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?
-
So there were no external links pointing to the subdomain admin.site.com ? If that's the case you could probably just noindex/nofollow the thing or let it 404. You could write an .htaccess rule to rewrite the domain name, but it's actually probably not worth it now that I think about it. The exception, of course, is if the subdomain had external links pointed to it.
-
Hi there,
Thanks for your reply. I'm not sure how feasible it is to redirect all of those urls. I know I could use regex but I just terminated the server that admin.site.com lived on so I can't access a robots.txt file anymore. Could I simply do a generic redirect admin.site.com -> site.com?
The subdomain was the same site and domain.
Thanks.
-
Okay, so the situation here is a little unclear, but the solution should be pretty straightforward.
If the admin.site.com was different from the original site domain, simply noindex/nofollow all of the pages on that domain. I recommend this over a robots.txt rule because it will actually remove them from the index. You can add a disallow all rule in robots.txt later once the site is completely noindexed.
If the admin.site.com was the same domain, I'd recommend redirecting all of those pages to the new URLs again and then launching a noindex/nofollow version blocked with robots.txt, though I'm not sure why it needs to exist for reference. If the subdomain was different from the old site you could also probably just noindex/nofollow all of it without the redirect. It's not best practice, but it's not that big a deal.
Hope this helps to answer.
-
If you took website down, you don't have to really do anything. Go to search console, do fetch as google on old admin subdomain, so google understands that it's not there anymore, and then just wait. Google will take those backlinks down.
-
The other thing I should note is that these site links do not show in Google when searching for the topic. I'm only seeing reported back links because the admin.site.com subdomain was blocked from Google crawling it for search results. Not sure if that makes a difference.
-
It says I can only demote 100 links, I need to demote upwards of 40,000 since the admin.site.com basically mirrored the actual site.
Now I'm a little confused.
I took the old site down, so I can use a robots.txt file there anymore.
So how can I disallow the entire admin subdomain and stop reporting back links?
-
I see. Read my response below and just use meta robots. it will help you out.
If you want to deindex those backlinks, you also can look into Google Search Console's demoting tool, but i don't think it's necessary.
-
Don't do that, disallow in robots.txt will NOT resolve indexing issue! What you need to use is meta robots. Noindex, nofollow. Watch this WBF on this subject:
-
Thanks
-
Hi there. Thanks for your response.
The pages exist on the new site, but the subdomain should have never been indexed. I noticed the back links in Google Console initially then confirmed with SEO Power Suite.
Basically we had site.com, then created a brand new site and migrated content over to newsite.com with 301 redirects from the old site. Then we wanted to keep the old site up for reference so we put it at admin.site.com. That is where all the 40,000 back links were coming from, admin.site.com, the old site.
There is no reason for us to redirect admin.site.com since the original articles were properly redirected. I guess however some how when the old site was taken down, Google must have indexed it still at the subdomain and counted those as backlinks.
-
Just make sure you add a robots.txt to the subdomain with
User-agent: * Disallow: / Or if the old site is not needed anymore, redirect the subdomain to your main domain and remove the site.
-
Hi there.
So, all the pages, from which those backlinks are coming from are non-existent anymore? have they been redirected? do they return 404s? Also, how did you find them? in Google Search Console or another tool?
So, if you found it in Google Search Console, and the original pages indeed have been removed and properly redirected, then it's just time delay by GSC. Otherwise (if those pages are crawlable), you should fix it.
Hope this makes sense.
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
-
Page not Ranking I feel helpless!
Hi there 🙂 I have been working at SEO for quite some time and I am such a noob. I have even done an online course. I am at my wits end. My website is https://www.urbani.com.au. I changed to https about 1 month ago. I want to rank for "outdoor furniture perth". Recently my homepage has stopped ranking for this keyword, and a useless blog page started ranking instead (www.urbani.com.au/tag/outdoor-furniture-perth/), on page 5 of google. I got rid of that page and redirected it to my homepage. Do you know what the problem is? Why won't google rank my homepage for "outdoor furniture perth"? It is ranking for "outdoor wicker furniture perth", but for "outdoor furniture perth" it has disappeared from the face of this earth. Thank you so much, if I can get help for this it would save my business! Whitney
Link Building | | vhitnah0 -
I earned some high-quality backlinks, but the target page's ranking is not improving. Why?
