Switching subdomains
-
A few years ago our company decided to merge all its websites (magazine brands) as sub-domains under one new root domain. So the current situation is like this:
brand1.rootdomain.com
brand2.rootdomain.com
brand3.rootdomain.com
...For the moment the rootdomain has a domain authority of 66.
In a few weeks we would like to switch that rootdomain to the strongest (highest trust, pagerank,...) brand.
So we get this:
www.brand1.com
brand2.brand1.com
brand3.brand1.comBefore we make the switch i'll have to make a pro and con list.
So I hope I can get some advice for you guys if this is a good idea or not.
-
Since your 301 redirect are years apart it shouldn't cause that much of a problem. I wouldn't make a habit out of it though!
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
-
Canonical vs Alternate for country based subdomain dupe content?
What's the correct method for tagging dupe content between country based subdomains? We have: mydomain.com // default, en-us www.mydomain.com // en-us uk.mydomain.com // uk, en-gb au.mydomain.com // australia, en-au eu.mydomain.com // europe, en-eu In the header of each we currently have rel="alternate" tags but we're still getting dupe content warnings in Moz for the "WWW" subdomain. Question 1) Are we headed in the right direction with using alternate? Or would it be better to use canonical since the languages are technically all English, just different regions. The content is pretty much the same minus currency and localization differences. Question 2) How can we solve the dupe content between WWW and the base domain, since the above isn't working. Thanks so much
Technical SEO | | lvdh11 -
Subdomain as News Section instead of Source in Google News?
Hi, trying to dig into Google News for a large site, mostly containing news.
Technical SEO | | m.m
The structure of the site network is subdomain.domain.se, and each subdomain has it's own brand with it's own news: x.domain.se
y.domain.se
z.domain.se
etc... Each brand/subdomain is more or less to equate with its own subjectfield/section. In Google News every subdomain is configured with it's own Site Source url, but also having the set up with one section with the same url. It seems like they're getting conflicts in Google News, Google can't always figure out which news article to which brand. Example: an article owned by brand A, but it is sometimes happens that articles getting labeled as brand B in the news SERP, though the link takes you correctly to brand A. I am thinking that this config in News Publisher Center may be a problem? Anyone having any thoughts if that would be better if we delete all source urls except for domain.se-brand and then put all the other subdomains as sections? www.domain.se x.domain.se y.doamin.se z.domain.se Any smart thoughts on this one? Or anything else that could make this wrong labeling (all content included images are hosted in same domain for example). Regards,
Magnus0 -
Subdomains or Subdirectory for multisite SEO structure?
Hey Mozzers, I work for a startup releasing several apps all within their own niches: hiking, mountain biking, skiing, running etc.. We've decided to go for the Wordpress Multisite route and I was wondering what the best site structure was. For example: Would hike.myapp.com or myapp.com/hike be more beneficial to our growth plans? My thinking follows that of geotargeting strategies for franchises (uk.travel.com etc) and to go for the subdomain option in order to build each individual 'sites' authority because each sport has niche audiences. Or am I talking nonsense? I've read varying advice and thought I'd ask you guys. Cheers, A
Technical SEO | | AdamRob011 -
Robots.txt on subdomains
Hi guys! I keep reading conflicting information on this and it's left me a little unsure. Am I right in thinking that a website with a subdomain of shop.sitetitle.com will share the same robots.txt file as the root domain?
Technical SEO | | Whittie0 -
Effects of significant cross linking between subdomains
A client has noticed in recent months that their traffic from organic search has been declining, little by little. They have a large ecommerce site with several different categories of product - each product type has its own subdomain. They have some big megamenus going on, and the end result is that if you look in their Webmaster Tools for one of their subdomains, under Links to your Site, it says they have nearly 22 million links from their own domain! Client is wondering if this is what is causing the decline in traffic and wondering whether to change the whole structure of their site. Interested to hear the thoughts of the community on this one!
Technical SEO | | helga730 -
Need advice on having customer stores running on my subdomain
We have an online store product and we're working on the SEO for our new domain (foo.com in this example.) Our customers have the ability to change the domain of their store but many of them will likely stick with the subdomains we give them (store1.foo.com) We could potentially have thousands of stores soon using our subdomain. Each of these stores will have a very small link at the bottom to our own domain but other than this, the content is completely user-generated and not under our control. Are there risks/problems associated with this type of strategy? If so, could we perhaps avoid them by using robots.txt to block entire site until they change to their own domain? TIA, Sean
Technical SEO | | schof0 -
Switching Hosting & SEO
Hello friends, We are facing the prospect of switching to a new hosting account or company. We are currently using a third-party reseller account but are outgrowing that account. We are considering VPS and dedicated servers. However, this will mean updates for IPs and nameservers. Does anyone have experience with SEO consequences of making switch? Best practices? Tips? Obstacles? Any and all comments/advice welcome. We're trying to balance the potential SEO ramifications of making the switch with the consequences of reduced site speed.
Technical SEO | | Gyi0 -
Impact on domain when using a subdomain for majority opf site content
Hello, We're looking to use a subdomain for a bookings engine that will also host the majority of our site content as it wil house the details of the courses that we'll be selling online. All content is currently available on www.existingdomain.co.uk A few pages will remain here but the majority will ultimately be hosted on a different IP address under a subdomain: courses.existingdomain.co.uk I am a little concerened about search engine reaction to this content separation. Would this approach dilute the rankings of www.existingdomain.co.uk? Is there anything else we need to be mindful of? We have alternative options if this is a real SEO faux pas. Thanks
Technical SEO | | Urbanfox0