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
-
I am trying to use Page Optimization feature but it is giving me error.
Hi, I am trying to track a page optimization feature for one of my project, https://www.360degreespropertyinspections.com.au for keyword: property inspections melbourne but i keep getting this below error: "Page Optimization Error There was a problem loading this page. Please make sure the page is loading properly and that our user-agent, rogerbot, is not blocked from accessing this page." I checked robots.txt file, it all looks fine. Not sure what is the problem? Is it a problem with Moz or the website?
On-Page Optimization | | Abhijay191 -
Should I use 'Click here' as an inbound link for my cornerstone content?
Hello Should I use 'Click here' as an inbound link for my cornerstone content? Example: For a full selection of our Facebook Event Attendee packages, please click here. OR Example: Please click the following link for a selection of our Facebook Event Attendee packages. This is my product page to help you better understand the context: LikeChimp
On-Page Optimization | | xdunningx0 -
How to remove subdomains in a clean way?
Hello, I have a main domain example.com where I have my main content and then I created 3 subdomains one.example.com, two.example.com and three.example.com I think the low ranking of my subdomains is affecting the ranking of my main domain, the one I care the most. So, I decided to get rid of the subdomains. The thing is that only for one.example.com I could transfer the content to my main domain and create 301 redirects. For the other two subdomains I cannot integrate the content in my main domain as it doesn't make sense. Whats the cleanest way to make them dissapear? (just put a redirect to my main domain even if the content is not the same) or just change the robots to "noindex" and put a 404 page in the index of each subdomain. I want to use the way that will harm the least the performance with Google. Regards!
On-Page Optimization | | Gaolga0 -
Does anyone use No Sweat WP Internal Links Lite?
Would you recommend it? Are there any other plugins that you'd recommend instead?
On-Page Optimization | | --Chantal--0 -
Any benefit to using HeadSpace AND All in One?
I noticed that somewhere along the line (outside developer or SEO) I ended up with HeadSpace AND All in One on one of my WP sites. There are functions that I appreciate with both and I wonder if there is any danger to completing both forms for a post or page? Is there really any benefit or just a waste of time? I keep finding articles that compare the 2, but nothing that talks about using them together. If I get rid of All in One, …. WOW. Mid question, i realized I'm a dum-dum. All in One has the same no follow options I thought I would miss from HeadSpace. So new question…if I uninstall headspace, will I lose the data/settings that it was used to set up? Jenn
On-Page Optimization | | vernonmack0 -
Is it good to have a subdomain with keyword?
Hi, I want to ask do you thing that it is good and necessary to have a subdomain with a keyword in it when the domain doesn't include it? f.e. you have a website named domain.com but there is no keyword in it. And if you add subdomain keyword.domain.com will this bring any benefit?
On-Page Optimization | | vladokan0 -
Do you think using accordion text can hurt SEO?
I have a lot of text for my home page. My plan is to a J Query Plugin for accordion text. Does anyone think that this can hurt SEO efforts?
On-Page Optimization | | DTOSI1 -
Keyword use in Title tag?
To improve SEO on a particular keyword, should you use that same keyword in the title tag of multiple pages within your site? Will that help or would it actually hurt by causing pages within your site to complete against each other for that keyword? Does it make a difference if that keyword is truly used on all those different pages?
On-Page Optimization | | KHCreative0