Is it possible to redirect the main www. domain - but keep a subdomain active?
-
Hi Mozzers,
Quick question, which I hope one of you can answer...
Let's say I have a website (i) www.example.com and on that a subdomain exists, (ii) subdomain.example.com.
Let's say I want to change my main domain from www.example.com to www.newwebsite.com. I'd 301 all content, use GWT to notify Google of a change of address etc etc.
Having done that, is it still possible to keep the original subdomain active? So, even though www.example.com has been redirected / transferred to www.newwebsite.com, subdomain.example.com would still exist.
If that is possible, what is the implication for Domain Authority? On the one hand, I have transferred the main site (so DA from that will transfer to the new site); but part of that root domain is still active.
Make sense? Any answers?
Thanks everyone...
-
Hi - thank you for your responses and sorry for my very late reply.
Appreciate your input on this. Ruth, the reason for this being in a consideration was because the company wanted to re-brand their customer-facing site (changing to newwebsite.com) but keep oldwebsite.com as a corporate site.
The issue of course is that, unless we did a complete domain transfer, we would lose some of the fantastic rankings that have been built up over two years of hard work. This got me thinking about whether I could give them both, i.e. create subdomain.oldwebsite.com even though the main site has been redirected and transferred.
Having thought about that, I wanted to know if anyone had tested this as it seemed like a potential loop-hole, whereby you might be able to have subdomain.oldwebsite.com and newwebsite.com both piggy-backing off the same DA. But, as you mentioned that DA doesn't transfer that well to subdomains, I guess this may be one reason why.
Thankfully, this strange scenario was avoided, as I finally managed to convince them to start a new corporate site on a .net or .org. The corporate site doesn't need to rank particularly, so I got my #1 solution anyway. The subdomain idea I posted above was a potential backup plan at best, as the CEO didn't look like budging for a while!
Thanks again - much appreciated! Incidentally, I have another question posted here: http://moz.com/community/q/google-not-indexing-xml-sitemap-images. It's really killing me, so I hope somebody can offer some assistance!
Cheers,
Mark
-
DA doesn't usually transfer very well across subdomains - so it's likely the DA from www.example.com is already not affecting subdomain.example.com.
It's certainly possible to keep the subdomain alive, but I'd be a little concerned about what it would do for your brand. If you're sending the message that example.com is now newexample.com, but then keeping things running at example.com, it could create a lot of consumer confusion. From a DA stance you should be OK, though, especially if you take some extra time to promote the subdomain and the new site after launch.
You may still not see pages from the new domain and the old subdomain ranking in the same SERPs, though - Google is often pretty good at figuring out when multiple sites are owned by the same people.
-
I think you may have already done that, and just not relized you have.
An example would be Binding #1 set up as yourdomaine.com and the second binding set up as www.yourdomaine.com . Check the SEOMOZ "Site explorer". First do a report on yourdomaine.com noteing the results, now try it on www.yourdomaine.com notice the differance in the results. and your right about the answer. The sub domaine does retain some of its DA.
I'm not sure if it is the correct thing to do, but in GWT, I have manually chosen to have Google use the higher ranking DA name as its default.
Just my thoughts.
-
Thanks for your response, Allen - much appreciated.
I probably wasn't clear in my original message that I am specifically interested in what happens to Domain Authority in that scenario - and wondered if anyone had tested this. Hence felt a web dev / IT forum would be the wrong place.
So I thought it might be possible to do this technically, for the reasons you mentioned. But what happens to the DA?
Let's say you redirect www.example.com to www.newsite.com. www.newsite.com then takes over from www.example.com in the rankings (done this several times and it's been near seamless).
But, I then want to set up a subdomain on example.com AFTER I have redirected www.example.com. Surely, that subdomain would retain some of that DA and thus have an unfair advantage. All of a sudden, I could engineer it so that subdomain.example.com AND www.newsite.com rank alongside each other.
Not tried this before so fascinated to see if the subdomain would rank - or whether because it's on a redirected site, it would not.
Cheers!
-
Hey guys,
Yes make perfect sense. Not sure that this is the best place to ask the question though. A web server IT site would probably be the best place.
What your asking is easily possible if you are the Administrator for your web server. All you will need to do is create another binding in the IIS Administrator panel. Just like you created the domain name example.com and the binding www.example.com you can create a third binding example2.com
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
-
Should I do multiple 301 redirects?
We launched our website less than a year ago. We had another domain name and business name. I created 301s from the old domain to the new domain, that are still in place now. We are in the process of restructuring our current site which would result in pages getting a new title and URL to match. Essentially it would look something like this:
Web Design | | MAVENTRI
-- olddomain.com/page1 --> newdomain.com/page1 --> newdomain.com/newpage I recently checked the analytics and it looks like we are still getting traffic redirected from the old domain. What is the best way to handle these redirects? Should I redirect a redirect?0 -
Domain name change
Dear team, If a website with a domain name - example - raisins.com wishes to change to peanuts.com is this a dangerous task or a relatively simple one? I hope that by keeping my Q short, provides ease.
