Search traffic hit after switching magazine to subdomain
-
Hi there,
I'm fairly new at all of this and would appreciate any help with understanding why our website has taken a hit in traffic. We curate an online magazine, which was previously accessible through: forensicoutreach.com. It was receiving about 2,000+ unique visitors per day up until a week ago, when we changed a few things.
However, the magazine doesn't reflect what our business does, so we created a product-focused web presence on forensicoutreach.com, and moved the magazine (which everyone loved) to library.forensicoutreach.com (DA 37, PA 1).
We thought separating the properties was a good idea, but now I'm not so sure. Our traffic on library.forensicoutreach.com is 1,500 (so 500 less than usual!) and our main property has about 56 unique visits a day. It's pretty substantial.
A few questions:
1. If we move the library to forensicoutreach.com/library, will that make any difference?
2. Where did we go wrong here and how can we fix it?
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
-
Thanks -- this was indeed the issue. Appreciate your help.
-
Thanks very much for your response. I've changed it back to the subfolder setting and we've regained our lost traffic. Amazing!
-
If your audience is the same as the audience for your business, I'd highly advocate keeping this in a subfolder like /library/ rather than a subdomain.
If your audience is different, then I'm not certain why you're doing the magazine, so let's assume that's not the case.
You will see a drop in organic traffic by moving to a subdomain for the reasons covered in the Whiteboard Friday that Dmytro shared. Regardless of whether you leave it on the subdomain or the subfolder, you'll need to create proper 301 redirects as Eric mentioned.
Please let us know if you have questions on that process, but to clearly answer the question of "If we move the library to forensicoutreach.com/library, will that make any difference?", YES, we recommend doing that /library/ subfolder.
-
Whenever you change to a new subdomain, or you change domains, you'll need to tell Google that you're doing it. Here's what we recommend:
1. Set up 301 Permanent Redirects from the old URLs to the new URLs. This will forward/redirect users to the new location, including the search engine crawlers.
2. Verify the new location (the new subdomain) in Google Search Console and use the Change of Address Tool to tell Google that you've moved.
3. Update Google Analytics so that it reflects the new URL.
By verifying the site you'll see the traffic in the Google Search Console and Google will recognize that change faster if you use the Change of Address tool.
-
Hi,
I think what might be causing the traffic drop is the fact that you have moved your library to a submain as oppose to keeping it under the root domain.
Have a look at this whiteboard Friday. https://moz.com/blog/subdomains-vs-subfolders-rel-canonical-vs-301-how-to-structure-links-optimally-for-seo-whiteboard-friday
This should give you some heads up.
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
-
Spammy traffic
Hi guys! There has been an unusual amount of traffic to one particular page on our blog. Now that the business is slow, I had the time to look into it. Half of that traffic is coming from India and we are a Chicago based limo service. We 'll skip why that happens part for now.
Reporting & Analytics | | echo1
I let Hotjar record 100 session and upon reviewing them I have noticed a lot of sessions with no interaction, no mouse movement, no clicks; just scroll and exit. My question is related to implementing a type of verification (captcha) for that blog page to see if the bots / behavior changes.
Are there any downside in terms of in page SEO for this type of implementation?
What is good practice for something like this?0 -
Site property is verified for new version of search console, but same property is unverified in the old version
Hi all! This is a weird one that I've never encountered before. So basically, an admin granted me search console access as an "owner" to the site in search console, and everything worked fine. I inspected some URL's with the new tool and had access to everything. Then, when I realized I had to remove certain pages from the index it directed me to the old search console, as there's no tool for that yet in the new version. However, the old version doesn't even list the site under the "property" dropdown as either verified or unverified, and if I try to add it it makes me undergo the verification process, which fails (I also have analytics and GTM access, so verification shouldn't fail). Has anyone experienced something similar or have any ideas for a fix? Thanks so much for any help!
Reporting & Analytics | | TukTown1 -
Conflicting average position data from Google Search Console?