Within the last three months, I acquired five .EDU backlinks and two editorial links to a page ranking for a competitive keyword. After the first few links came through, the page jumped from #15 to #7. It stayed there with minor fluctuations for a couple weeks. I earned a couple more good links, and the page fell as far as #44. It has recovered a bit then, but has not returned to the first page. It is worth noting that the .EDU links were achieved by sponsoring university programs. Could Google possibly be recognizing this as a link scheme? Are the links being earned too quickly? I don't believe it could be either, as the links reside on high quality, trustworthy sites and there wasn't a sudden major influx of them. Thank you for your insight! Also, I think my username tricked Moz into thinking I'm a staffer. Not the case!
Link Building | | StevenLevine0 -
My Backlinks become 404s
if pages linking to my website went deleted (become 404 pages ) ... Do they affect my website in google ranking ? Thank you and sorry for my bad english
Link Building | | simobens0 -
How Is It Possible That I Rank O Above Large Competitors?
Hello! Ive noticed that on some terms I am ranking above my competitors who are much larger, older, and have many more links. How is this possible? Thx!
Link Building | | TP_Marketing0 -
Rankings unchanged
I have been working away on my site for almost a month now, following all the advice I have gotten here and things seem to be going great. I have built a pretty large 400+ number of backlinks from blog posts, press releases, forum posts etc. Everything is very nice and white hat, really almost nothing spammy at all, maybe a couple of blog comments that I shouldn't have made but nothing in the big scheme of things. The problem is that my position in SERP has not changed at all. Its strange my on page SEO got me to the first page of all my keywords but from there I have not moved a bit. I am local service site and I am still waiting for my pin from google places (third try) and I know that will have a huge effect on my main city. I also have landing pages in 3 other small local cities though and those haven't budged a bit either. I just wanted to see what people here had to say, possibly I am just not patient enough? it has been probably 1.5 weeks since my links really started to index and show up in webmaster tools.
Link Building | | ayetti1 -
Building backlinks for a newspaper site?
Anyone have tips on building links to a newspaper site? I am looking for a strategy to create links to a news site beyond building one link at a time. We have so much content that is constantly updated that it would be impossible to do this one page at a time.
Link Building | | BostonWright0 -
What Are the Best Practices for Ranking for Synonyms?
This topic has me entirely confused, and unsure if we should keep a website focused on one keyword group, and using synonym contextual links to rank it for other keyword synonyms. We simply have not seen enough data or run enough tests to find our answer, and wanted to reach out to the community to see if anyone has. I have seen Google rank a synonym to my search query on the first page, and is why we are confused. Let's use an example: We'll use "Industry" as the main keyword for our page. "Company" or "Companies" is viewed as a synonym by Google of this keyword. When we query "Industry", "Company" and "Companies" are also found in bold. 1.) Is it best practice to also create a unique page targeting synonyms? Our thinking is that it would be best to try and target exactly what the user is looking for rather than having a synonym to their search for better conversions, but as mentioned above we feel it's best to hit exactly what they query because that's their way of thinking. That they're looking for that exact match. 2.) Have the page "Industry", but do some link building using contextual links "Company" or "Companies" pointing back at our "Industry" page. Would this help rank our "Industry" page for "Company" or "Companies" even though the main page is "Industry"? Just not sure we want to do this as the reasoning explained in #1. Thanks for your help!
Link Building | | cyberlicious0 -
Can You Recommend A Company Who Can Deliver Effective Link Bait Campaigns
I am looking for some recommendations on legitimate companies who can plan and execute an effective link bait campaign. Particularly I am looking for companies who have experience in producing infographics and distributing them for links. Thanks
Link Building | | SmarterSEO1