UTM tracking on a mapped subdomain, is it OK? (DA bonus question)
-
Hi,
This is a technical question. OK, two technical questions. Please bear with me and I'll do my best to explain...
We have a WordPress blog (business account, hosted by WordPress). We use it to blog and send traffic to our separate e-commerce site. We use UTM tracking to see which blog posts perform best.
Our e-commerce site has a high domain authority. Our blog, not so much.
In an effort to increase the domain authority of the blog we have mapped a subdomain of the e-commerce site to the Wordpress blog (still hosted by WordPress).
Q1. Will this actually raise the blog's DA?
If the blog does get a DA boost, I guess it'll be because Google now sees it as part of a powerful domain.
But if it is technically part of the powerful domain...
Q2. Should we remove the UTM parameters from the blog?
I've read that you should never use UTM on internal links because it messes with your Google Analytics data. But I'm unsure if links on a mapped subdomain count as 'internal links'.
Any help would be gratefully appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
J
-
Hi again,
I have just checked and you have a redirect chain which is not good.
Status Code URL IP Page Type Redirect Type Redirect URL
301 http://blog.example.com/ server_redirect permanent https://blog.humankinetics.com/
301 https://blog.example.com/ server_redirect permanent https://humankinetics.me/
200 https://example.com/ normal none noneI have removed any identifying data but trust me it's from your link.
I would work to get the 301 pointing straight from both the first two links to the third so there is no extra step in the middle required.
and now back to your original questions.
Did the links I provided earlier help with the UTM question?
As for adding DA/PA to your blog have you seen any increase since you made the change? You may get some from it but as I said earlier I don't think you will get much. Monitoring is the only way you will know for sure.
-
Hi JabeKay,
Apologies for the delay in replying its been a busy day.
I need to have a read over the info you have provided and digest it, I will then come back with what I can to help.
By the way, you may want to check the link at the bottom of your last post
Steve
-
Does it show the new URL in the browser or the original URL when the page has stopped loading?
Yes, once the page has loaded it displays the old URL.
Perhaps this exchange from our tech team might shed some more light.
On 5/15/19, at 8:21 am, James wrote:
Mike, We need to create and register a subdomain named blog.example.comPer the instructions, we will need to our NS records to network solutions. The current site that blog will map to is https://example.me/ in which is hosted via wordpress in which that is going to stay there as well as the name. The instructions for non-wordpress domain registrar customers is linked below:
https://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/map-subdomain/#adding-a-mapping-subscription
On 5/15/19, at 12:18 pm, Mike wrote:
The records for blog.humankinetics.com have been added to internal and external DNS. Someone still needs to add a "mapping subscription" to the Wordpress site to enable it.I believe I added the "mapping subscription."
-
I'm not sure but if you type the newly created subdomain URL into a browser it redirects to the WordPress blog at its usual address.
Does it show the new URL in the browser or the original URL when the page has stopped loading?
I don't think so. Wouldn't that create some kind of loop where the new subdomain redirects to the usual blog URL then that redirects back to the new subdomain?
It depends on which method you have used. If you have done a DNS mapping for the new subdomain then redirecting the old URLs will be fine in theory. If when you load the page you see the original URL then there is no need to do this. (see my earlier post for info on things to be aware of when redirecting).
If you are not sure if it will create a loop test it on one URL that is nested deep in your site and has little to no traffic.
It all depends on the setup that has been put in place. If you can find out the answer to that then I can give you a clearer answer.
I can't see much point in redirecting the new subdomain to the original URL though, I wouldn't have thought much link juice would be passed via this method. I could be wrong it's not a situation I have found myself in. I would definitely advocate lots of monitoring and testing to see the results.
-
Thanks again,
When you say mapping I assume you mean via DNS so that the subdomain for the blog is pointing straight to the host server and you are not redirecting?
I'm not sure but if you type the newly created subdomain URL into a browser it redirects to the WordPress blog at its usual address.
If you have done this have you redirected the old domain for the blog to the new subdomain with 301? if not you need to do this to preserve what you can of the link juice.
I don't think so. Wouldn't that create some kind of loop where the new subdomain redirects to the usual blog URL then that redirects back to the new subdomain?
-
I haven't tried it but I am pretty sure you can run Shopify and WordPress on the same domain. You may have to use subfolders but that would be better than a separate domain.
If you can't run the two together, running it on a subdomain is ok, but it will probably be treated as two different domains by Google. When you say mapping I assume you mean via DNS so that the subdomain for the blog is pointing straight to the host server and you are not redirecting?
If you have done this have you redirected the old domain for the blog to the new subdomain with 301? if not you need to do this to preserve what you can of the link juice.
See my responses here for more on large redirects https://moz.com/community/q/301-redirects-large-htaccess-file-question
I haven't really looked at UTMs on internal pages, however, subdomains are normally considered separate domains as far as I am aware.
These links may help
https://moz.com/community/q/subdomains-or-separate-domains-for-dealers
https://chrisberkley.com/blog/subdomains-for-seo/
https://www.analyticsmania.com/post/transfer-utm-parameters-google-tag-manager/
https://penguinwp.com/common-utm-campaign-url-tracking-mistakes-to-avoid/
-
Thanks Steve,
What you recommend would be ideal but sadly this is not an option.
The e-commerce site is on the Shopify platform and the blogging functionality is not as good as WordPress.
Also, the native Shopify blogging feature is currently being used to host book excerpts.