I'm looking at Google Search Console data in Google Analytics, specifically Average Position as given in the Landing Page report, and the same metric broken out by mobile and desktop in the Devices report. In the Landing Page report, I see an aggregated average position that's much higher/worse than an actual average of what is reported for mobile, desktop and tablet traffic under the Device reporting. For example: Mobile: 5 Desktop: 5 Tablet: 5 So the average still should be roughly 5, right? Why would the Landing Page then show an aggregate Average Position of 8? I wouldn't expect to see a precisely same average given that different device types have different proportions that could render differently when the buckets are combined, but this is a huge swing. In fact, the aggregate Average Position as given in the top level Devices report is closer to 5 than to the 8 shown in the Landing Pages report. (These aren't actual numbers, but are illustrative of what I'm seeing, by the way.) Unless I'm missing some vital difference in the way that Average Position is reporting for the Landing Page report versus the Device reports, it doesn't seem like this should be possible. What am I missing?
Reporting & Analytics | | BradsDeals0 -
What does 'Safari (in-app)' mean in Google Analytics browser traffic?
Hi, can anyone explain what 'Safari (in-app)' refers to in my browser sources? Also, it has a very high bounce rate - any ideas why?
Reporting & Analytics | | b4cab1 -
Track subdomains in the same analytics property/view
Hello to everyone, this is my first question (kind of a newbie here :-D). I have a website that spans over 4 subdomains + the main domain and I'd like to have a place where I can see the total page views, events and goal completions. Main domain is langhe.net, and subdomains are eventi.langhe.net, servizi.langhe.net, shop.langhe.net, about.langhe.net. The website is based on wordpress and I'm using google analytics for wordpress by yoast as analytics plugin. The configuration of the plugin is as follows: all the website have the same UA-XXXXXXXX code The Subdomain Traking field (setDomainName) is filled with .langhe.net Cross-Domain tracking is enabled Cross-Domain Primary Domain (setDomainName) is langhe.net Cross-Domain Tracking, Other Domains field is filled with: about.langhe.net, eventi.langhe.net, servizi.langhe.net, shop.langhe.net. In the GA property I've created an Advanced Custom Filter configured this way: Field A -> Extract A = hostname (.*) Field B -> Extract B = request URI (.*) Output To -> Constructor = request URI $A1$B1 Field A Required: yes Field B Required: No Override Output Field: yes Case Sensitive: no I was wondering it this is the best way of doing it, or if there are other "best practice" ways to obtain what I'm looking for (for example with this configuration it's become quite difficult to separate the traffic sources for each website). Thank you in advance 🙂
Reporting & Analytics | | Enrico_Cassinelli
Cheers!0 -
Will 301 redirects (Same Domain) show as referral traffic in Analytics?
For an eCommerce site we have 301'd legacy product pages to new product pages. Is all that traffic going to show up as referral traffic from our own domain in Google Analytics? If so, is there any way to preserve original source/medium info or will all the source/medium info be our own domain since there is a 301 redirect?
Reporting & Analytics | | bozzie3111 -
Having Issue with Site Search in Analytics
Hi Mozzers, We launched a website in October 2012 and have added in the settings(Google analytics) of that profile "Do Track Site Search" since we have a search box on the website. The site search report worked for 10 days and it was over(from end of december till beginning of January 2013). Since then I have been trying to understand this issue. I have added all the query search terms possible, but still not showing any signs of life. At this point I am not sure what to do? Some Help would be appreciated! Search URL= subdomain.example.com**/search/node/**.... Thanks! z93cGUZ.png
Reporting & Analytics | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
100% sudden drop in traffic
Hi Guys I've just had an awful fright as Google Analytics is saying my website http://www.clintonpower.com.au has dropped to nil traffic since the 14th September. I've checked Google webmaster tools and all is OK with no malware or Google blacklisting that I can see. Any ideas how I can find out what's happened? This is super scary because 99% of my business comes from Google. I really have no idea what to do next or how to investigate the problem. Is there a way I can submit a query to Google through webmaster tools? Thanks in advance! Clinton Google-traffic.png
Reporting & Analytics | | ClintonP0