[Need advice!] A particular question about a subdomain to subfolder switch
-
Hello Moz Community!
I really was hoping to get your help on a issue that is bothering me for a while now. I know there is a lot of about this topic but I couldn’t find a good answer for my particular question.
We are running several web applications that are similar but are also different from each other. Right now, each one has its own subdomain (which was mainly due to technical reasons).
Like this: webapp1.rootdomain.com, webapp2.rootdomain.com etc.
Our root domain currently points with 301 to webapp1.rootdomain.com.
Now, we are thinking about making two changes:
- changing to a subfolder level like this: rootdomain.com/webapp1 , rootdomain.com/webapp2 etc.
- Changing our rootdomain to a landing page (lisitng all the apps) and take out the 301 to webapp1
We want to do these changes mainly for SEO reasons. I know that the advantages are not so clear between subdomain/subfolder but we think it could be the right way to go to push the root domain and profit more from juice passing to the different apps.
The problem is that we had a bad experience when we first switched from our first wep app (rootdomain.com) to an subdomain (webapp1.rootdomain.com) to set them equal with the other apps. Our traffic dropped a lot and it took us 6 weeks to get back on the same level as before. Maybe it was the 301 not passing all juice or maybe it was the switch to the subdomain. We are not sure.
So, I guess my question is do you think it is the right thing to do for web apps to go with subfolders to pass more juice from root to subfolders? Will it bring again huge drops in traffic once we make that change? Is it worth taking that risk or initial drop because it will pay off in the future?
Thanks a lot in advance! Your answers would help me a lot.
-
Thanks a lot for the answer SMG. I really appreciate it.
The one thing that is special about our case is that we actually only need organic traffic on the individual apps not on the root domain. Therefore we mostly care about the strength of the individual apps. I simply assume that a lot of people will link the landing page (rootdomain.com). So, with a subfolder system I hope to get more juice from the root domain to the apps and also that app1 for example can better support app2 with a better distribution of the root domain strength.
Well, I guess there might be no other way than to try it. If anyone else has another opinion I would love to hear it before I make the changes tomorrow.
-
Hi,
Whereas I can agree that having the webapps in the same domain WILL help push the root domain, I also agree care will have to be taken as to how it is done.
For instance, you mentioned you will be changing your root domain to become a landing page, this automatically affect the traffic that will go to webapp1 as you are offering people the choice. Webapp1 traffic will decrease from the 100% (albeit 301) traffic.
Also ensure the subdomains are 301 to the /webapp folder, but this too will cause a leakage (initially) as juice will need to be passed from the subdomain to the root. Root domain traffic and content will increase though which is a positive.
Ensuring any newly moved page has an equivalent 301 there should be no need to lose traffic as the traffic is simply being redirected, but without knowing what specifically happened the first time, it is hard to advise what to avoid I'm afraid.
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
-
Domains vs Subdomains for similar brands.
Hi all! I work for a company who have 6 different brands in the same industry targeted at different demographics. Some of them have a lot of history and are well known and respected, others are newer targeted at different price points/ types of people. I've been asked to input on there ongoing web strategy; should they use sub domains or individual branded domains. Previously that had separate brand domains but a new MD wanted to bring everything together into one website. The branded domains were redirected to the new site and it has been going along fine, albeit having lost 1/3rd or so organic traffic. Now a new management team has been brought in and they want to re-structure the website again to put more focus on the brands. Any new website will be on a brand new domain anyway as they are also re branding their main website. What will work better, separate branded domains or sub domains of one website? From what I understand, SEO won't be much different between the two options, but it feels like the bigger historical brands should have individual websites purely from a branding perspective. Thanks for any input!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RemarkableAgency0 -
Need explanation of Schema
Can someone explain me what it is and what is it used for. From my understanding it is something used by computers to understand language. In other words it is what you can say about an entity. For example a person works, is born somewhere but if I write Mr X flies to as human we do understand but as a computer the computer doesn't understand. Is that what schema is for ? telling me what I can say about an entity using specific verbs so that computers can understand. Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Google Places - Advanced Question
Hi All, Ive found multiple threads about previous issues but I haven't found any tailored to my specific question.I know there are a large amount of factors so I wanted to see if any other individuals had ran into this previously. We are currently in a centralized position in a major city. We are discussing moving the main office about 15 miles away into another city, moving us out of the main city where we have been for the past 3 years. The city where we are currently located has a lot more GEO search volume compared to the new city search terms and variants of. If we move will our local rankings drop when someone searches in the city where we were previously? How long would it take for this ranking to fall? Or would we still rank because we are moving a short distance away and have a large amount of citations there? I know we would need to change over all our online directories, on page etc..Any other suggestions on a smooth transition? I know there are many factors that go into this and any past experience, guidance and/or assistance is greatly appreciated. Cheers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PRKEL0 -
Advice on Link Building?
