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.
Can you redirect specific sub domain URLs?
-
ello!
We host our PDFs, Images, CSS all in a sub domain. For the question, let's call this sub.cyto.com. I've noticed a particular PDF doing really well, infact it has gathered valuable external links from high authoritative sites. To top it off, it gets good visits.
I've been going back and forth with our developers to move this PDF to a subfolder structure.
For example: www.cyto.com/document/xxxx.pdfIn my perspective, if I move this and set up a permanent redirect, then all the external links the PDF gathered, link juice and future visits will be attributed to the main website. Since the PDF is existing in the subdomain, I can't even track direct visits nor get the link juice. It appears in top position of Google as well.
My developer says it is better to keep images, pdf, css in the subdomain. I see his point and an idea I have is to:
- convert the pdf to a webpage.
- Set up a 301 redirect from the existing subdomain to this webpage
- Upload the pdf with a new name and link to it from the webpage, so users can download if they choose to.
This should give me the existing rank juice. However, my question is whether you can set up a 301 redirect for just a single subdomain URL to a folder structure URL?
-
"Do you recommend scrapping the subdomain in such an instance and hosting them all in the main domain in a folder?"
Yes.
"Would that impact on page load and speed?"
No.
This PDF is a perfect example of why not to do this, but the same can be said for images. Say you create an awesome infographic that people start linking to/sharing, and it's sitting on your subdomain. There goes your SEO benefit, much like you're experiencing with this PDF.
If you have the right hosting service, none of this should impact performance. Looking into a CDN will help for sure. I've heard good things about cloud flare, for example.
-
Thanks for the response Jesse.
Our site is an ecommerce one, and every product page is supported with a pdf. This is expected from our customers and it basically is the product page in a PDF format with tweaks. We have 10,000s of these and for speed, we store files such as pdfs and images locally in a subdomain.
For content delivery network purposes, I heard it was better to keep pdfs, images separate as well? We haven't got a CDN but it's something we will look into next year.
Do you recommend scrapping the subdomain in such an instance and hosting them all in the main domain in a folder? Would that impact on page load and speed?
Also is it possible to redirect individual subdomain URLs to a main domain one?
-
"My developer says it is better to keep images, pdf, css in the subdomain. I see his point"
You do? I sure don't. That sounds ridiculous to me and I see absolutely no reason why this should ever be necessary. I'd be surprised if anyone else did.
Your original plan was the right one; move that pdf to your main domain in a pdf folder or whatever and redirect the original URL right to it. That's the way to go, for sure. If you want to build it as an HTML page that's fine too. I personally would do that if it were an option mainly because I can't stand PDFs. But that's me.
No reason you need to have pdf, css, and images in a subdomain. That's silly.
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
-
Does redirecting from a "bad" domain "infect" the new domain?
Hi all, So a complicated question that requires a little background. I bought unseenjapan.com to serve as a legitimate news site about a year ago. Social media and content growth has been good. Unfortunately, one thing I didn't realize when I bought this domain was that it used to be a porn site. I've managed to muck out some of the damage already - primarily, I got major vendors like Macafee and OpenDNS to remove the "porn" categorization, which has unblocked the site at most schools & locations w/ public wifi. The sticky bit, however, is Google. Google has the domain filtered under SafeSearch, which means we're losing - and will continue to lose - a ton of organic traffic. I'm trying to figure out how to deal with this, and appeal the decision. Unfortunately, Google's Reconsideration Request form currently doesn't work unless your site has an existing manual action against it (mine does not). I've also heard such requests, even if I did figure out how to make them, often just get ignored for months on end. Now, I have a back up plan. I've registered unseen-japan.com, and I could just move my domain over to the new domain if I can't get this issue resolved. It would allow me to be on a domain with a clean history while not having to change my brand. But if I do that, and I set up 301 redirects from the former domain, will it simply cause the new domain to be perceived as an "adult" domain by Google? I.e., will the former URL's bad reputation carry over to the new one? I haven't made a decision one way or the other yet, so any insights are appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gaiaslastlaugh0 -
Can subdomains hurt your primary domain's SEO?
