Using Subdomains to Avoid Sitewide Penalties?
-
If I'm using a subdomain on my website, for instance news.mywebsite.com, and it gets penalized by Panda (or whatever animal update), would that affect the main domain and/or other subdomains?
-
It depends, in part, on whether what you're seeing is a manual penalty or an algorithmic update that is causing your site to rank lower.
Often times with Penguin updates, what looks like a penalty is actually just that a lot of the links pointing to a site have been devalued and are no longer passing juice. This is definitely something that can affect your whole domain, if there are enough inbound links to enough different pages on your site that have all been devalued. Subdomains won't be immune to this effect. However, as Michael points out below, losses from Penguin are usually more page/keyword specific, so you won't necessarily see your whole domain/subdomains hit.
With a manual penalty, whether or not the subdomain is hit depends on whether or not it shares the low quality signals that got the main domain hit. I certainly wouldn't recommend isolating black-hat practices on a subdomain, however; a penalty on a subdomain CAN affect other subdomains and the main domain, but it doesn't always do so. It's something to keep an eye on.
-
Panda is often a sitewide penalty, Penguin is usually isolated e.g. specific keywords, pages etc.
Take a look at this article, should give you some better insight into the updates and how they can affect your site/in what capacity they affect sites.
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
-
To avoid the duplicate content issue I have created new urls for that specific site I am posting to and redirecting that url to the original on my site. Is this the right way to do it?
I am trying to avoid the duplicate content issue by creating new urls and redirecting them to the original url. Is this the proper way of going about it?
On-Page Optimization | | yagobi210 -
When, if ever, would you need to use: example.com/en
Is there any reason to have /en on your website if your website is only in English? Or is it worth having in case you are preparing to translate into other languages? And is there any advantage to being: en.example.com over example.com/en Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | CosiCrawley0 -
Using Canonical & INDEX, FOLLOW meta tag
I am sort of new to this, and working with an overseas development team on an eCommerce site. I am curious if the Canonical tag will supersede the tag, or if it is best to remove this tag entirely for duplicate product pages?
On-Page Optimization | | BretDarby1 -
Product Landing page- Key Words used too often.
Hi There to everyone. I'm very new at SEO so I appreciate all the help I can get! Question: on my e-commerce website, one heading is "USB KEYS", then when you click on that, you get a page full of products with the word "USB KEYS" on the title, such as "4gig black USB KEY".. So then I do the MOZ Page grader and get a low score because on the product landing page it thinks I've used the word "USB KEYS" too much, like 72 times,.. But I have to use it- Cause it has to be in the product title! Is this ok!? thanks
On-Page Optimization | | cowhidesdirect0 -
What does Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical mean?
I'm a newb and see this on my report and I don't understand what it means. Any help?
On-Page Optimization | | smartapps0 -
Use of
Hi Everyone, Encountered this NOHTMLINDEX tag within the section of a website and I am not really sure how it affects the performance of the website and its use. This meta robots tag has been used on numerous pages like the home page, content pages and forum threads. Is it good to keep it there or should it be removed and why? Thanks in advance! Steve
On-Page Optimization | | sjcbayona-412180 -
Do you use <nofollow>and rel=nofollow?</nofollow>
I just read http://www.thoughtmechanics.com/does-nofollow-attribute-work-google-says-yes-studies-say-otherwise/ . Is it really better to avoid using nofollow for local links (from one site to itself)?
On-Page Optimization | | fleetway0 -
Do we need to use the canonical tag on non-indexed pages?
Hi there I have been working in / learning SEO for just over a year, coming from a non dev background, so there are still plenty of the finer points on-page points I am working on. Slowly building up confidence and knowledge with the great SEOMoz as a reference! We are working on this site http://www.preciseuk.co.uk (we are still tweaking the tags and content by the way- not finished yet!) Because a lot of the information is within accordians, a page is generated for each tab of the accordian expanded, for example: http://www.preciseuk.co.uk/facilities-management.php is the main page but then you also have: http://www.preciseuk.co.uk/facilities-management.php?tab=0 http://www.preciseuk.co.uk/facilities-management.php?tab=1 http://www.preciseuk.co.uk/facilities-management.php?tab=2 http://www.preciseuk.co.uk/facilities-management.php?tab=3 http://www.preciseuk.co.uk/facilities-management.php?tab=4 http://www.preciseuk.co.uk/facilities-management.php?tab=5 All of which are in the same file. According to the crawl test, these pages are not indexed. Because it is all in one file, should we add the canonical tag to it, so that this is replicated in all the tab pages that are generated? eg. Thanks in advance for your help! Liz OneResult
On-Page Optimization | | oneresult
liz@oneresult.co.uk2