Are multiple domains for my website hurting my Google ranking?
-
Hello,
I currently have two domains showing up in google search:
These domains are currently ranked in the #2 and #3 spot, however my page is much more trafficked than the current #1 ranking. I am wondering if the fact that I have two domains competing for the #1 spot is hurting my search ranking. If so, what is the best way to remedy this issue and get back my #1 spot?
I'm rather new to SEO and teaching myself as I go, so I appreciate the feedback!
-
Here's the post on Search Engine Roundtable that discusses Google's comments about this not being a ranking change.
http://www.seroundtable.com/google-subdomains-webmaster-tools-13968.html
-
FYI, it looks like you're 302-redirecting the "shop." sub-domain to a deeper page on the root domain. This can be the worst of both worlds, in some cases. I'm not clear on the reasoning, but if "shop." is the e-commerce/store sub-domain, I'd rather see you 301-redirect it to "/shop" or something like that.
I realize you may have technical constraints that require the e-commerce site to be on a subdomain. There are ways around that, like a reverse proxy.
From a purely SEO standpoint, you can potentially rank 2 sub-domains (Google keeps changing their mind on that, it seems), but you're also potentially splitting the link-juice between those sub-domains. In most cases, I don't find the sub-domain approach to be a good long-term strategy. On the other hand, if you're ranking #2 and #3 and aren't seeing a downside, you've got to consider that data.
-
Google hasn't been clear on this - they stated later (I can't recall where, unfortunately) that this change was only an accounting change in Google Webmaster Tools. It didn't change how they actually pass link-juice across subdomains. I've found it can go both ways. Some subdomains fragment and get treated as separate domains, and others seem to get more tightly integrated. It depends a lot on the site, structure, duplication, etc.
-
Glad to see you also sorted out the non-www to www permanent redirect on shwoodshop.com. I would say that this is the quickest way to get site wide content duplication.
Now that you have these redirects put in place your site will be ok. Just make sure you don't delete the redirects!
-
Perfect! Thanks again for your input. I really appreciate your help!
-
These are 2 completely different pages so you should be fine now. As for the question "will it hurt if Google indexes both?", not at all. Actually it's every SEOs dream to get 2 pages from one site indexed on 1st page. Although, it's best practice to make sure that each page's content and meta tags are unique to each other. The reason is that sometimes these can also battle for serp position if they are closely alike in terms of content and meta tags. Just make sure there unique and focused on what that specific page has to offer. But then once again if your already have a keyword ranking on 1st page for both urls then its probably best to leave them as is and see what the result 301 redirect will accomplish for you. Allow for it to be re-indexed by Google again.
-
Thanks so much for your response! I went ahead and used the 301 redirects to direct everything to www.shwoodshop.com.
Now that everything is pointing to the same place, is there any harm in having both www.shwoodshop.com and www.shwoodshop.com/collections/all show up in a google search? These pages aren't competing now, correct?
According to the SEOmoz data, my page www.shwoodshop.com is much stronger than my competitors' when googling "wood sunglasses" so I just want to see if there are any obvious factors limiting my search strength.
Thanks again everyone!
-
Hi Taylor, As I had done some of the analysis for your both domains. If you use both domain then it will hurt your ranking according to google.
The analysis that I had done as below:
This is website that have Page rank =5
Google Indexing Backlinks=274
Secondly your shop.shwoodshop.com is redirect to http://shwoodshop.com/collections/all these page which have following factors:
This is website that have Page rank =4
Google Indexing Backlinks=274
One of the most important issue that I found that your website does not have 301 redirect error set up.
This would results that there are two separate domains i. e http://www.shwoodshop.com/ & http://shwoodshop.com/, so it is better to redirect it to the one & only single page according to their preferred domain.
Below there is a link which tells you that multiple domain are bad for SEOm& website too:
http://www.seo.com/blog/multiple-domains-seo/
&
http://blog.ineedhits.com/tips-advice/why-owning-multiple-domain-names-is-bad-for-seo-02539442.html
I hope that your query had been solved.
-
This use to be the case but recently Google now treats the sub domain as internal links see the changes here: http://searchengineland.com/new-google-classifies-subdomains-as-internal-links-within-webmaster-tools-91401
Overall I do not think this will be a problem having your sub domain and your main url rank for a term, that been said if both the sub domain and main website have unique content and are well linked it can be a good strategy.
I remember one website in a local insurance niche doing this well for a long time
-
Hello Taylor,
Is this a trick question? The reason I ask is because the shop.shwoodshop.com you are talking about already redirects to http://shwoodshop.com/collections/all. Also I notice an important factor that might help your site rank better. I recently suggested this to a client and within a few days his site moved to 1spot from 4th position. I am not guaranteeing it will work but its actually an issue that needs to be resolved anyhow. If your utilizing the SEOMOZ software then the first thing you will notice if running a campaign is a notification from the software stating the following:
We have detected that the domain www.shwoodshop.com and the domain shwoodshop.com both respond to web requests and do not redirect. Having two "twin" domains that both resolve forces them to battle for SERP positions, making your SEO efforts less effective.
