Can "poor" subdomains drop PR of the root domain?
-
The page rank of my company's website has dropped from a 6 to a 4 over the past year or so. In that time, we implemented subdomains for development sites to show clients progress on their websites. I noticed that our "dev" sites are being indexed while in development and my question is, will Google drop pagerank of our root domain purely off of these "dev" subdomains?
Example - our site is www.oursite.com
Dev site - development1.oursite.com
I just began investigating the drop and this came to my mind yesterday but am not too sure what type of impact these non-credible subdomains will have on our root domain. Any thoughts?
-
I agree.
I have seen posts on SEOmoz and elsewhere throughout the SEO community that others are noticing drops in PR with no impact on traffic. I am not seeing a noticeable drop in traffic so the PR isn't concerning me too much but I am curious.
Have you noticed anything like this post Panda and do you think the panda update has any impact on the PR directly (I see how it would with poor content --> harder link building)? Again, I appreciate the feedback!
-
Another thought....
robots.txt shouldn't be used much but dev sites are a perfect example of where it should be used. Block crawlers from those dev sites.
-
Thank you, didn't even think of it in that sense (kind of have blinders on in this case and am looking for an easy answer, which probably doesn't exist). Appreciate the feedback!
-
Your subdomain is seen as a completely different site. Google does not assume your subdomain is related to your main site.
For example, if you visit wordpress.com you will see someone probably has the URL seo.wordpress.com. Whatever happens on that subdomain should not have any impact on any other subdomain or primary domain for wordpress.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
-
Can external links in a menu attract a penalty?
We have some instances of external links (i.e. pointing to another domain) in site menus. Although there are legitimate reasons (e.g. linking to a news archive kept on a separate domain) I understand this can be considered bad from a usability perspective. This begs the question - is this bad for SEO? With the recent panda changes we've seen certain issues which were previously "only" about usability attract SEO penalties, but I can't find any references to this example. Anyone have thoughts / experience?
Web Design | | SOS_Children0 -
Mobile subdomain?
Hi, We are setting up our mobile website. Should we use a Subdomain ie m.mysite.com or should we display different content under the same domain? We are worried that we are stripping out some content and images from the mobile version that could adversly affect our SEO. Thankyou
Web Design | | ryanryan0 -
B2C directory website adding B2B ecommerce sub-domain
Hey fellow Mozzers, Just got back from Mozcon and enjoyed getting to know a handful of you. I do in house SEO for a B2B wholesaler. We have a B2C website directory for homeowners to locate contractors to work on their home. On the site we have a products section which includes tech specs but not pricing. Our contractors have been asking us to add the ability to purchase their items online, so we are wanting to add a B2B sub-domain (store.domain.com) to our website for the contractors to purchase products online. We do not want consumers to be able to purchase the items and will have pricing behind a log in. I have a few questions that I'm hoping you might be able to answer: 1. What would be the best practice to not have duplicate content errors with products that are listed on both sites? Should we rel-canonical items shown on both domains or do something else?
Web Design | | AC_Pro
2. We are not against having the new site be crawled, but will Google be upset/ding rankings because pricing is behind a log-in? Are there certain best-practices for B2B ecommerce sites?
3. Do you know of any other sites that have done this/do you have any recommendations on how to best implement this?0 -
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 -
Blog on Subdomain or Subdirectory?
I was wondering what the SEO impact was of having a blog on a sub domain or sub directory. Which of the following is better? blog.companysite.com companysite.com/blog Personally, I like making the blog a more important part of the site so 2) is preferable; however, I don't know which one is best for SEO purposes. Do the search engines consider a subdomain as a different website? Can SEO authority be passed through each equally? What is your preference? Regards, Dino
Web Design | | Dino640 -
Should I nofollow my blog "read more" links?
I have a standard blog index page with entries formatted as such: Blog title Blog excerpt read more link The blog title is linked to the blog post (duh). The "read more" link is also linked to the same blog post, but I put a rel="nofollow" tag on that link because I don't want the SE's thinking "read more" is relevant anchor text. Now, is what I'm doing right? Won't having the read more link as nofollow result in some sort of conflict considering the blog title link is set to follow? Will a nofollow link have a cascading effect on any matching "follow" link? I've frequently read that "read more" should be nofollowed, but I've never once seen anyone address the conflict of having a follow and nofollow link on the same page pointing to the same link. Which one wins? Thanks.
Web Design | | bluekite770 -
How can the Web site designer and the SEO strategist work together peacefully?
The organization I work for has decided to re-design or re-develop the existing company Web site. My part in this project is to come up with new features to add to the site, as well as making the site SEO-friendly (copywriting, link-building, keyword research, etc.). I don’t know a thing about Web site design, coding, format, etc., and I guess I will have to work with a designer on this project. How would I go about finding a Web site designer? Should they have some SEO knowledge? How much designer, coding and site structure knowledge should I have? And how do we not infringe on one another as we work together? (Sorry so many questions.)
Web Design | | Obie0
