Does Google do domain level topic modeling? If so, are off-site factors such as search traffic volume taken into account?
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80% of my site's organic traffic is coming through a resource that is only somewhat related.
Does Google think the main topic of my site is terms this resource targets thus bumping the terms I care about to a sub-topic level of sorts?
If this is the case, would putting the resource information into a sub-domain help to solve the problem?
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Yes i do, some will argue that each pages stands on its own, but relevancy plays a major part, you wan to be in a relevant link neighborhood, both external and internal
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Good point. It does have links. That's a tough one. How do I salvage the links...
I think I'm going to 301 everything to the home page and start the resource over on a sub-domain.
And just to be clear, you do believe having such a prominent irrelevant page on my site is hurting my ability to rank for the terms I want to...
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Yes it would, but when you say traffic, do you mean links, if you have links to those pages, yopu may want to replace them with more relevant content or maybe 301 them, dont waste the links, even if they are not relevant.
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The traffic doesn't convert so it's of very little use to me.
If I don't want to put the effort into trying to convert it, would moving it to a sub-domain solve my domain level topic modeling problem?
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I think you are correct in your thinking, but you also will lose traffic, i guess it depends on wether the traffiic is convertable, can you convert these vistors to your end goal?
If not then the traffic is off limited use, if so, then try harder to convert it, Maybe even try selling them what they want rather then what you have for sale. (assuming you are selling)
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