UTM tracking on a mapped subdomain, is it OK? (DA bonus question)
-
Hi,
This is a technical question. OK, two technical questions. Please bear with me and I'll do my best to explain...
We have a WordPress blog (business account, hosted by WordPress). We use it to blog and send traffic to our separate e-commerce site. We use UTM tracking to see which blog posts perform best.
Our e-commerce site has a high domain authority. Our blog, not so much.
In an effort to increase the domain authority of the blog we have mapped a subdomain of the e-commerce site to the Wordpress blog (still hosted by WordPress).
Q1. Will this actually raise the blog's DA?
If the blog does get a DA boost, I guess it'll be because Google now sees it as part of a powerful domain.
But if it is technically part of the powerful domain...
Q2. Should we remove the UTM parameters from the blog?
I've read that you should never use UTM on internal links because it messes with your Google Analytics data. But I'm unsure if links on a mapped subdomain count as 'internal links'.
Any help would be gratefully appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
J
-
Hi again,
I have just checked and you have a redirect chain which is not good.
Status Code URL IP Page Type Redirect Type Redirect URL
301 http://blog.example.com/ server_redirect permanent https://blog.humankinetics.com/
301 https://blog.example.com/ server_redirect permanent https://humankinetics.me/
200 https://example.com/ normal none noneI have removed any identifying data but trust me it's from your link.
I would work to get the 301 pointing straight from both the first two links to the third so there is no extra step in the middle required.
and now back to your original questions.
Did the links I provided earlier help with the UTM question?
As for adding DA/PA to your blog have you seen any increase since you made the change? You may get some from it but as I said earlier I don't think you will get much. Monitoring is the only way you will know for sure.
-
Hi JabeKay,
Apologies for the delay in replying its been a busy day.
I need to have a read over the info you have provided and digest it, I will then come back with what I can to help.
By the way, you may want to check the link at the bottom of your last post
Steve
-
Does it show the new URL in the browser or the original URL when the page has stopped loading?
Yes, once the page has loaded it displays the old URL.
Perhaps this exchange from our tech team might shed some more light.
On 5/15/19, at 8:21 am, James wrote:
Mike, We need to create and register a subdomain named blog.example.comPer the instructions, we will need to our NS records to network solutions. The current site that blog will map to is https://example.me/ in which is hosted via wordpress in which that is going to stay there as well as the name. The instructions for non-wordpress domain registrar customers is linked below:
https://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/map-subdomain/#adding-a-mapping-subscription
On 5/15/19, at 12:18 pm, Mike wrote:
The records for blog.humankinetics.com have been added to internal and external DNS. Someone still needs to add a "mapping subscription" to the Wordpress site to enable it.I believe I added the "mapping subscription."
-
I'm not sure but if you type the newly created subdomain URL into a browser it redirects to the WordPress blog at its usual address.
Does it show the new URL in the browser or the original URL when the page has stopped loading?
I don't think so. Wouldn't that create some kind of loop where the new subdomain redirects to the usual blog URL then that redirects back to the new subdomain?
It depends on which method you have used. If you have done a DNS mapping for the new subdomain then redirecting the old URLs will be fine in theory. If when you load the page you see the original URL then there is no need to do this. (see my earlier post for info on things to be aware of when redirecting).
If you are not sure if it will create a loop test it on one URL that is nested deep in your site and has little to no traffic.
It all depends on the setup that has been put in place. If you can find out the answer to that then I can give you a clearer answer.
I can't see much point in redirecting the new subdomain to the original URL though, I wouldn't have thought much link juice would be passed via this method. I could be wrong it's not a situation I have found myself in. I would definitely advocate lots of monitoring and testing to see the results.
-
Thanks again,
When you say mapping I assume you mean via DNS so that the subdomain for the blog is pointing straight to the host server and you are not redirecting?
I'm not sure but if you type the newly created subdomain URL into a browser it redirects to the WordPress blog at its usual address.
If you have done this have you redirected the old domain for the blog to the new subdomain with 301? if not you need to do this to preserve what you can of the link juice.
I don't think so. Wouldn't that create some kind of loop where the new subdomain redirects to the usual blog URL then that redirects back to the new subdomain?
-
I haven't tried it but I am pretty sure you can run Shopify and WordPress on the same domain. You may have to use subfolders but that would be better than a separate domain.
If you can't run the two together, running it on a subdomain is ok, but it will probably be treated as two different domains by Google. When you say mapping I assume you mean via DNS so that the subdomain for the blog is pointing straight to the host server and you are not redirecting?
If you have done this have you redirected the old domain for the blog to the new subdomain with 301? if not you need to do this to preserve what you can of the link juice.
See my responses here for more on large redirects https://moz.com/community/q/301-redirects-large-htaccess-file-question
I haven't really looked at UTMs on internal pages, however, subdomains are normally considered separate domains as far as I am aware.
These links may help
https://moz.com/community/q/subdomains-or-separate-domains-for-dealers
https://chrisberkley.com/blog/subdomains-for-seo/
https://www.analyticsmania.com/post/transfer-utm-parameters-google-tag-manager/
https://penguinwp.com/common-utm-campaign-url-tracking-mistakes-to-avoid/
-
Thanks Steve,
What you recommend would be ideal but sadly this is not an option.
The e-commerce site is on the Shopify platform and the blogging functionality is not as good as WordPress.
Also, the native Shopify blogging feature is currently being used to host book excerpts.
Finally, our tech team has said that this is the only configuration they will green light.
J
-
Hi JabeKay,
Is there a reason the blog is on a different domain?
