Why are my sub-domains ranking higher than my Root Domains?
-
I have just noticed that my sub-domains are ranking higher in Mozrank and Moztrust than the root domain - that seems nuts. Am I doing something wrong?
-
Glad to help anytime Simon.
I know it's probably hard to believe right now, but I'm sure it won't be long and you'll be explaining stuff to others here in Q&A!
Once all the pieces start to fall into place everything becomes much easier to understand and if you spend some time around the SEOmoz community you'll be flying in no time!
Here's a post with links to all of the most important resources here are SEOmoz which might help you find your way around.
Look forward to catching up with you around the community
Sha
-
Thankyou Chris and Sha for your feed back - I now have it clear in my head. You have been of great help. Thank you also for the link Sha.
Warm Regards
Simon
-
Hi again waspman,
No worries...it takes a little getting your head around when you start out
As Chris confirmed, the root domain is waspkilluk.co.uk.
The most common subdomain is the www, which is standard, but you can also create other subdomains if you wish.
Perhaps the most visible real world example of a site that uses subdomains is Google - which uses subdomains to manage each of its specific products within the site. If you take a look at the URLs when you are using Google products you will see examples like places.google.com, maps.google.com, blogger.google.com, webmasters.google.com, www.google.com etc.
A subdomain is referred to as a "third level" domain, created within another domain. As a rule, each level of a domain is defined by the dots (.) appearing in reverse order within a URL.
So, in the Google Maps example:
the Top Level Domain (TLD) is .com
the second level domain is the chosen domain name google
the third level domain (or subdomain) is maps
In your case it is a little more complicated. You have an extra level in your domains because your Top Level Domain is the country designator .uk so your second level is actually .co, but for the purposes of understanding subdomains it won't hurt for you to think of .co.uk as your top level domain.
Generally, most small sites don't require extra subdomains, so often the only subdomain in play is the www.
Matt Cutts has a simple tutorial on the parts of a URL that makes it much easier to understand what is going on at a glance.
Hope that helps,
Sha
-
That's right wapkilluk.co.uk is the root domain and www.waspkilluk.co.uk is your sub-domain
-
Thank you Sha for answering.
I am new to this - but I thought "www.waspkilluk.co.uk" was my root domain.
So have I got this a little mixed up - is "waspkilluk.co.uk" my root domain and "www.waspkilluk.co.uk" classed as a sub-domain?
Sorry if this sounds a little basic - be gentle.
-
Hi waspman,
No, you are absolutely not doing anything wrong
The simple answer is that you are acquiring links primarily to the sub-domains and not the root domains.
To explain:
"mozRank is SEOmoz's global link popularity score. It compares the relative link value (ranking power) between URLs on the Internet. It is similar in premise to Google's original PageRank metric but is updated more frequently and offers greater precision."
You can read more about all of the SEOmoz Metrics at the Open Site Explorer explanatory page.
So, if you go to Open Site Explorer and run a query for your sub-domain you will see the number of external links to that URL. If you then remove the www and run the query for the root domain you will see that there are 0 links to that URL.
Since mozRank = link popularity - it should be higher for the sub-domain because that is where the links are pointing, and of course you want to ensure that your links are always consolidated to just one domain. So, things are exactly as they should be.
Hope that helps,
Sha
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
-
Duplicate Content for Default Document Domains
I've noticed recently that within the Moz Crawl Report I keep seeing duplicate content for one of our pages that pulls from a default document. The pages are product pages, one ending in releases/ and the other ending in releases/index and are both identical pages. Normally in these situations I would prefer to make sure that every link is being sent to the releases/ page, however according to Moz, the releases/index page is actually ranking better and has a higher internal link count. Can someone advise me on the best way to deal with this situation? Hopefully I've explained myself well enough! Thanks Sam
Moz Pro | | BlueLinkERP0 -
Is Rank Tracker accurate?
Rank Tracker tells me my page is #3 on Google (US) for a keyword phrase When I check Google.com myself, I see my page is #6 Am I missing something here?
Moz Pro | | brianflannery0 -
When is rank tracker going to work
has anyone heard when rank tracker under the research tools is going to be working, been a very long time. I use this tool to check on the progress of sites, I know that it is in the campaigns per week but i want the tool under the research tools and feel a bit let down by semoz over this
Moz Pro | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Rank tracker not working right
so i'm quite new at using seomoz so maybe this is a silly question. a couple of weeks ago i added 6 url to tack weekly and it's been working so far. since then i've been wanting to add several more but it seems that the list is limited to 6. at first i click the checkbox on track column but when that didn't work i updated each url then click "track this url" --> that didn't work either. can anyone help if maybe i'm doing something wrong? thx
Moz Pro | | BSutandio0 -
SEOmoz Report: Competitive Domain Analysis
Hi there, According to SEOmoz Dashboard's Competitive Domain Analysis, the 'Total Links' for our domain shot up (more than quatripled) in the last few weeks. We haven't really done much link building in over 6 months so not sure how to explain this. Did SEOmoz make updates to their bots? Could it be that the bots are finding all these links only now? We've been using SEOmoz reporting for almost a year now, and I've never seen this before. Some insight / explanation for this would be great. Thanks in advance,
Moz Pro | | RBA
Gemma0 -
Rank Tracker via API
Hello SEOMoz, The functionality of the Rank Tracker Tool is excellent - I was wondering if it might be coming to the API so we can do some deeper analysis? Thanks!
Moz Pro | | igzebedze0 -
Will SEOmoz improve my google ranking?
I want to know iwll SEOmoz improve my google ranking. will they improve my keywords.
Moz Pro | | imusmanbutt0 -
Keyword Rankings Question
Does the Keyword Rankings tool track all urls or just the main. Example: Say I put www.domain.com to have tracked. Will the Keyword Rankings tool also track www.domain.com/landing-page and any derivative of the main domain or would this be considered a separate campaign. Thanks
Moz Pro | | montage0