Our primary website https://domain.com has a subdomain https://subDomain.domain.com and on that subdomain we have a jive-hosted community, with a few links to and fro. In GA they are set up as different properties but there are many SEO issues in the jive-hosted site, in which many different people can create content, delete content, comment, etc. There are issues related to how jive structures content, broken links, etc. My question is this: Aside from the SEO issues with the subdomain, can the performance of that subdomain negatively impact the SEO performance and rank of the primary domain? I've heard and read conflicting reports about this and it would be nice to hear from the MOZ community about options to resolve such issues if they exist. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BHeffernan1 -
Switching URLs after acquisition to retain domain authority?
Hey everyone! My company just acquired our biggest competitor and we're switching to their platform because they have a better technical structure for SEO--what's the best way to do that, other than a 301 redirect? Can we even rename their domain to ours? How do we ensure we keep both our and their domain authority and SEO juice? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | genevieveagar0 -
How Can I Redirect an Old Domain to Our New Domain in .htaccess?
There is an old version of http://chesapeakeregional.com still floating around the web here: http://www.dev3.com.php53-24.dfw1-2.websitetestlink.com/component/content/category/20-our-services. Various iterations of this domain pop up when I do certain site:searches and for some queries as well (such as "Diagnostic Center of Chesapeake"). About 3 months ago the websitetestlink site had files and a fully functional navigation but now it mostly returns 404 or 500 errors. I'd like to redirect the site to our newer site, but don't believe I can do that in chesapeakeregional.com's .htaccess file. Is that so and would I need access to the websitetestlink .htaccess to forward the domain? Note* I (nor anyone else in our organization) has the login for the old site. The new site went live about 9 months before I arrived at the organization and I've been slowly putting the pieces together since arriving.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | smpomoryCRH0 -
Consolidating Multiple Domains into A Single Domain
I have a client who's website is an amalgamation of multiple domains. jacksonhole.net is the main domain but the site passes traffic back and forth from the following domains/sites. My questions is, would it it be better for SEO to consolidate all of these domains under the single high authority domain and 301 redirect the rest or is that a really bad idea? Thanks for your help. jacksonhole.net (Domain Authority 31) jackson-hole-rental-condos.com (Domain Authority 22) jackson-hole-rental-homes.com (Domain Authority 21) j acksonholehotelguide.com (Domain Authority 19)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dbaxa-2613381 -
How do you 301 redirect URLs with a hashbang (#!) format? We just lost a ton of pagerank because we thought javascript redirect was the only way! But other sites have been able to do this – examples and details inside
Hi Moz, Here's more info on our problem, and thanks for reading! We’re trying to Create 301 redirects for 44 pages on site.com. We’re having trouble 301 redirecting these pages, possibly because they are AJAX and have hashbangs in the URLs. These are locations pages. The old locations URLs are in the following format: www.site.com/locations/#!new-york and the new URLs that we want to redirect to are in this format: www.site.com/locations/new-york We have not been able to create these redirects using Yoast WordPress SEO plugin v.1.5.3.2. The CMS is WordPress version 3.9.1 The reason we want to 301 redirect these pages is because we have created new pages to replace them, and we want to pass pagerank from the old pages to the new. A 301 redirect is the ideal way to pass pagerank. Examples of pages that are able to 301 redirect hashbang URLs include http://www.sherrilltree.com/Saddles#!Saddles and https://twitter.com/#!RobOusbey.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DA20130 -
When should you redirect a domain completely?
We moved a website over to a new domain name. We used 301 redirects to redirect all the pages individually (around 150 redirects). So my question is, when should we just kill the old site completely and just redirect (forward/point) the old domain over to the new one?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | co.mc0 -
How to do geo targeting for domain and sub directories in Webmaster tool?
Hello All, How can i do geo targeting in multiple countries on my ** root domain and sub **directories in Webmaster tool. My domain is "abc.com" and i want to target three countries UAE , Kuwait, Saudi arabia. So, Can i assign geo targeting in Webmaster tool , Root domain for UAE country and make other two sub directories for Kuwait and saudi ? abc.com - UAE (geo targeting) abc.com/kw - Kuwait (geo targeting) abc.com/sa - Saudi (geo targeting) Or Root doamain should be not assign for any country and Make three sub directories for UAE, Kuwait , and saudi and targeting them there geo locations. abc.com - Unlisted (geo targeting) abc.com/uae/ - UAE (geo targeting) abc.com/kw/ - Kuwait (geo targeting) abc.com/sa/ - Saudi (geo targeting)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rahul110