It seems to me like you are working to build the strength of two separate domains when you could put all your efforts into one.
I would seriously consider moving the blog to the e-commerce site domain and 301 redirecting the old blog domain to the e-commerce domain.
This way new content is in the right place and building traffic for the place you want it.
If this is not an option let me know.
Steve
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 to filter out traffic from subdomain using regex?
Hi There, We have a test server that lives on a subdomain which we'd like to filter out in Google Analytics. We're using the hostname filter but are having trouble understanding the regex needed, we're using this as the filter pattern: .domain.com. Will that work? The profile is new so we can't test the pattern. Any pointers in the right direction would be much appreciated. Cheers Ben
Reporting & Analytics | | cmscss0 -
Google Tag Manager for cross-domain tracking
Anybody experience with setting up Google Tag Manager to contain the Analytics script including cross domain tracking? We have a marketingwebsite .com / .com.br and an application running in a subdomain, but have always had some difficulties in getting the cross domain tracking working. Would be great to be able to exchange some experience with fellow Mozzers.
Reporting & Analytics | | jorisbrabants1 -
Tracking Organic Traffic and Conversions from multiple TLDs with Google Tag Manager
Hello Guys, I want to track traffic / conversions from different domains (basically same brand - but a lot of different TLD's). The "problem" is that the main conversion which I want to track always happens on the .com TLD and all other TLD's link to there. The problem is, that now the traffic always counts as Referral Traffic, even after setting up cross domain tracking over the google tag manager... So example: Sessions begins on example.co.uk/landing-page11 after User searched on it on google. He decides to buy the product and therefore moves to example.com for the checkout process. No I will have the conversion in my google analytics under referral with example.co.uk. --> but I want to have it under organic, and not under referral. How I can manage this? Thanks for you Help!
Reporting & Analytics | | _Heiko_0 -
Analytics - Video Tracking
Hello, As i've ended up confusing myself, I thought I would ask the moz community whether i'm on the correct track! I'm wanting full GA tracking on individual videos from our destination URL. In short I need the name of each video to have specific tracking. Example;
Reporting & Analytics | | Whittie
Video 1 (Apples)
Video 2 (Oranges)
Video 3 (Pears) We need to be able to see the amount of plays per session, per video. As well as any extras if possible, such as;
Watched 25%, watched 50%, watched 75%, video complete, video paused. If the following script is used; https://github.com/sanderheilbron/vimeo.ga.js As well as using the Google URL builder (https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867?hl=en-GB) , what would be the best way to set each video to see the statistics within Google Analytics, so I can see how many plays the 'Apples' video has had. I think it is the ordering of the 'event, campaign, label etc' which has confused me. Many Thanks for any replies in advance, I appreciate it.0 -
Bounce Rate Question - The percent calculated does not add up
Hello All, I'm attempting to see why organic search bounce rate has increased by 5% when compared to last year for a certain section of my website. I am using a custom segment to filter the specific pages I want to look at. Once the custom segment is set, I go to Acquisition - > Channels - > Organic. Then, I click the Landing Pages tab. Because we don't have keyword data anymore the only thing I can look at is the landing pages that contributed to the change in bounce. Finally, I set my date range and compare to the same date range as last year. Once I set the date range I am presented with a list of URLs and the percent change in bounce rate for each URL. This is where I get confused. If you look at the average bounce rate at the top of the column (example 1 attached) it does not add up with the data below it. If you export all of the data to excel, and then do an "Average" function in Excel, the data adds up to 17.29% instead of 35.04% for Sept. 2013. Why does this not add up? Isn't GA calculating the Average? Also, I always notice several URLs with only 1 session per URL. Several of these 1 session URLs have a 100% bounce rate. Since the bounce rate at the top of the column (example1) is a reflection of the average bounce rate, wouldn't these 1 session URLs significantly distort my data? I ultimately just want to see the pages that are contributing to the increased bounce rate when compared to last year. Having a hard time figuring this one out. Thank you all, Dave zMfAGls
Reporting & Analytics | | DaveGuyMan0 -
Keeping Google Analytics Data when Moving to Subdomain
Hey All, Against my objections a client has decided to move an existing site into a subdomain while putting up a new site on the main domain. My question revolves around Google Analytics, how do I make sure that I don't lose historical data on the domain before it moves to a subdomain? We're going to be doing a redesign of the old site and I need to keep the historical data so I can prioritize content. What do I need to do? Or will Google analytics recognize the URL's and still attribute the data to those URL's or will I have a separate set of data based on the new URL (with the subdomain). Any insight would be appreciated! Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | EvansHunt0 -
Tracking Multiple Top Level Domains in GA
Hi, I am setting up Google Analytics for www.example.co.uk and www.example.ie Is this as simple as just adding GA tracking code 'track Multiple top-level domains'? With this method how can I distinguish between each site's incoming traffic? Do filters needed to be created? Thanks in advance 🙂
Reporting & Analytics | | daracreative0 -
Google Analytics should track users from iPhone App
Hi Mozzers, you say there are no dumb questions, here is one. We've build an iPhone App for our Website working-dog.eu. So users can read there new messages with ease when they are out of the office, read about breeds, ... do all the nice stuff they want. I don't think so, but is it possible to track these users with Google Analytics? When the come via App, the Analytics code will not run for them. But maybe it could start an AJAX request or something like this? But how should the code run, without a browser which can interprete JavaScript? So, in short: Is it possible to track users from iPhone App with Google Analytics? Kind regards Patrick
Reporting & Analytics | | mdoegel0