Domain Authority and Page Rank concerns when using CNAME
-
In the event that a person uses a service like Blogger or a photo service like Photo Shelter, but use a CNAME to resolve example.blogspot.com or example.photoshelter.com to example.com, how does that affect Domain Authority and Page Rank in real world results, and how does it affect the user when/if they leave the service and establish their own site?
For example:
A client has a blog on Blogger called johndoephotography.blogspot.com but uses CNAME so what is shown is johndoephotography.com.
The Domain Authority is quite high since he is really on Yahoo's domain. How does that affect SERP rankings? Is it ignored, since it is merely a sub-domain, or does the parent domain actually give a benefit?
The second part:
If John Doe decides to host his own WordPress blog, what happens to that domain authority? Has he lost it all?
-
Thank you Daniel. I know it's been awhile, but now just getting back to this.
You pretty much substantiated what I thought to be true for the first part.
I have heard of some workaround 301s when going from something like Blogger to a self hosted version. And I do believe that WordPress.com has a paid option to redirect all traffic if you go to a self-hosted blog.
Thanks again!
-
It is important to recognize that johndoephotography.blogspot.com is NOT the same as blogspot.com. Subdomains are treated by search engines as their own domain. The SEOMoz tool does not make this distinction, and it will show domain authority for blogspot and wordpress subdomains to have the authority of blogspot.com and wordpress.com. Google does not treat them this way, or else we would see a whole lot more blogspot results in search.
I don't understand the last question. If someone has a wordpress.com blog and decides to host in on their own domain and uses wordpress.org software, do they lost the authority built to the .com? If that is what you are asking, yes. You cannot 301 redirect a blogspot or wordpress subdomain. My best solution has been to put one and only one link on the subdomain, have it go to your new domain, and hope it passes as much of its authority as possible.
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
-
I have recently re-done my website. My buyers guide and my category page are ranking for keywords I'm after.
I have recently re-done my entire site (only a few days). I believe Google is still re-crawling and updating (however, the amount of movement on other searches has been significant). My buyers guide is ranking very high for its intended keywords, as well as high for the keywords of the category page. Both are at the beginning of the second page and I wonder if its dragging me down. What do you think I should do? Is it to early to take action as everything has been completed redone.
Technical SEO | | Code2Chil0 -
My 'complete guide' is cannibalising my main product page and hurting rankings
Hi everyone, I have a main page for my blepharoplasty surgical product that I want to rank. It's a pretty in-depth summary for patients to read all about the treatment and look at before and after pictures and there's calls to action in there. It works great and is getting lots of conversions. But I also have a 'complete guide' PDF which is for patients who are really interested in discovering all the technicalities of their eye-lift procedure including medical research, clinical stuff and risks. Now my main page is at position 4 and the complete guide is right below it in 5. So I tried to consolidate by adding the complete guide as a download on the main page. I've looked into rel canonical but don't think it's appropriate here as they are not technically 'duplicates' because they serve different purposes. Then I thought of adding a meta noindex but was not sure whether this was the right thing to do either. My report doesn't get any clicks from the serps, people visit it from the main page. I saw in Wordpress that there's options for the link, one says 'link to media file', 'custom URL' and 'attachment'. I've got the custom URL selected at the moment. There's also a box for 'link rel' which i figure is where I'd put the noindex. If that's the right thing to do, what should go in that box? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Smileworks_Liverpool0 -
Author schema and Wordpress Author Page
Hi everyone, Has anyone tried using the author schema on their Wordpress author page or on their G+ profile or on their Moz profile? Would it be a good idea to always use it where you publish? I publish on several blogs Thanks Carla example: Use it here - http://www.posicionamientowebenbuscadores.com/blog/author/carla/ http://moz.com/community/users/392216 It seems like I would be over doing it.
Technical SEO | | Carla_Dawson0 -
Website ranking went from page one to not in top 50 overnight. Help/suggestions?
One of our customer's websites initially ranked very well. For approximately 3 months it sat atop of Google for their optimized keywords. Suddenly, on November 17th, the ranking dropped and they were no longer in the top 50 for any keywords. We went through Google Webmaster tools and found no violations, so we emailed Google to see if we violated something and if they would reconsider. They responded "We reviewed your site and found no manual actions by the webspam team that might affect your site's ranking in Google." This is a site built on WordPress, so we turned off a majority of plugins in case one was somehow affecting the site. They have an incredible amount of business partners that link their website from their partner's website menus, so they have about 15,000 links all with anchor text "insurance." (every page on partner site is seen as a different link). Think this is affecting it? Maybe Google sees it as artificial? (P.S. This has been set up this way for a while before they came on with us). The site ranks on page one of Bing and Yahoo, but nowhere in top 50 for Google. Any suggestions? Appreciate the help!
Technical SEO | | Tosten0 -
Odd Ranking Page - Contact Us
Hi Everyone, So I have a client and when they are logged in the "Contact Us" page ranks as the number 1 page. She sends me screenshots when she is looked in through the corporate Google account, in a panic because of this...I am guessing she is frequently visiting the contact us page while logged in, which is why this is happening but I can't think of any other reason. From a ranking factors perspective there aren't any reasons for this. There are barely any links pointing to this page. I just don't know what to tell her. I can't duplicate it.
Technical SEO | | runnerkik0 -
Are building a page using HTML 5 better for seo?
Very general question really, but does anyone know whether Google sees html5 pages as being superior in any way to xhtml or html 4.x pages?
Technical SEO | | jimpannell0 -
Is it better to delete web pages that I don't want anymore or should I 301 redirect all of the pages I delete to the homepage or another live page?
Is it better for SEO to delete web pages that I don't want anymore or should I 301 redirect all of the pages I delete to the homepage or another live page?
Technical SEO | | CustomOnlineMarketing0 -
How to Redirect only specific pages to new domain
My HTACCESS FILE IS AS FOLLOWS: rewriteengine on
Technical SEO | | askthetrainer
rewritecond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mydomain.com$
rewriterule ^mydomain/(.*)$ "http://www.mydomain.com/$1" [R=301,L] #4d864805b49b5 I want to move ONLY specific pages from this domain to a new domain How do I edit my HTACCESS (which redirects http:// to www.) to move specific pages from old domain (which I have to delete) to new domain.... I.e. http://mydomaon.com/move.html needs to move to http://mynewdomain.com/move.html Where i can delete the original domains0