1 this seems like an odd strategy, especially since the www already has a good page rank, and I'm not sure about how engines view a www.domain.com and www1domain.com situation even with unique content in each. Any thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | vibelingo0 -
Setting up a domain for a future site
Hi there, That may be a bit of a silly question to ask, but we've setup a new domain for an existing site. While the site is in the making, the site owners wants to already start promoting the new URL on stationeries etc. Hence, we need to setup the new URL so that it forwards to the site, but so that Google doesn't give it the history of a secondary (less important) domain. What is the best way to do this? Currently we've put in a 301 redirect, but will that bear no future consequences on the SEO of the site, when the site is moved to this new domain, and the old domain is 301 redirected. Thanks, SEOeclipse
On-Page Optimization | | Bozboz0 -
Subdomains vs. Subfolders Inheriting Authority/Ranking Value
Our website is a continuing education website that is linked to a large university, and our URL is a subdomain of that larger university domain. We offer degrees as well, but because of the modifications we'd like to make to the degree webpages, our content management system won't let them be a part of our website. Now we're trying to figure out if we should create a separate subdomain for all degrees, and put the individual degrees in separate folders (so, all degrees' URLs woudl be degrees.us.university.edu/degree-name/), or if we should give each its own URL, which would be completely separate from ours (degree urls would be degree-name.university.edu). So our question is, how well do subdomains carry the value of the domain? Is it better to have twenty websites that are all separate subdomains of a strong domain, or one subdomain in a subdomain that houses all twenty websites in folders? And, as a side note, will housing the degrees in degrees.us.university.edu pass value to us (us.university.edu)? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | UWPCE0