Subfolder cannibalization
-
Hello,
I looked through the forum but couldn't find an answer so here is my question:
A client have 2 subfolders that are selling the same things for example Furnitures, Office Furniture, Bedroom Furniture, etc.
The website looks like this :
But it's like 2 diferents brand, just that it sells the same kind of product.
The company wants to put evereything in subfolder1 and stop the subfolder2, which mean stop the second brand.
But the thing is that right now the subfolder2 have better positions in SEO than subfolder1 for most of the Keywords.
How could I make all the internet traffic goes from the subfolder2 to the subfolder1 ?
A 301 redirection could do the trick ? In addition of improving the SEO (Title, H1, Meta, etc) of the subfolder1 ?Thanks for your help.
-
Hello,
I'm getting back to you about a point in your answer :
"So you have to make clear that it is not 90% branded traffic , it should be more unbranded keywords. In this case - before I would do anything, I would try to figure out why subfolder 2 is ranking for these terms and why subfolder 1 is not."
I understood and one of the main Keywords is "muebles" (Furniture in english) but the pages are really similar.
Except for the basic "Title, Meta, H1, etc" are there others characteristics or feature I should look into ?Thank you
Maxime -
Hello Andreas,
Thank you for your answer.
Yes exactly, that's what I'm trying to do right now : Figure out why subfolder 2 is ranking better than subfolder 1.
Then I'll make the appropriate changes but because SEO can take a long time to update and if the company is in a hurry I wanted also like a backup plan to "accelerate" those changes if possible.So right now I'm analyzing the pages (Title, Meta, H1, H2, speed, etc) to look for keywords and see the differences.
If you have any more advice I'll be glad to read it.
Thank you.
-
Yep that would do it, but it is a little bit tricky with the brands. You know an "adidas predator" page will never rank for "nike air max" but both ar shoes.
So you have to make clear that it is not 90% branded traffic , it should be more unbranded keywords. In this case - before I would do anything, I would try to figure out why subfolder 2 is ranking for these terms and why subfolder 1 is not.
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
-
Hubspot (Primary CMS) and WordPress Blog on Subfolder?
We are thinking about transitioning a WordPress blog from a subdomain to subfolder on our main root domain that is run on Hubspot. Is there anything that we need to be aware of? In my mind, it should be a simply as creating the WordPress instance on a subfolder and then importing everything in and then setting up 301 redirects. Has anyone done this before? I ask because our product managers would like to continue to update their blogs within the WordPress environment rather than transition over to Hubspot. Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | s1jkirkpatrick0 -
SEO Question re: Keyword Cannibalization
I know about Keyword Cannibalization, so I understand why it's generally a problem. If you have multiple versions of the same page, Google has to "guess" which one to display (as I understand it, unless you have a SUPER influential page you won't get both pages showing up on the SERP). To explain why I'm not sure if this applies to our page, we have a blog that we write about employment law issues on. So we might have 20 blog posts over the past year that all talk about recent pregnancy discrimination lawsuits employers might be interested in. Now, searching the Google Keyword tools, there aren't even close to 20 different focus keywords that would make any sense. "Pregnancy Discrimination lawsuit" is niche enough for us to be competitive, but anything more specific than that simply has very little search activity. My suggestion is to just optimize all of them for "pregnancy discrimination lawsuit". My understand of how Panda works is that if the content is different on each page (and it is!) then it will only display what it guesses is the most relevant "NLRB" post, but any link juice sent to the other 19 "NLRB" posts would still boost the relevancy for whatever post Google chooses. And it wouldn't get dinged as keyword stuffing because it's clearly not just the same page repeated over and over. I've found quite a few articles on Keyword Cannibalization but many are pre-Panda. I was CERTAIN I'd seen a post that explained my idea is a totally viable and good one, but of course now I can't find it. So before I go full steam ahead with this strategy I just want to make sure there's nothing I'm missing. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CEDRSolutions0 -
Subdomain or subfolder for each country
