Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Ranking drop after sub domain to sub directory migration. Usual?
-
Hi all,
We had our help articles on sub-domain help.website.com. Then we moved it to sub directory website.com/help/. We expected ranking improvement of website.com as there is a wide saying of benefiting from sub domain to sub directory migration. We have noticed that ranking improvement of new sub directory pages (website.com/help/) but not for any main website pages (website.com). I presume that link juice from main website has benefited new sub directory pages but main website lost ranking due to the page rank dilution. Do you agree? Any ideas?
Thanks
-
Hmmmm - that is interesting then
I'd of done exactly what you've done. I take it you mean you're home page has dropped in rankings? Are the sub domains outranking it?
How's your internal link structure/navigation back to the home page.
As I say I don't think you've done anything wrong - A link building campaign to the home page might benefit you but even then I'd be tempted to ignore it and focus on the sub domains - ask yourself as a user - When was the last time you used a home page as a landing page as opposed to a page that served your specific request?
-
I can say the website got affected in between not benefited and suffered.
Main website pages are around 130 where new sub directory have almost 1000 pages. But we do have other sub domains and sub directories. Especially, we have blog as sub directory which have hundreds of pages.
-
If it's a sub directory and it's been migrated correctly and the old sub domain has been removed/redirected then yes it will be considered part of the new website.
It sounds like the sub directory has has benefited (albeit eventually) are you saying the main website a. hasn't benefited or b. actually suffered?
Whilst from an SEO standpoint the main site should have benefited as a whole from the new sub directory from a UX standpoint I probably would only expect the sub directories to massively change.
How big is the website? did the sub directories double the amount of content? Or just add a few pages - What you've done is right, from an SEO and UX perspective (in my opinion) but I think you might be hoping for too much from it.
There isn't always a silver bullet when it comes to rankings... just a lot of hard slog
-
Eventually new sub directory pages gained the ranking improvement, but not main site pages. I can say that the fall hasn't happened overnight. I actually expected to be performing better but main website didn't pick up as per the estimation. This is what concerns me more. And competitors have almost stable rankings over the period.
One confident answer I been expecting from you is, if the sub domain has been migrated to sub directory, Google will consider it as a pert of the website. So the traffic of the sub directory will fall into website. Then the visits of the new sub directory will benefit the website or not?
-
Has you're traffic and rankings actually dropped or remained static over that top?
Is that to the main site or the sub directory?
and don't forget - ranking factors aren't always down to what you've done. You could be doing everything fine but if you're competitors are doing something better you'll still be doing everything right and experience a drop.
-
Hi James,
Thanks for such response. You made it almost clear. But the migration to new sub directory happened months back and we don't see any other reason for our main website drop or not improving as expected. Most of the keywords people land on new sub directory are brand related searched as it's all about help guides of our product. I just wonder why main site hasn't benefited when new sub directory even after months. So, do you agree with my expectation that more number of visitors from different IP addressed to our website or sub directory will benefit in rankings? And you mentioned that you need more detail to answer this question. Please let me know the exact details you need for better understanding of the scenario.
Thanks
Satish
-
I'm not sure there's enough detail here to answer the question correctly
You say the sub directory has benefited which for me would have been the main goal of this exercise - I wouldn't have expected much short term benefit to the main site. You're right, in the long term the extra content/traffic will help (assuming the sub directory is serving peoples searches) but I'd assume the Homepage and the sub directory will have different key words with the sub domains being more specific or long tail.
If the sub directory has benefited I'd just sit back and wait for the rest to happen - that won't be overnight though as Google builds up a view of people using those pages
You may have been hoping for a bit too much overnight I'm afraid.
-
Hi Becker,
Thanks for the response. As I told, sub directory pages are ranking good. That's because they are now part of our main website and root domain is influencing them. But I thought this migration will help as the visitors of new sub directory counts as visitors of website and that's how we gonna benefited from Google. But seems like it didn't workout as expected. I think main reason is because of more internal links increased, PR got diluted.
-
There are not a lot of reasons for a better ranking root domain. Möge dir improvement of the help content. Why did u expected a better ranking for the Rest? There was "No" change, Just some new internal links. They have been there before, nur from another URL.
Main Website lost? Thats the Strange Part, if true.
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
-
Huge difference between GSC ranking and browser ranking for certain keywords: How to proceed?
