Turning off a subdomain
-
Hi! I'm currently working with http://www.muchbetteradventures.com/. They have a previous version of the site, http://v1.muchbetteradventures.com, as sub domain on their site. I've noticed a whole bunch of indexing issues which I think are caused by this. The v1 site has several thousand pages and ranks organically for a number of terms, but the pages are not relevant for the business at this time. The main site has just over 100 pages. More than 28,400 urls are currently indexed.
We are considering turning off the v1 site and noindexing it. There are no real backlinks to it. The only worry is that by removing it, it will be seen as a massive drop in content. Rankings for the main site are currently quite poor, despite good content, a decent link profile and high domain authority.
Any thoughts would be much appreciated!
-
This is a fantastic answer, thank you.
-
Sounds like the indexing issues are causing some drops in ranking, even though good based content and domain authority are present.
Also, the .v1 site looks to be a testing platform?Could that be possible? I recently had an issue with an enterprise client site with very similar issues - with multiple testing versions of the domain up and indexable, causing massive amounts of duplicate content, indexed content and indexing issues.
I would plan to assess any content that could me migrated over to the main site from the .v1, and 301 redirect (and rel-canonical) the old .v1 site pages. Keep those in place for a few months to ensure that all the value of the 301 take effect.
By migrating some of this valuable content over (or all of it), just make sure you use both properly executed 301 redirects, and to take it a step further, apply the canonical tag on the .v1 pages with redirects to the exisiting and correct pages on the main domain. This way, we know for sure all any value is being passed.
SIDE NOTE: Having that many pages, indexed content doesn't mean the site will do well. In fact with this poor setup, the site's massive amount of page URL's might be causing more damage. Too many pages will bad page quality scores can and will bring a site down. Plan to migrate the pages or sections of the site to the main domain (that hold the most value), 301 and rel-canonical the other's, and remove the bad pages with little to no value that may be causing site wide damage in search indexing.
In dumping lots of content from the site - redirect those URL's (being dumped) to a helpful 404 page, which will try to salvage any user hitting the page, and redirecting them to back into sections of pages of the site. Also - make sure that page has a useful 'search' option that is clear to allow them to search for something they might have tried to land on through organic indexed content.
Finally, once you see indexing improve and redirect those pages automatically in the SERP's through reporting in weeks or months to come, then you can shut down the old .v1 pages without fear of losing any value you had.
It's a lengthy process and a big project, but the client (and site) should see huge value in the time you are taking to manage it. It will maintain value for the site in the long run and help build a better platform going forward.
Cheers!
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
-
How Can A SubDomain Out Perform A Root Domain?
Hi guys! I have a rather strange SEO question. It may not be that strange at all actually. If a site has a subdomain or a shopping cart that is on a subdomain through a third-party shopping cart provider, can the third party shopping cart transfer value to the subdomain causing the subdomain to have greater domain authority than the main site or root domain? Another question, this subdomain, up until yesterday, blocked google from crawling it with robots txt, however it has a much higher domain authority than the root domain. The root domain has a really low domain authority, despite not blocking google from crawling it. How is this possible? I hope these questions make sense. I am a little stumped & trying to figure out why the subdomain is out-performing the main site despite being hidden from search, if that's even the case. Please let me know if I have it all wrong..
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Prae0 -
Third Party Subdomain Slow Load Times Affect Our SERPs?
We have a third party subdomain that is not hosted on our server (smugmug.com gallery). It periodically has slow load times. The question is; does anybody know if the SERPs, or more specifically Google, would see that subdomain as our site? I want to gather insight into whether or not this might affect our results. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | leslieevarts0 -
Do low quality subdomains affect the ranking performance/quality of a root domain?
Hi, Late last year the company I work for launched two new websites that, at the time, we believed were completely separate from our main website. The two new websites were set up externally and were not well-planned from an SEO perspective (LOTS of duplicate content) - hence, they have struggled to rank on Google. Since the launch of the new websites we have also noticed that our main website (that previously ranked very well) has suffered a decline in visitation and search engine rank. We initially attributed this to a number of factors, including the state of the market, and ramped up our SEO efforts (seeing minor improvement). We have since realised that these two new websites have been set up as subdomains of our main website, with MOZ displaying the same domain authority and root domain backlink profile. My question is, do poor quality subdomains affect the ranking performance of a root domain? I have not yet managed to find a definitive answer. Please let me know if more information is required - I am quite new to the whole SEO concept. Thanks! Amy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | paulissai0 -
Subdomains and Forwarding Domains
Will someone who has experience chime in on these two issues below: Do sub-domain links which link back to the main site count as a new link from a new site; or would they be considered more of an internal link? Basically, would a sub-domain link to the main site be like a link from a unique website, or treated like any other internal link on the main site? I am speaking in terms of link juice. Should we 301 sub-domains to the main site internally? Thank you, we really appreciate any input you have!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DJ1230 -
Website, webshop and blog. Subfolders or subdomains?
Hello fellow mozzers, I've seen a lot of discussion and confusion about whether you should use subfolders or subdomains when you have a website, a blog and a webshop.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WesleySmits
Of course with subfolders the PageRank will be more effective since it's all in one domain. On the other hand subdomains will be a better user experience since you can focus on just the webshop or just the blog. Was wondering how you guys/girls think what would be the best way to handle this.0 -
Folder or subdomain for new e-commerce addition
Our main content site has 5K pieces of unique content all targeting our market. We are planning to add e-commerce as a source monetizing our audience. Should we place the new commerce platform within a subdirectory or subdomain? The layout we are considering is... shop name: Brand Name Market http://www.brandname.com/market/ http://market.brandname.com I am also considering something like: http://www.brandname.com/market/ aggregating product details and content from http://market.brandname.com/ with rel= back to the subdomain if possible.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ejovi0 -
Disavow Subdomain?
Hi all, I've been checking and it seems like there are only 2 options when disavowing links with Google's tool. Disavow the link: http://spam.example.com/stuff/content.htm Disavow the domain: domain: example.com What can I do if I want do disavow a subdomain? i.e. spam.site.com I'm also assuming that if I were to disavow the domain it would include all subdomains? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Carlos-R0 -
Subdirectory vs. Subdomain
I work for a large franchise organization that is weighing the pros and cons of using subdomains versus subdirectories for our franchisee locations. What are the pros and cons of each approach?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Glassdoctordfw0