3 Subdomains - Can their authority or ranking affect each other?
-
HI,
We have 3 different subdomains that target completely different industries.
a.example.com - school reviews
b.example.com - healthcare reviews
c.example.com - car reviewsQ1: If any of the above subdomains gets demoted or penalized by Google would that affect the other subdomains?
Q2: Moving forward with all the new changes in SEO, penalties, etc; would it be wise to utilize 3 subdomains for different industries or should we consider getting separate domains?
-
Thank you all for your response.
-
I have a different opinion based on my extensive experience working with subdomains. The big advantage to working with subdomains, is that they all benefit from the Domain Authority of the root url.
If you owned tacobell.com (with a DA of 80) and decided to create a web site on a subdomain for each location like tambabay.tacobell.com, that subdomain would benefit immediately from the root.
In my experience is the same is true for penalties, regardless of how the subdomains are linked, if in the example above, tacobell.com begins the spammiest seo campaign of all time, tampabay.tacobell.com absolutely will incur some, if not all of the wrath.
-
I agree with Chris, it depends on how "closely connected" your subdomains are. If you are sharing a lot of links in between the subdomains, then its likely that all the sites will be affected once detected by Google. However, do note that Google treats subdomain separately. This means that if you ensure the content in each of your subdomain is unique and perform different linking activities on them, it shouldn't be an issue.
On top of SEO concerns, if you are aiming to establish a review community under a common brand name, it would certainly be a good idea to use subdomains. For example, if a visitor looking for car reviews is impressed with your car review site, it is likely that he/she will look for healthcare reviews from your healthcare review site. One good example of this is Tutsplus, which has several subdomains under the giant umbrella of web development.
-
Daniel,
If you are linking to any large degree between the sites, or if the sites share a lot of links in their back link profiles, are part of joint manipulation effort such as link networks or link wheels they could all get penalized at the same time or the penalization of one could lead to the penalization of another. If they share a link from a single strong site that gets penalized and they loose the value of that link, all three could loose domain authority.
But if their linking activities are completely separate and above board, they should be fine residing on subdomians.
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
-
Should I target low competition related keywords to rank my main keyword?
Hi everyone, I created a product review based blog about finding the best outdoor basketball but it's MOZ keyword difficulty is increasing drastically. I'm finding it difficult to rank. Is it a good practice to target low competition related keywords to rank the main keyword?
Algorithm Updates | | rosie16
Please advise, Thank you!1 -
Ranking dropped with no page changes
My rank for a keyword went from ranking #1 to #22. The page grade for this keyword is A, there was no site structure changes. The only thing I can see is that tumblr and reddit and other sources are now listed for this keyword and it's difficulty went from the mid-low teens to 28%. However, even given that, I do not a see a reason for this keyword alone to fall so far. It was giving us a ton of traffic, in fact, most of our organic search results came from this term for nearly two months. And 2 weeks ago for no reason, we were pushed to page 3. Has anyone else had similar experiences how do you counter it, and what can we do?
Algorithm Updates | | mozmemberanon0 -
Why a terrible website ranks number 1??
Hi, I'm an SEO newbie. A couple of months ago I launched a new E-Commerce website for my client : http://www.corporategiftsshop.co.za The site has over 1000 pages indexed in Google. I've done some link building and on-page SEO for the keyword terms : corporate gifts
Algorithm Updates | | MarnusW
promotional items
promotional gifts Currently the website ranks number 31 for "Corporate Gifts" in Google.co.za What I cannot comprehend, is that the site which ranks number 1 is simply shocking! http://www.corporategifts.co.za/ It is a single, static webpage with all links pointing to another website : http://www.promogifts.co.za It has 1 back link and a page rank of zero, yet it still ranks number 1? Can anyone give me a reason or some insight into this as it has me stumped.. Some of the other sites in the top 5 are also poor, yet they still rank high. Our site has a Page rank of 5 and 67 unique domains which links to it ( according to our webmaster tools ) yet it still only manages a 31 ranking?? Any advise would be greatly appreciated as I need to make sense of this, otherwise hang up my SEO gloves.. Regards, Marnus.1 -
Why is my domain URL ranking instead of individual pages?
Hello, Google is ranking my homepage for many keywords instead of showing the various sites pages? Any idea why? Thanks, David
Algorithm Updates | | DavidSpivac0 -
Google.uk rankings plummet, .com improves. What to do?
Hey Guys, Seems so much has changed with international SEO I'm not sure what to do with our site. We have a huge site with many country level landing pages that perform very well on google.com searches (IE; keyword + Jamaica) etc. We are not using a .co.uk version of our site and now our rankings have plummeted in the UK. Should we just make a .co.uk with similar (or the exact same content) or is there some newer strategy to follow?
Algorithm Updates | | iAnalyst.com0 -
Has anyone notice their website page rankings in Bing and Yahoo slipping lately?
My websites for the most part rank higher in Yahoo and Bing than in Google. Now, ranking within those search engines (Yahoo/Bing) are settling in to where my websites rank in Google. Any thoughts? Anyone else experiencing this? Thank you for your time!
Algorithm Updates | | APICDA0 -
Can anyone explain these changes to our Titles in the SERPS?
Hi there, We've been doing well in the SERPS over the past few weeks. Our previous meta title was displayed as: "Hunter Original Tall - Buy Original Tall Online Here" However, recently we've seen the title in the SERP switch over to: "Hunter Original Tall - Cloggs.co.uk" This has occurred on several of our product pages which display a particular style of a certain brand. So for example: "Ugg Bailey Button - Cloggs.co.uk" Has anyone else experienced these changes or can explain why this may have happened?
Algorithm Updates | | NigelJ
There is not change to the source code and our Titles have proven to have good click through rates in the past. Any ideas mozzers?0 -
TOP 3-5 SEO Blogs
I am wondering if you can help me start with the top three to five SEO blogs. I have been really enjoying and getting into learning more about SEO and it is becoming really fun as it becomes less overwhelming. A few days ago there was a question about great SEO blogs. And everyone provided a great list. I bookmarked all of them, but in reality I won't be able to go through them all and really get what is being presented. My question is what would be the best 3-5 to start with? Eventually I will go through them all but experience can help me get on the right track. Thanks for the suggestions
Algorithm Updates | | fertilityhealth0