Hi, There is a huge ranking difference between the GSC and browser for our primary keyword. As per GSC, our ranking is around 15 and when checking on the multiple different incognito browsers it's around 50. How to handle this? Which is the accurate one? Product expert from Google forums claim that what I see on browsers are the personalized results; but I tried on different browsers with different connections. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Sub-domain with spammy content and links: Any impact on main website rankings?
Hi all, One of our sub-domains is forums. Our users will be discussing about our product and many related things. But some of the users in forum are adding a lot of spammy content everyday. I just wonder whether this scenario is ruining our ranking efforts of main website? A sub domain with spammy content really kills the ranking of main website? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Do sub-domain visits do not count for website?
It's a common understanding that Google treats sub-domains as different websites. Does that mean visits of sub-domain do not impact website in-terms of ranking or visibility or reputation at Google?
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
US domain pages showing up in Google UK SERP
Hi, Our website which was predominantly for UK market was setup with a .com extension and only two years ago other domains were added - US (.us) , IE (.ie), EU (.eu) & AU (.com.au) Last year in July, we noticed that few .us domain urls were showing up in UK SERPs and we realized the sitemap for .us site was incorrectly referring to UK (.com) so we corrected that and the .us domain urls stopped appearing in the SERP. Not sure if this actually fixed the issue or was such coincidental. However in last couple of weeks more than 3 .us domain urls are showing for each brand search made on Google UK and sometimes it replaces the .com results all together. I have double checked the PA for US pages, they are far below the UK ones. Has anyone noticed similar behaviour &/or could anyone please help me troubleshoot this issue? Thanks in advance, R
Algorithm Updates | | RaksG0 -
Is user engagement a ranking signal?
Read something about user engagement might be a signal that Google uses, along with links and on-site optimisation, to decide if a search result goes up or down. What should I believe and what are the developments in this field?
Algorithm Updates | | MozzieJr0 -
Sudden drop after 301 redirection
Hi Experts We did a 301 redirect from an old site to a new site to get rid of any bad link juice. We recently found a big drop in rankings and traffic after google last indexed the new web pages. We did 301 using asp at page level coding. The website had 4000 approx. pages and we did 301 section by section. This is how we did as per one of the blog post in seomoz. Create a sitemap for your old domain. Create content (contact information, description of your company, indication of future plans) and something link worthy for the new domain. (You should start trying to build links early) Setup the new domain and make it live. Register and verify your old domain and new domain with Google Webmaster Tools. Create a custom 404 page for old domain which suggests visiting new domain. Old Domain error checking and fixing In a development environment, test the redirects from the old domain to the new domain. Ideally, this will be a 1:1 redirect. (www.example-old-site.com/category/sexy-mustaches.html to www.example-new-site.com/category/sexy-mustaches.html) 301 redirect your old domain to your new domain. Submit your old sitemap to Google and Bing. The submission pages are within Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Center (This step will make the engines crawl your old URLs, see that they are 301 redirects and change their index accordingly.) Fill out the Change of Address form in Google Webmaster Tools. Create a new sitemap and submit it to the engines. (This will tell them about any new URLs that were not present on the old domain) Wait until Google Webmaster Tools updates and fix any errors it is indicated in the Diagnostics section. Monitor search engine results to make sure new domain is being properly indexed. We also did a press release with prweb to announce the new launch. We followed the steps recommended in one of the I am not sure what to do next. Can anyone suggest if its normal to see a drop and we should wait for some time or if we did something wrong? We are loosing business with every single day. Please help !
Algorithm Updates | | ITRIX0 -
Is there a way to pull historical rankings for a keyword?
I have someone who's come to me and said that they have lost all of their organic keyword rankings. They did launch a site redesign a few months back so that could be a reason as to why. But after looking at the site, link profile, etc. It doesn't look like they could have been ranking for the terms they say they were. They have never implemented any SEO on their sites btw. I did not build this site and have not done any SEO, they are coming to me to solve the problem. I did notice in SEM rush that a couple months ago they were ranking organically for more terms (20 in July vs. 5 now), so they did lose some. Is there any way to see what terms they WERE ranking for?
Algorithm Updates | | MichaelWeisbaum0 -
Why google index ip address instead of the domain name？
I have a website ,now google index ip address of it instead of the domain name,I have used 301 redirected to the domain name,but how to change the index IP to its domain name? And why google index the IP address?
Algorithm Updates | | frankfans1170