Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Link Building
    4. Root-Domain vs Subdomain Linkbuilding

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Root-Domain vs Subdomain Linkbuilding

    Link Building
    5
    5
    1615
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • adamdankhazi
      adamdankhazi last edited by

      Hello Mozzers!

      Couple of days ago I received a request to start optimizing a wordpress website, the domain itself has been around for around 10-12 years so it's it can be considered as one that has real history behind it.  The page has been moved from HTML/FLASH to wordpress about 3 - 4 years ago and hasn't been any SEO maintenance on it. The site used to rank for first position with several keywords, but now understandably, it has greatly decreased.

      My main question would be, that when I've checked the root domain's and the subdomain's metrics with MOZ Open Site Explorer, the sub domain (with "www.") showed a PA 40 and 90 external links while the root domain (without "www.") only has 27 PA and 6 External links.

      I know that the 301 or server redirects only transfers about 90% of the link juice to the targeted URL but the difference between the 2 results seem way too big for me.

      What do you think? Is this normal?
      During future link building is it more beneficial to target the root domain so the page won't lose that "10%" by redirecting the new link from sub-domain to root domain?
      Is it possible to get more juice transferred?

      Thank you very much,
      Adam

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • bazzyboy
        bazzyboy last edited by

        Hey

        I'm a bit confused - not the first time! Would very much appreciate if you good folks could shed some light on a couple of questions.

        Our site in the search console is inputed as www.domain.co.uk

        Is this our subdomain?

        When I'm using Open Site Explorer and filter by Target, say "this root domain" is it now showing me inbound links to domain.co.uk instead?

        Lastly how does this affect rankings i.e getting links to www.domain.co.uk or domain.co.uk as whoever types in either domain gets to the correct site.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • adamdankhazi
          adamdankhazi last edited by

          Thank you CKG for your answer, it's much appreciated.

          I have already started to move to www. , I changed in WordPress settings, from non-www to www version, also selected the preferred version www. in webmaster tools and contacted the server administrators about the change. My only last problem is the battle with the htaccess to redirect the rootdomain to the www. subdomain but I should get it sorted out pretty soon 🙂

          Cheers,
          Adam

          CKG

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Mustansar
            Mustansar last edited by

            Hey

            I think  you should go through both for analysis purposes however in order to moving forward you should be focusing on one URL which contains www.

            here are the link for you to help yourself to understand the difference between these.

            http://moz.com/community/q/root-domain-and-subdomain-links-opensite-explorer

            https://moz.com/help/guides/links/link-analysis

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • Brighton-Soundsystem
              Brighton-Soundsystem last edited by

              I have just come across the same issue for a site I am optimising. For me, when www is used the page authority in OSE is 42 compared to 33 when there is no www.

              It would be really good to hear what people's views are on this.

              Billy

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • 1 / 1
              • First post
                Last post

              Got a burning SEO question?

              Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


              Start my free trial


              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.

              • See all categories

              Related Questions

              • Sindre

                My site is linked from over 900 "The Globe"-domains - disavow or not?

                Hi! As some of you may be familiar with, there is a giant spam-network with the same design and same page title on all domains: "The Globe - The world's most visited web pages". For example: theglobe.at
                theglobe.co.za
                www.internet-search.us I've now discovered that over 900 of these spam-domains link to my site. My plan was of course to disavow them all, but Google is explicit on telling me to be careful. «Only disavow if you are certain that the links are damaging to your rankings». And to be honest, I'm not sure. Also: it seems drastic to disavow almost a thousand pages. I'm afraid to mess something up. What would you do?

                Link Building | | Sindre
                3
              • NCOREGSEO

                Backlinks vs External Links vs Referral Links vs Outbound links

                Hello all, I was just wondering if you could explain the difference between all the links above? I'm confused as they all seem to be the same or similar and I would just like to clearly know what distinguishes them from eachother. Thanks for your help, Jayne

                Link Building | | NCOREGSEO
                0
              • JIMBO16

                Back link from site with DA of 72 to a website domain. Clicking on the link redirects to our website not the attended one.