Finally, our tech team has said that this is the only configuration they will green light.
J
-
Hi JabeKay,
Is there a reason the blog is on a different domain?
It seems to me like you are working to build the strength of two separate domains when you could put all your efforts into one.
I would seriously consider moving the blog to the e-commerce site domain and 301 redirecting the old blog domain to the e-commerce domain.
This way new content is in the right place and building traffic for the place you want it.
If this is not an option let me know.
Steve
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
-
GA 4 Question
What differences are you typically seeing in Google Analytics 4 compared to UA? For one site I have, UA says there were 2,342 new users. GA4 says there were 1,899 new users for the same time period. Does that seem like a normal amount of difference between the two platforms?
Reporting & Analytics | | emilycarimus1 -
Question on structuring URLs in a Drupal CMS - Adverse SEO or Analytics impacts?
Hello Moz Community, We're building out a health system (think a bunch of hospitals and clinics etc.) website on Drupal for the first time. Nebraskamed.com is our domain. Because we're using nodes instead of pages, our URL structure can pretty much be whatever we think makes sense. Our proposal is to drop /blog/ and related terms from the URL structure, because it doesn't really mean anything to the user. Instead, we'd use the service line "cancer" for example, followed by the name of the blog post or document. Example: nebraskamed.com/cancer/10-bone-cancer-myths Do you see any red flags (perhaps with SEO or Analytics for example) to what I'm proposing? domain name/service line/blog-post-name If so, do you have a URL structure you advise?
Reporting & Analytics | | Patrick_at_Nebraska_Medicine1 -
UTM source errors in google search console
Dear Friends, I need help with UTM source and UTM medium errors. There are 300 such errors on my site which is affecting the site i think, The URL appended at the end is utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign= How do i resolve this? Please help me with it.Thanks ccEpFDn.png ccEpFDn.png
Reporting & Analytics | | marketing910 -
Possible penalty question - need expert help
hallo everyone, I am posting this question to the MOZ community, because I could not find any useful information or proper advice so far, even after consulting a few local SEO experts. I noticed from the end of september a steady and consistent decrease in visits (please see attached pdf) for my website https://bastabollette.it I lost so far almost 40%. Please consider that I have not changed my habits in blog posting lately, both in quantity and quality. I have not made any subtantial change on the website lately. I did a general audit of the site asking to an expert but apart from some generic suggestions (like: "work on increasing PR, add more quality backliks, use more no-follow links, fix broken links" - things I am currently going to fix anyway) I don't really understand the reason of the drop. Please also note the strange drop of 11/22/15 (see search console screenshot). Can you please help me? thank you. Selezione_018.jpg Selezione_019.jpg
Reporting & Analytics | | micvitale0 -
Weird Math in GA Ecommerce Tracking
Hi everybody. I've recently discovered that I have a problem with the ecommerce tracking on a client's website. The client sells concert tickets at an average price of $10 per ticket. The custom ecommerce platform they use is kind of unusual; the same product often has different SKUs, but not always. This isn't associated with different seats, etc. In fact, I don't yet know why they've set it up that way. The problem that I'm facing is this: the data in Analytics is calculating the "average price" of a SKU item as the total price. If, for example, the actual average price for a SKU item is $10 and four of those SKU items were sold, Analytics will tell me the average price is $40. This means that the total revenue for that SKU shows up as $40 x 4 = $160. Needless to say, this is enormously skewing the data. Here's a screenshot. Note, it's the same product: http://screencast.com/t/JyLQkb3jzz6s The total revenue for ticket sales is way off because of this, and I'm not sure if it's a problem with the ecommerce tracking code in Analytics, or something that the ecomm platform is doing. Have any of you experienced anything like this, and if so is it a fix in Analytics? Thank you!
Reporting & Analytics | | newwhy0 -
I want to track product click so how to create project object or how to pass project object ?
Hey, I am reading this post - https://developers.google.com/tag-manager/enhanced-ecommerce#product-clicksIn this there is function like given below - function(productObj) { dataLayer.push({ 'event': 'productClick', 'ecommerce': {.....................................................................................................................Now my developer asking how to create object? or how to pass product object? Like on page we have more than 50 products listed, so if any one clicks on any product from list then how will we know which product has been clicked?Hope you understand what i want to say? Regards,Mitesh
Reporting & Analytics | | bkmitesh0 -
'Search Queries Report' in Webmaster Tools Question
Hi, How much do you use the search queries report in webmaster tools to research current rankings/movements? It does look like a great tool but the data doesn't seem to be spot on. For example a keyword over a week might have flux in position so lets say 6.0 then 9.2 for 3 days then back to 6.0. But I check the serp's for this keyword everyday and didn't see any movement?!?! Is this a good tool for you?
Reporting & Analytics | | activitysuper0 -
Cover my tracks / two websites on the same Analytics
Hi, I've got 2 websites and I like one of them to make some links to the other one. These two sites are on the same Google Analytics account. They have been set up 3 month ago and they have some articles on them. I've heard that Google can see that those websites are related in my Analytics and use this information to give less power to the link I could make between them. What do think about it and what do you recommend me ? Shoud I closed the Analytics account ? Or down one of the website and rebuilt it whith a different domain / host / analytics ? The thing is if I delete one of the website i'll be force to republish the articles, because there are links on it, and they're part of a deal I've already made. Thank you
Reporting & Analytics | | Spleen0