Link juice passing from a .org.uk link to a .org/uk websites
-
Hi all,
A client I am working on had a CMS built in recently which has resulted in all their canonicals tags being taken off the website, and as such the same page with both a .org/uk and .org.uk/uk domain have appeared in the search results and I am wondering what your guys take is on the best cause of action.
For further background: Historically they have always used .org.uk/uk (not sure why) for their UK website and used .org/xxx for other countries (they also have a .org splashpage FYI). Having seen the .org/uk pages, and knowing they have to choose one to avoid duplication, they would like to move their uk website to the .org/uk domain to fit in with the rest of the divisions. However due to the historical use of .org.uk/uk their backlink profile contains links to both the .org.uk and .org domains.
My question then: would a canonical tag on all the .org.uk/uk pages pointing to the .org/uk pages be strong enough to pass on link juice to the .org/uk pages (from all links pointing to .org.uk) or would a 301 redirect be required in this instance, or indeed would it be best to stay with the .org.uk/uk domain?
Thanks,
Diana
-
I would absolutely use 301s in this case as the client is, in essence, picking a new URL. Switching from .uk/uk to .org/uk could Have unintended consequences for your rankings, but this could be offset by an international bump upwards. Without knowing your traffic, it's difficult to codify the potential issues of keeping or leaving the .uk TLD.
However, it's always fun To make statements after A disclaimer, so to steal Google's own PPC targeting terminology:
- People in, searching for, or viewing pages about your targeted location <-- May go down.
- People in your targeted location <-- May go down.
- People searching for or viewing pages about your targeted location <-- May go up.
At the very least, I would be sure that regional targeting is set to within WMT to ensure that Google knows your target region, based on your audience.
-
Would a canonical tag on all the .org.uk/uk pages pointing to the .org/uk pages be strong enough to pass on link juice to the .org/uk pages (from all links pointing to .org.uk)
Canonical tags DO NOT pass link juice, they are separate pages in their own right and you are asking Google to consider using your recommendation not merging pages.
Would a 301 redirect be required in this instance?
Yes, unless for some reason you would like to have two copies of the same site available? I am pretty sure that you would not.
Indeed would it be best to stay with the .org.uk/uk domain?
Now that is a more tricky question. Google loves localized top level domains. If it is a .uk it knows your target market is the UK and ranks you in Google.co.uk as a priority. Moving to a .org will take that away. Do you have each folder setup in Webmaster Tools under a different "Geographic target" in "Site Settings"?
You will be best to do this if you have not. Where is your server hosted? If not in the UK this can also have a big effect on the site when moving to a more generic top level domain away from a localized one.
Hope that helps to shed some light on the matter
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
-
Ability to Transition Completed Wordpress Website to New Coder/Developer
We have worked with the same Wordpress developer since 2012. They recently redesigned our Wordpress site. We purchased a real estate theme and they performed major modifications to it. The project took 8 months. There are many customized widgets and multiple plugins. We hired a new SEO. The SEO is very comfortable coding. The SEO performed certain modifications and the code broke. The original developer stepped in and and helped restore the code. The SEO stated that the site should not be so delicate; that too many plugins and widgets are used making it inherently unstable. The original developer is claiming that the SEO did not follow best practices (they did not use a dev server to test). For a non technical business owner this is very disturbing. We finally agreed that the new SEO would make changes on a dev server and the original developer will check these changes to ensure they do not break the code. My question is, shouldn't a Wordpress site be simple enough to hand over to a decent coder with little risk of breaking the code? Are there any standards regarding the hand over of a site? I am comfortable with my developers, but what if they change professions or close their company? How would I transition the site? There must be standards and protocols that allow a third party, such as an SEO to change code without causing havoc. Any one have some insight?
Web Design | | Kingalan11 -
SEO strategy for UK / US websites
Hi, We currently have a UK-focused site on www.palmatin.com ; We're now targeting the North American market as well, but the contents of the site need to be different from UK. One option was to create another domain for the NA market but I assume it would be easier to rank with palmatin.com though. What would you suggest to do, if a company is targeting two different countries in the same language? thanks, jaan
Web Design | | JaanMSonberg0 -
Would you consider these website designs an upgrade?