I suggest that you fix this by either 301 redirecting the non www to www or vice versa. It all depends for which version you already have keywords ranking on. In other words if your already ranking for keywords on the www version then you will want to redirect the non www to it. If it's the non www that you are already ranking for then you will benefit from directing the www to the non www.
I hope that helps
-
As far as I know Google will treat content on a subdomain as a separate website, so chances are you're splitting the domain authority over the two websites.
As far as PageRank is concerned this is on a **per page basis (n**ot per site). Every page is ranked on its own individual merits.
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
-
Google June Core update massive drop in visibility and rank
Following Google Core update in June, I noticed that some websites has seen small improvements or stayed on same positions in SERPs, but our website received nearly 60% visibility drop. Now, after two weeks, some keywords shows "slight" improvement, while majority of keywords still sits on quite low places in searches. Even others big brands got hit after update, but some competitors didn't and overtook our positions. Anyone else noticed any patterns after update and can share some thoughts? Thank you.
Algorithm Updates | | Optimal_Strategies1 -
Training - How Google Crawls & Indexes Websites
Hi Does anyone know of any online training resources/webinars/training UK based that will cover the following for SEO: Why monitoring how search engines crawl and index content is important and how this can improve your SEO performance Using Google advanced operators to evaluate website indexation How to use log file data to gain insight into how search engines crawl and index content Techniques to control how search engines crawl and index content How search engines deal with JavaScript, common frameworks and SEO considerations I'm trying to develop my technical knowledge - I have always been more focused on content/KWD research/optimisation. Thank you
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
Ranking drop after image compression across website.
Hi all, Just checked my website in Google pagespeed insights and most of our website pages were required to reduce the images file size for better page loading. So I have compressed the images using https://compressor.io/ and https://tinypng.com/ and replaced the images. Then surprisingly ranking dropped even score improved for all pages with image optimisation. What would be the reason? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Google has indexed some of our old posts. What took so long and will we lose rank for their brevity?
Hi, We just had a few of our old blog posts indexed by Google. There are short formed posts, and I want to make sure we're not going to get dinged by Google for their length. Can you advise?https://www.policygenius.com/blog/guaranteed-issue
Algorithm Updates | | francoisdelame0 -
New Website Old Domain - Still Poor Rankings after 1 Year - Tagging & Content the culprit?
I've run a live wedding band in Boston for almost 30 years, that used to rank very well in organic search. I was hit by the Panda Updates August of 2014, and rankings literally vanished. I hired an SEO company to rectify the situation and create a new WordPress website -which launched January 15, 2015. Kept my old domain: www.shineband.com Rankings remained pretty much non-existent. I was then told that 10% of my links were bad. After lots of grunt work, I sent in a disavow request in early June via Google Wemaster Tools. It's now mid October, rankings have remained pretty much non-existent. Without much experience, I got Moz Pro to help take control of my own SEO and help identify some problems (over 60 pages of medium priority issues: title tag character length and meta description). Also some helpful reports by www.siteliner.com and www.feinternational.com both mentioned a Duplicate Content issue. I had old blog posts from a different domain (now 301 redirecting to the main site) migrated to my new website's internal blog, http://www.shineband.com/best-boston-wedding-band-blog/ as suggested by the SEO company I hired. It appears that by doing that -the the older blog posts show as pages in the back end of WordPress with the poor meta and tile issues AS WELL AS probably creating a primary reason for duplicate content issues (with links back to the site). Could this most likely be viewed as spamming or (unofficial) SEO penalty? As SEO companies far and wide daily try to persuade me to hire them to fix my ranking -can't say I trust much. My plan: put most of the old blog posts into the Trash, via WordPress -rather than try and optimize each page (over 60) adjusting tagging, titles and duplicate content. Nobody really reads a quick post from 2009... I believe this could be beneficial and that those pages are more hurtful than helpful. Is that a bad idea, not knowing if those pages carry much juice? Realize my domain authority not great. No grand expectations, but is this a good move? What would be my next step afterwards, some kind of resubmitting of the site, then? This has been painful, business has fallen, can't through more dough at this. THANK YOU!
Algorithm Updates | | Shineband1 -
Webpage is ranking on google.ie / google.co.uk but not google.com?
One of our site webpage appears to be found in the first few pages on google.ie / google.co.uk but not on google.com. Is there such a thing being penalised on a specific Google domain? Traffic is healthy despite this but I want to rank well for the page in google.com. Any ideas?
Algorithm Updates | | notnem0 -
Google Update?
We have a website that for the past several weeks has been very consistent at between 13,500 and 14,200 daily visits and this site received 15,600 last Thursday. THIS week, Monday is at 22,200, Tuesday is at 26,200, and at mid-day today (at about our traffic halfway point in the day) we're already at 14,000 today. This was a site that was bringing about 14,000 visits as of May 16th last year and dropped to 11,000 the following week. The traffic to this site this week is so far beyond statistical analysis that there must have been something that happened.
Algorithm Updates | | sourcelinemedia0