I know webmasters shouldn't focus on link building but unfortunately there are some types of content that doesn't get shared as much as other. And for content to go viral, it ain't that easy and it's almost impossible in some smaller niches where you don't have the volume to go "viral". That said I know about the common link building techniques. I know I can submit guest posts but when you're competing with websites that have over 10,000 backlinks, there is no way I'm going to get close to this with guest posting and commenting on other blogs. One way I found for getting backlinks is to publish interviews. Most of the time, people/businesses you interview like to link to this type of content. Publishing value-added content about other businesses' products or services may get some backlinks in return but not that often. So other than that, can some of you share some "out-of-the-box" link building strategies? Thank you in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sbrault740 -
Need to find scientific studies
I need to find scientific studies that back up a claim. I am searching the internet and see a mix of studies with blog posts with other stuff. Is there a way to isolate scientific studies in a search result?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | StreetwiseReports0 -
Help needed on Google Webmaster tools
Hi I notice that one of my oldest sites , even if I put hundred of backlinks (good or bad) google webmaster tools never index more like 20 per day. Why is this happening? They control it? I mean they dont let them all to get indexed and they take it slowly slowly? If I put just 20 per day is the ideal link building amount? Thnk you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nyanainc0 -
Advice needed on how to handle alleged duplicate content and titles
Hi I wonder if anyone can advise on something that's got me scratching my head. The following are examples of urls which are deemed to have duplicate content and title tags. This causes around 8000 errors, which (for the most part) are valid urls because they provide different views on market data. e.g. #1 is the summary, while #2 is 'Holdings and Sector weightings'. #3 is odd because it's crawling the anchored link. I didn't think hashes were crawled? I'd like some advice on how best to handle these, because, really they're just queries against a master url and I'd like to remove the noise around duplicate errors so that I can focus on some other true duplicate url issues we have. Here's some example urls on the same page which are deemed as duplicates. 1) http://markets.ft.com/Research/Markets/Tearsheets/Summary?s=IVPM:LSE http://markets.ft.com/Research/Markets/Tearsheets/Holdings-and-sectors-weighting?s=IVPM:LSE http://markets.ft.com/Research/Markets/Tearsheets/Summary?s=IVPM:LSE&widgets=1 What's the best way to handle this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SearchPM0 -
Subdomains vs. Subfolders for unique categories & topics
Hello, We are in the process of redesigning and migrating 5 previously separate websites (all different niche topics, including dining, entertainment, retail, real estate, etc.) under one umbrella site for the property in which they exist. From the property homepage, you will now be able to access all of the individual category sites within. As each niche microsite will be focused on a different topic, I am wondering whether it is best for SEO that we use subdomains such as category.mainsite.com or subfolders mainsite.com/category. I have seen it done both ways on large corporate sites (ie: Ikea uses subdomains for different country sites, and Apple uses subfolders), so I am wondering what makes the most sense for this particular umbrella site. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks, Melissa
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | grapevinemktg0