Subdomain and Domain Rankings
-
I have read here that domain names with keywords might add a boost to your search rank
For instance using a completely inane example monkey-fights.com might get a boost compared to mfl.com (monkey fighting league) when searching for "monkey fights"
There seems to be a hot debate as to how much bonus the first domain might get over the second, but leaving that aside for the moment.
Question 1.
Would monkey-fights.mfl.com get the same kind of bonus as a root domain bonus?
Question 2.
If the answer to 1 above was yes would a 301 redirect from the suddomain URL to root domain URL retain that bonus
I was just thinking on how hard it is to get root domains these days that are not either being squatted on etc. and if this might be a way to get the same bonus, or maybe subdomains are less bonus prone and so it would be a waste of time
Thanks
-
Actually, I saw a couple of those monkeys at a recent MMA event.... again, its a joke.
-
I would hope that domain/key-word would rate as well as key-word.com etc. , it seems like they should, but it also seems like a lot of peopel think they are not.
I kind of buy into the key-word.com being a bonus if for no other reason than it's a form of anchor text keywording on all incoming links. That makes sense to me, but that does not mean it's correct.
I have also read the subdomains do not inherit the same magic as root domains on google, but you know what they say about opinions, and if its primarily a function of the key word being included in all links then domain - subdomain should not matter .
I was hoping someone had tried an experiement, I guess we will see what others say.
As to monkey fighting, it's the direct replacement to MMA, so don't nock it until you have tried it! ( for the humorless readers this is a joke, I do not sponsor, participate in, or condone cruelty to animals )
-
Subdomains and Root domains are treated somewhat similarly. So, monkey-fights.mfl.com should receive a similar exact match domain "bonus." But, it really depends on what you are trying to accomplish with the exact match as to whether or not it is a good idea. SubDomains do not usually get the benefit (or at least not the full benefit) of the various ranking metrics acquired by the root domain.
If this would otherwise simply be a single page on your main site, you are better off in my opinion to go with mfl.com/monkey-fights.com. You get the benefit of the URL having a keyword match without giving up the acquired rank of the root domain. Also, many in SEO believe the amount of "bonus" afforded with an exact match domain is weakening.Lastly, my response in no way signifies my endorsement of Monkey Fights, I find the practice abhorrent.
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
-
Page ranked then disappeared
Recently there have been a a couple of pages form my website that ranked well, in top 5 for a couple of days then they disappear suddenly, they are not at all seen in google search results no matter how narrow I search for them. I checked my search console, there seems to be no issues with the page, but when I check google analytics, I do not get any data from that page since the day it disappeared, and it does not even show up on the 'active pages' section no matter I keep the url open in multiple computers.
Technical SEO | | JoelssonMedia
Has anyone else faced this issue? is there a solution to it?0 -
Lost ranking after domain switch
I recently migrated from https://whitefusemedia.com to https://whitefuse.com. The website URL structure and content remained the same and I followed all the best practice guidance regarding checks on the new domain and appropriate 301 redirects. I have seen traffic drop by about 50% and the traffic that is still coming through is mainly coming through links still listed by Google under the old domain (https://whitefusemedia.com). Is this normal? Should I expect to see this bounce back, or is there anything I can do now to regain the rankings?
Technical SEO | | wfm-uk0 -
Redirect effecting ranking?
I manage the SEO for several different regions which are also based on the same site e.g. example.com/au, example.com/us The /us site has pretty good rankings and changes I'm making to the site are having an impact. The /au site has really bad rankings, even though much of the content is the same. (The /uk site is also awful but we had an issue with 4,500 duplicate pages which were only resolved last week). Crawl diagnostics are only showing 1 major error for a 404 response, I'm receiving a domain authority of 43 and A grade page ranking for some of our targeted keywords. I could believe that this isn't necessarily going to get us a top 10 rating but I would have thought we would be in the top 50, especially for branded keywords. Could the lack of ranking be to do with how our domain redirects? If you go to example.com.au you are taken to the home page rather than being redirected to example.com/au. Once you head to an internal page the URL changes to example.com/au/page
Technical SEO | | ahyde0 -
Country Specific Domain
Guyz, we are new startups and have one very simple question regarding domain name. Should we use example.com or example.com.au ? Our Goal initially would be to target customer from Australia and gradually go global. So if we opt for .com.au we may have an edge in terms of local SEO in the beginning but lose out in the long run. What is the best way to tackle this? Thanks
Technical SEO | | WayneRooney0 -
URL redirecting domains
Hi Is there anything wrong/dangerous forwarding a clutch of domains to a sub page (landing page) on a different domain ? Say Brand X buys Brand Z and wants to close down Brand Z site but have Brand Z domain fwd to a landing page (explaining the company acquisition) on Brand X site. In addition Brand Z had a few related but unused domains forwarding to Brand Z doman & now also wants those fwd'd to the new landing page on brand X Since the reasons for doing this forwarding are legitimate company reasons relating to an acquisition i would have thought it should be ok but can anyone think of a reason why could be bad since i remember in the old days peeps used to redirect domains for seo reasons so worried fwd'ing a load of domains could cause some sort of negative flag with big G ? Also do domain redirects transfer the authority/juice from the old site/domain to the new destination page (new landing page on brand x site) similar to how a 301 redirect works ? Many Thanks Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
We just recently moved site domains, and I tried to set up a new campaign for the new root domain, but it threw an error?
It threw an error saying we cannot access the SERPs of this site? Any reason why? It is an https:// site instead of the http://, but even our older domain had an https://
Technical SEO | | josh1230 -
What to do with domain?
I bought a domain a couple months ago while having delusions of granger. The domain is PR2, has around 30 decent backlinks, and a small amount of traffic. It also has one of our keywords in the domain name. I'm thinking of 301 redirect to our homepage. Is there a downside to doing this? We really could use the additional traffic on our site.
Technical SEO | | dmac0 -
Multiple Domains, Same IP address, redirecting to preferred domain (301) -site is still indexed under wrong domains
Due to acquisitions over time and the merging of many microsites into one major site, we currently have 20+ TLD's pointing to the same IP address as our "preferred domain:" for our consolidated website http://goo.gl/gH33w. They are all set up as 301 redirects on apache - including both the www and non www versions. When we launched this consolidated website, (April 2010) we accidentally left the settings of our site open to accept any of our domains on the same IP. This was later fixed but unfortunately Google indexed our site under multiple of these URL's (ignoring the redirects) using the same content from our main website but swapping out the domain. We added some additional redirects on apache to redirect these individual pages pages indexed under the wrong domain to the same page under our main domain http://goo.gl/gH33w. This seemed to help resolve the issue and moved hundreds of pages off the index. However, in December of 2010 we made significant changes in our external dns for our ip addresses and now since December, we see pages indexed under these redirecting domains on the rise again. If you do a search query of : site:laboratoryid.com you will see a few hundred examples of pages indexed under the wrong domain. When you click on the link, it does redirect to the same page but under the preferred domain. So the redirect is working and has been confirmed as 301. But for some reason Google continues to crawl our site and index under this incorrect domains. Why is this? Is there a setting we are missing? These domain level and page level redirects should be decreasing the pages being indexed under the wrong domain but it appears it is doing the reverse. All of these old domains currently point to our production IP address where are preferred domain is also pointing. Could this be the issue? None of the pages indexed today are from the old version of these sites. They only seem to be the new content from the new site but not under the preferred domain. Any insight would be much appreciated because we have tried many things without success to get this resolved.
Technical SEO | | sboelter0