Hello everyone, I've asked a few questions in here regarding website design, etc. So first I want to thank you guys for the responses, and second I want to apologize I hope I am not boring you guys. I just feel like this is a forum of qualified people and I value your opinions greatly. Now to my question, I am considering a redesign as we are not happy with our current site located http://www.studentdebtrelief.us/. We think it feels outdated, not structured well, no good call to actions, ten different fonts, blurry images, does have good integration with social media, boring and bland news page, etc. I just wanted some opinions on these other sites that were designed by the fellow we are considering hiring. I've gotten some feedback from a friend that he doesn't think they would be an upgrade from our current site, which I totally disagree with. Though I am the first to admit design/creativity is not my strong suit, so I don't value my own opinion on this very much either, lol. I am hoping I can get some insight from you guys here. Do you think the designs below are of higher quality than our current site? Would you be more inclined to continue reading these sites than our own? Is there one in particular you think is the best? http://www.jayhafling.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/archive.jpg http://www.jayhafling.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/zazachat.jpg http://www.jayhafling.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/jetpeppers3.jpg http://www.jayhafling.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/pbs_9001.png http://www.jayhafling.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/fidgetfeed.png http://www.jayhafling.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/haute.jpg http://www.jayhafling.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/worketc-732x1362.jpg Thanks for the help
Web Design | | DemiGR0 -
Internal links, new pages & Domain Authority
I have two questions regarding Domain Authority: 1. Is it possible that a drop in Domain Authority may have been caused by adding a blog and blog posts? In other words, would adding pages/posts dilute the site's authority? And will it catch back up with itself or will that require inbound links to those new pages? (oops! that was 3 questions in one) 2. Would it be detrimental to have internal links coming from blog posts without authority to my Home page and could that have contributed to a drop in Domain Authority? Thanks!
Web Design | | gfiedel0 -
Redirects (301/302) versus errors (404)
I am not able to convincingly decide between using redirects versus using 404 errors. People are giving varied opinions. Here are my cases 1. Coding errors - we put out a bad link a. Some people are saying redirect to home page; the user at least has something to do PLUS more importantly it does NOT hurt your SEO ranking. b. Counter - the page ain't there. Return 404 2. Product removed - link1 to product 1 was out there. We removed product1; so link1 is also gone. It is either lying in people's bookmarks, OR because of coding errors we left it hanging out at some places on our site.
Web Design | | proptiger0 -
After a website redesign, what is the impact and is it a good practice to use /v2/ naming convention?
Hi mightyful SEOMoz community. We just launched a redesign of our commercial website from https://www.data-field.com to https://www.data-field.com/v2/ All URLs from previous website were 301 permanent redirect to the appropriate page in the new website, and the root domains ( /, /v2/ ) send the users to their own language content /v2/en/, /v2/fr/, /v2/zh/ Up to here everything is fine. But then I setup the usual "Share" buttons, only to find that they were displaying a "0" count. Then I realized that it was because of the root URL change from / to /v2/ My question is the following: 1. Is using /v2/ a good practice? 2. If yes, then should I link the Social tool to https://www.data-field.com/ ( only ) instead of linking it to the actual page in the address bar? Thanks for your answers.
Web Design | | NicolasE0 -
Still too many internal links reported on page
Hi Guys I am new here, and very much learning a lot, and enjoying the benefits of being an SEOMoz user. So here goes with my first question (probably of many). I have known for sometime that our website has a top heavy number of links in the primary navigation. But I wasn't too sure how important this was. Our main objective was to make an east to use nav for customers. All of the feedback we have had says that customers really like our navigation, as it is easy to use etc etc. However, when running an SEOMoz campaign on our site, again we got back that there are too many links on the pages. Example, home page has 500+ links. So I decided to do something about this. I have implemented what I think is a good solution where by the drop down navigation isn't loaded on first load. If the user then hovers over one of our "departments" the sub navigation is loaded via Ajax and dropped in. This means if the user wants it, they get it, if not then it's not loaded with the page. My theory being that Google loads the page without all the links, but a user gets the links as and when they need them. I tested with the SEOMoz toolbar and this tells me that when I load the home page there is 167 links in it vs 500+ previously. However, the my campaign still tells me that my home page has 450+ links (and this is a recent crawl of the page). Our site is here: www.uniquemagazines.co.uk Can you tell me is what I have done is a) a good solution and b) does the SEOMoz crawler have the ability to trigger the hover event and cause the AJAX load of the sub navigation content?
Web Design | | TheUniqueSEO0 -
Ecommerce web site with too many internal links
Hi, We're using Magento CE 1.4.0.1 for our ecommerce web site with a fairly flat navigation system i.e. 9 major categories display across the top menu that when you roll over display 2-20 sub categories (which take you to a groups of similar products) and then individual product pages. The categories and sub categories are available to click on as part of a dynamic Html menu system on each page. Each page also shows a small number of related products. This linking structure seems fairly standard and yet Seomoz throws up the error message, "Too Many On-page links" for most pages on our site. Do I need to really worry about this? Is there much can be done to improve this on an ecommerce web site with a large catalogue of products? I've looked at the Knowledge Base but I don't feel the existing responses adequately address the issue for ecommerce sites.
Web Design | | languedoc0