Web Design | | AdrianCGreen0 -
301 Redirect Issue for URL with # and !
Hi All, We had a WIX website and now moved to Wordpress. I m having issue while doing redirecting from old URL to new URL. Example: Old Url: http://www.firsttraffic.com.au/#!traffic-management/ccfn New Url: http://www.firsttraffic.com.au/our-services/traffic-management/ I tried different wordpress plugin but nothing works. I m thinking its due to the # . But How can I to redirection for URL like this . Thanks
Web Design | | emarketexperts0 -
Best way to move blog from subdomain to folder?
Hey all, Our company has 4 product websites, and each has its own separate blog. They are currently set up as subdomain blogs (blog.company.com) hosted on wordpress.com, but I would like to transition them over to root folders (company.com/blog) in order to improve accessibility and SEO. What is the best way to go about doing this? Should I continue to host the blogs on wordpress or are there better options? Would I migrate the blog posts over or just redirect? I'd like to get a general framework/plan of action going in order to know what to expect. Thanks!
Web Design | | kslusarski0 -
For A Corporation With 3 Distinct Business Divisions, Is It Better To Go With 1 Domain & 3 Sub-Domains, 1 Domain & 3 Folders, or 3 Domains for SEO Purposes?
Hi, I am working on a project right now for an existing client, we have one domain up and running well, they want to create an 'umbrella' site to cover three current business divisions and roll everything up under that main site, including the existing site on a totally different domain (would migrate over and 301 redirect from current domain). From what I've researched, I am inclined towards one main domain with three sub-domains due to the amount of content for each business division being significantly different enough that it seems to deserve separation from each other. However, in terms of SEO and maintaining consistent domain authority, would anyone recommend it be better to structure this as just folders/categories falling under the main domain instead of separate sub-domains for each division, and focus keyword targeting on pages tailored to that end within the main domain structure rather than spreading out link-juice to different sub-domains? Thanks!
Web Design | | Dan_InboundHorizons0 -
Redirecting duplicate pages
For whatever reason, X-cart creates duplicates of our categories and articles so that we have URLs like this www.k9electronics.com/dog-training-collars
Web Design | | k9byron
www.k9electronics.com/dog-training-collars/ or http://www.k9electronics.com/articles/anti-bark-collar
http://www.k9electronics.com/articles/anti-bark-collar/ now our SEO guy says that we dont have to redirect these because google is "smart enough" to know they are the same, and that we should "leave it as-is". However, everything I have read online says that google sees this as dupe content and that we should redirect to one or the other / or no /, depending on which most of our internal links already point to, which is with a slash. What should we do? Redirect or leave it as is? Thanks!0 -
Google search issue with exact domain
We had a site from Feb-2011 to Nov-2011 at the domain amcoexterminating.com. The site was pure HTML/CSS and the daily unique visitors steadily increased over that time. So all was fine. We then moved the site to a CMS (Joomla) on Dec. 6th. From that day forward, the daily visitors went into the tank. Before the move, if you typed "amcoexterminating.com" or "amco exterminating" into Google search, the site would be the first result (as you'd expect since those are the words that make up the actua domain). But we tried this yesterday and the site did not come up at all. NOT GOOD. It would work in Yahoo or Bing, but not in Google. So obviously, the problem with Google search directly affected the daily visitors. We just checked Webmaster tools yesterday (yes, this should have been done sooner, lesson learned) and it said "Site has severe health issues - Important page blocked by robots.txt". It listed the "important" page URL and it was just a link to an image. Regardless, I wiped out the Joomla created robots.txt file and added a new one and made it just say... User-agent: *Allow: / About 14 hours later, after the new robots.txt file was recognized by Google, the "severe health" message went away. However if I search in Google for "amcoexterminating.com", it still doesn't show up and the client is concerned (as they should be). Do you think the search engines just need more time to refresh? If so, once it refreshes, should the site show up first again right away? Or is it possible the robots.txt file had nothing to do with the issue? If so, what other things could I check into that might cause Google search to not find a site even if you search for exact domain name? Please share any and all things I should look into as I need to get this site showing in Google search again (as it was before moving to the CMS). Thanks!
Web Design | | MarathonMS0 -
Subdomain rewrite
Our old website had a staging subdomain that was used before I got with the company. We recently had the website redesigned, still on the DNN platform, but our staging subdomain is still showing up. The domain, staging.structural.net, shows up in serps and needs to be redirected to just the root domain. What is the best way to get this thing from working. If robot text is needed to get this subdomain from showing up, can you share? Also can you share the instructions you would use in iis to route this beast? Any advice is appreciated.
Web Design | | KJ-Rodgers0