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
-
Ranking gone for the original page and a shortened url ranks instead.
Hi Experts!!! Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year In Advance. I am been facing a issue with a few of my SERP results for "Singapore Visa" and related keyword. Until last to last Saturday i.e 16th December, I ranked for Singapore visa keyword with this url https://in.musafir.com/Visa/singapore-visa.aspx !!! But since 18th December I am ranking for "Singapore Visa" keyword with this url and message below it in place of description. Singapore visa - Musafir.com
Algorithm Updates | | sainath
go.musafir.com/Singapore-visa
No information is available for this page.
Learn why The go.musafir.com/Singapore-visa redirects to https://in.musafir.com/Visa/singapore-visa.aspx with some UTM parameters. The URL go.musafir.com/Singapore-visa is a shortened URL which was used for SMS marketing and all of a sudden Google has picked it in SERP instead of Singapore VIsa Landing Page. The Singapore visa Main page is not blocked by Robots.txt file. Please help me to resolve this.1 -
One of our top visited page (login page) missing primary keyword, does this makes ranking drop of our homepage for same keyword?
Hi all, So, I have removed the "primary keyword" from login page, which is most visited page on our website to avoid keywords in non related pages. I noticed our homepage ranking dropped for same "primary keyword". Visitors of this login page directly land without searching with "primary keyword". Then how removing it from such page drops our ranking? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Why different pages rank in different countries?
Hi all, I have been investigating on why our log-in page is ranking for primary keyword, but not our homepage. I can see now homepage is ranking from our second important country. I wonder why and what causes to rank different pages in different countries for same keyword. Again the statistics does not vary much between these countries. Thnaks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Falling Ranking
Hello until recently I was ranking quite well for a certain keyword and now week by week I am dropping in ranking. How do I fix this or find out how my competitors are getting higher than me Thanks Linda
Algorithm Updates | | invitationsforless0 -
Does it impact over ranking of any website if their same content being used some other external sources
Hi Moz & members, I just want to make sure over website www.1st-care.org , does it impact over ranking this website if the same content (of about us or home care services) being used some other external sources or local citations places. Do those published same content create any ranking drop issue with this website's and making its content strengthen week? . As I was on 9th position in Google.com before, now it has slipped to 29th position. WHY? is there content issue or anything else which i am not aware.
Algorithm Updates | | Futura
See the content used:
Home page content
About us page content Regards,
Teginder Ravi0 -
Can you compare overall search volumes year on year for specific terms?
Hi. I was wondering whether anyone knew if it is possible to compare search volumes for keywords year on year for absolute figures (so not using Insight). For example: How many people searched for computer mouses from 1.1.11 - 1.4.11 Compared to How many people searched for computer mouses from 1.1.12 - 1.4.12
Algorithm Updates | | SEOclient120 -
How did my Page Authority and Page Rank disappear?
I've hit a problem. A couple days ago my site's page authority was 51 and the PR was 3 and now they're 1 and 0 respectively. The developer did adjust some of the code in the site in the past couple days but that shouldn't have affected this. It was last cached by Google on the 5th. Can anyone offer some good advice? If it helps the page is www.duracard.com
Algorithm Updates | | Andrea.G0 -
Changing Wordpress Permalink Structure, 301s, and Possibility of Rank Loss?
I have to change the permalink structure in wordpress, as using /%postname%/ in conjunction with a couple thousand pages triggers verbose rewrite rules, which further triggers about 5,000 requests per page load. The permalink structure must change as wordpress development probably won't change this in the near future. Now, changing the permalink structure worries me quite a bit, as about 25% of my traffic is attributed to my blog posts -- the rest is covered through CMS-like-use of pages (75%). blog posts will change permalink/url structure, pages won't The website is very respected in my niche and has quite a few links going to most of my posts and pages, as well as the homepage I've noticed in the last year that anything I post starts ranking on page 1 of Google for very competitive kws in 1-3 days, often with top 3 rankings PR4 / decent Alexa / Moz ranks not too shabby either / quality content / decent social media linking (mainly Facebook) / no penalties I provided the factors as to not gloat, but rather to get the best answer from those who have fairly established websites and perhaps had to change their URLs and noticed some or no changes to their rankings. How long of a hit am I going to take / how much my posts might drop down in SERPs if I change the permalink structure, properly 301 them, and implement all changes in one swoop? Info for WordPress users Benefits of changing the permalink structure to /%post_id%/%postname%/ -- for example -- include: way faster load times, not having 5,000 requests per page load, avoiding verbose rewrite rules trigger, finally modify the site without worrying about crashing the website and using a local server to make changes on thousands of pages (the database backups, the ritual of changing the settings in the local database, changing the post/page, saving the local database, loading the locally saved db on live server, and crossing fingers and pray it works -- just takes so darn long.) Ahh..yes, huge time saver. ** this issue occurs when using WP as a CMS with several hundred pages + and using the /%postname%/ or /%category%//%postname%/ or /somethingstatic/%postname%/ -- IF USING the date based way /%year%/%postname%/ or /%post_id%/%postname%/ you should be fine.
Algorithm Updates | | pepsimoz0