                Hi,
                I've ran a back link check and discovered a good back link to a site which then gets redirected back to my company's website. I have a feeling that an old SEO agency has purchased a small website which has a decent link back from a relevant organisation with a high Domain authority and then redirects the domain to our website to get the link juice. What are your thought on this? Is this really bad practise and possibly damaging? Thanks, Jim

                Link Building | | JIMBO16
                0
              • MMAffiliate

                Backlinks from subdomain, can it hurt ranking?

                I just started doing an SEO audit and noticed I have 40,000 some odd back links from an OLD version of our site that has been moved to a subdomain. The back links are for articles that already exist on our main site. I don't think Google is picking it up as duplicate content because that site isn't being crawled anymore. Could this hurt us SEO wise? I plan on removing the site, but how long after it's been removed should those back links disappear?

                Link Building | | MMAffiliate
                0
              • Zippy-Bungle

                How do we optimise links from a parent company to a subsidiary on different domains

                So we are the agent for an industrial company. They don't have a great website (well its pretty but doesn't rank) and have 5 product pages with a variety of products on each. We've taken those products and turned them into 50 pages with good on page optimisation. Now they've just agreed to give us a link on each page and I'm trying to figure out what the best text and link will be. As far as I can see there are three options Visit our agent for X region - sending to the home page If you are from X region you can request a sample of product group from our agent - sending to home page and product category page on our site If you are looking for X, Y, Z or P, Q, R in this region contact our agent there. - sending to home page and individual product pages The aim of this is to boost my page authority as 98% of the top 10 in SERPS have pages with zero authority and rely on the on page optimization and DA. Is this the best approach or are there other better ways of approaching the problem. It's worth noting that there is a total separation of control and ownership of the websites. I'm also starting to work with them to improve their on page optimisation and get links from their parent company to increase link juice

                Link Building | | Zippy-Bungle
                0
              • SamCUK

                Text Link vs image link?

                Which passes most link juice a text link or an image with the correct 'alt' attribute? Do the pass the same amount or is one more valuable than the other?

                Link Building | | SamCUK
                0
              • Store21

                Do links from my own subdomain to my main domain carry any value?

                I currently have a Wordpress blog set up on a subdomain i.e blog@ etc.  I wanted to know whether the links from the blog to my main site carry any value.

                Link Building | | Store21
                0
              • apolloseo

                Can link juice be passed in an iframe from domain A to domain B

                Need to give our web partners our booking form which must be loaded in an iframe calling back to our domain. Is it possible to pass any link juice from their domain loading our iframe back to us. Was thinking of a "Powered by" text link in the form footer, but I'm guessing the link needs to be outside the iframe. Would love to hear any thoughts or workarounds on this.

                Link Building | | apolloseo
                1

              Get started with Moz Pro!

              Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

              Start my free trial
              Products
              • Moz Pro
              • Moz Local
              • Moz API
              • Moz Data
              • STAT
              • Product Updates
              Moz Solutions
              • SMB Solutions
              • Agency Solutions
              • Enterprise Solutions
              Free SEO Tools
              • Domain Authority Checker
              • Link Explorer
              • Keyword Explorer
              • Competitive Research
              • Brand Authority Checker
              • Local Citation Checker
              • MozBar Extension
              • MozCast
              Resources
              • Blog
              • SEO Learning Center
              • Help Hub
              • Beginner's Guide to SEO
              • How-to Guides
              • Moz Academy
              • API Docs
              About Moz
              • About
              • Team
              • Careers
              • Contact
              Why Moz
              • Case Studies
              • Testimonials
              Get Involved
              • Become an Affiliate
              • MozCon
              • Webinars
              • Practical Marketer Series
              • MozPod
              Connect with us

              Contact the Help team

              Join our newsletter
              Moz logo
              © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
              • Accessibility
              • Terms of Use
              • Privacy

              Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.