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They have very, very similar content. Essentially its the same save for some differences due to the region differences.

Ok to get a little more specific, our client is a telecommunications company but let me still refer to them as client.com. There exist a series of regional sites such as region1.client.com, region2.client.com etc which i guess function as subdomains of client.com.

Our client is specifically client.com not the regional versions so all of our SEO efforts go to ranking client.com

For a given generic, yet important keyword, say "internet," a page on region1.client.com will rank higher than client.com, or sometimes client.com will not rank at all (which may be because of Google's two page rule)

Given all of the information i mentioned above (client.com having a higher PA, more backlinks, etc.) I cannot figure out why this ranking is happening

Please let me know if that clarifies

Hi,

Thank you for your passionate response, however now im feeling as if "affiliate" was a touchy word. If client.com is who I am working SEO for, then north.client.com is a regional branch of the same company. However that subdomain outranks the mother tree on many keywords, and wouldn't it be better to navigate from the trunk to branches rather than directly to a branch and not be able to find your way back?

Im just trying to understand what other factors may be playing into the observed ranks when all of the metrics I get from Moz's (awesome) tools would suggest otherwise

Hi moz,

Im currently working with a client that has a number of affiliates that work under similar URLs but operate independently. For example I work with client.com and we are concerned about SEO and ranking competition from affilate1.client.com, affiliate2.client.com etc. As it stands right now, the domain client.com has a higher DA, the homepage has a higher PA, and the equity passing links, both internal and external are much higher as well as number of linking domains, yet for whatever reason for many of the keywords we attempt to optimize for, the smaller affiliates often rank higher.

The only things ive been able to pinpoint is that affiliate1.client.com has a spam score of 2 (rather than 4, for client.com) and the homepage has more total links. External anchor text is pretty branded across the web so i can't imagine it playing into keyword associations. Lastly the sites are constructed and appear very similar so basic on page keyword best practices have been taken care of.

We worry that because affiliate.client.com has been at the SEO game longer, in addition to Google only linking two sites from a domain per search, we will never be able to rank for the keywords we want to rank for.

How else can I go about a competitive analysis if I've taken into account everything said above?

Any help will be very appreciated.

I currently work as an SEO/SEO in training. Oftentimes I get projects that require me to look at well established websites of big brands, the kind one would assume put a lot of effort into their sites, and make SEO changes. Additionally they want "actionable" changes that can be made on the fly so content creation, and most linkbuilding, is usually out of the question. Does this limit me to just changing meta titles and descriptions? What if all that seems alright too?

So I work for a company that has a very successful affiliate that operates under a third level domain name such as "region.company.com". Their SEO practices are very good and they rank highly in keyword searches. However "company.com" does not even though it is not a subdomain. Even after optimizing the company.com's pages etc, the regional sub domain ranks much higher for keywords and the main company fails to rank at all. Is Google discounting the main company's page? Is it a matter of trust or time? or is it something else?

How can I get Google to prioritize the main company website rather than a lower level domain affiliate?