Hi all I have a great .com domain but the cctlds are not available so I plan on using the .com for all the countries and languages. What is the best approach for SEO: subdomains like wikipedia does (de.greatdomain.com) or subfolders (greatdomain.com/de)? I know this question comes up frequently on other websites but I would like to hear the Moz forum.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndersDK0 -
URL categorization / subfolders
Hi Mozzers, We're currently in the process of a website redesign with new CMS and have the opportunity to change URL and structure. I would love some opinions as to what the best practise will be. A quick prerequisite, the website is entirely about France. French property, living, holidays, forum - everything. Therefore, we're unsure of the usage of the word France/French. Presently, we're running Classic ASP which allows for one subfolder then dynamic article ID. In my examples, I will take our activity holidays URL. At present this is /france-activity-holidays/DisplayArticle.asp?ID=12345. We know that DisplayArticle.asp?ID=12345 will simply become [article-title], however, its the preceding subfolders I would like some help with. Here are our thoughts on the options available. Can you please vote as to which you think is the best? /france-activity-holidays/ (one subfolder per category, as at present) /france/holidays/activity/ (always have a first subfolder with the word france) /holidays-to-france/activity-holidays/ (france in the primary subfolder) /holidays/activity-holidays-france/ (france in the secondary subfolder) /holidays/activity/ (because the whole website is about France, it is redundant to have /france/) /French-holidays/activity/ My gut feeling is either number 2 or 5. Concise, good for UX, OK for SEO. However, there is very little information around that is relevant to our sector. Thanks in advance! Matt
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Horizon0 -
How to resolve duplicate content issues when using Geo-targeted Subfolders to seperate US and CAN
A client of mine is about to launch into the USA market (currently only operating in Canada) and they are trying to find the best way to geo-target. We recommended they go with the geo-targeted subfolder approach (___.com and ___.com/ca). I'm looking for any ways to assist in not getting these pages flagged for duplicate content. Your help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jyoung2220 -
Subdomain blog vs. subfolder blog in 2013
So I've read the posts here: http://moz.com/community/q/subdomain-blog-vs-subfolder-blog-in-2013 and many others, Matt Cutts video, etc. Does anyone have direct experience that its still best practice to use the sub folder? (hopefully a moz employee can chime in?) I have a client looking to use hubspot. They are preaching with the Matt Cutts video. I'm in charge of SEO / marketing and am at odds with them now. I'd like to present the client with more info than "in my experience in the past I've seen subdirectories work." Any help? Articles? etc?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | no6thgear0 -
Subdomains and SEO - Should we redirect to subfolder?
A new client has mainsite.com and a large numer of city specific sub domains i.e. albany.mainsite.com. I think that these subdomains would actually work better as subfolders i.e mainsite.com/albany rather than albany.mainsite.com. The majority of links on the subdomains link to the main site anyway i.e. mainsite.com/contactus rather than albany.mainsite.com/contactus. Having mostly main domain links on a subdomain doesnt seem like clever link architecture to me and maybe even spammy. Im not overly familiar with redirecting subdomains to subfolders. If we go the route of 301'ing subdomains to subfolders any advice/warnings?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndyMacLean0 -
Subdomains vs. Subfolders for unique categories & topics
Hello, We are in the process of redesigning and migrating 5 previously separate websites (all different niche topics, including dining, entertainment, retail, real estate, etc.) under one umbrella site for the property in which they exist. From the property homepage, you will now be able to access all of the individual category sites within. As each niche microsite will be focused on a different topic, I am wondering whether it is best for SEO that we use subdomains such as category.mainsite.com or subfolders mainsite.com/category. I have seen it done both ways on large corporate sites (ie: Ikea uses subdomains for different country sites, and Apple uses subfolders), so I am wondering what makes the most sense for this particular umbrella site. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks, Melissa
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | grapevinemktg0