I have a sub domain that has live content on it but the root domain redirects to another URL. I know this is not great but what are the implications?
-
I have a subdomain that is populated and has content. The root domain that the sub lives on redirects to an entirely different URL. I am trying to make a case as to why this isn't great besides the fact that it is just weird user experiences. What are the SEO implications etc. Would any equity that gets built up on the subdomain get passed along in the redirect? Or will there be indexation issues with Google?
Cheers,
Mark
-
Thanks for the feedback! I was not the person who set-up the site like this. I came on board and that is how it is working. I want it changed but just wanted to make sure I was on the right track.
-
The implications are tied to trust and authority primarily, and overall ranking weight.
Why would content in a subdomain o exist on a "site" where the root domain itself redirects? It's not natural by any stretch of the imagination. And if the root domain isn't itself a stand-alone trustworthy presence, any ability it might otherwise have to provide ranking signals that it can then pass to the subdomain are lost.
Even though, generally speaking, subdomains are treated as independent, that's not true across the entire spectrum of signals.
IF, however, that subdomain is very strong in its own right, and sends the highest quality signals across the spectrum within it's own environment, it may be a case where it can succeed. Because yes, technically even "www." is a subdomain. So like most everything else, case by case, each situation is unique.
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
-
Using one domain for email and another domain for your website, but redirects...
Hello - We are rebranding and our new name is fairly lengthy. We own all main domain versions of our brand name - .com, .new and .org - There is a very high search volume for the new brand name as it is a merger of 2 popular existing brands so want to take advantage of that and use our full name within our website domain name. However, since the name is a little long as mentioned - 25 characters - we also own the 3 character acronym of the new brand so we are debating on using the acronym for our new email addresses. ie name@abc.com so it is user friendly. We would obviously redirect the acronym email domain to point to the longer website domain. Are there any negative SEO effects if we do that? Use the longer domain for the website and shorter acronym for our email? Thank you
Technical SEO | | KRBishopBh1 -
Trash Domain Or Redirect it (unmaintained)
We have an old website with an old domain that has not been maintained for a few years; it now has a DA of 14 and a spam score of 24%. Our current domain (same business) within a few years has a domain authority of 21 and page authority 29 spam score 1%. (Yes, this domain should have been redirected from the get-go) The question is what do you do with it now? Toss it. Or redirect it. That domain has existed for years but still not sure what its value is from an SEO perspective. I would love to hear your feedback. Is there any benefit to redirect the old domain to the current domain. Or is it a negative and what impact?
Technical SEO | | MyBambooSEO0 -
Decline in traffic and duplicate content in different domains
Hi, 6 months ago my customer purchased their US supplier and moved the supplier's website to their e-commerce platform. When moving to the new platform they copied the descriptions of the products from their site to the supplier's site so now both sites have the same content in the product pages. Since then they have experienced decrease in traffic in about 80%. They didn't implement canonical tag or hreflang. My customer's domain format is https://www.xxx.biz and the supplier's domain is https://www.zzz.com The last one is targeting the US and when someone from outside of the US wants to purchase a product they get a message that they need to move to the first website, the www.xxx.biz. Both sites are in English. The old site version of www.zzz.com, before the shit to the new platform, contained different product descriptions, and BTW, the old website version is still live and indexed under a subdomain of www.zzz.com. My question is what's the best thing to do in this case so that the rankings will be back to higher positions and they'll get back their traffic. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | digital19740 -
URL Redirect
Hi All, So we have employees who can own their own domains for business, however, one employee has a domain that links back to our main site, but when it does, the URL and Page title of our main site, still say his own domain. IE: www.johndoe.com links to www.mysite.com except the url and itle still say www.johndoe.com What are the implications of this? Thank you
Technical SEO | | PeteEllard0 -
Can new content be added to a url which has a 301 redirect?
I am working on a site which is currently being redesigned. The home page currently ranks highly for relevant search terms, although on the new site the content on this page will be removed. The solution I was considering, to preserve rankings, was to move the content on the home page to a new url, and use a 301 redirect to help preserve rankings for that particular page. The question I have therefore, is am I able to add new content to the home page, and have this page freshly indexed accordingly? Any thoughts or suggestions would be most welcome. Thanks, Matt.
Technical SEO | | MatthewA0 -
301 duplicate content dynamic url
I have a number of pages that appear as duplicate titles in google webmaster. They all have to do with a brand name query. I want to 301 these pages since I'm going to relaunch my new website on wordpress and don't want to have 404s on these pages. a simple 301 redirect doesn't work since they are dynamic urls. here is an example: /kidsfashionnetherlands/mimpi.html?q=brand%3Amim+pi%3A&page=2&sort=relevance /kidsfashionnetherlands/mimpi.html?q=mim+pi&page=3&sort=relevance /kidsfashionnetherlands/mimpi.html?q=mim+pi&page=5&sort=relevance should all be 301 to the original page that I want to remain indexed: /kidsfashionnetherlands/mimpi.html I have a lot of these but for different queries. Should I do a 301 on each of them to avoid having 404s when I change my site to wordpress? Thanks
Technical SEO | | dashinfashion0 -
Redirecting domain to the main domain (hosting cost?)
Hello Everyone, I have the following situation. There is main domain and a secondary domain that is related to the page on the main domain. I want to integrate the content of the secondary domain into the page on the main domain and redirect the secondary domain via 301 to that specific page. As i understand I can do it via .htaccess using rewrite mechanism. http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection But the question is does it mean I have to keep paying for the hosting for the secondary domain? Because htaccess has to be located on the web server so I would need a hosting plan for it? Is that true? Is there any way around it? P.S. to avoid any confusion - I am talking about hosting plan - not domain registration fees
Technical SEO | | SirMax0 -
Duplicate content error from url generated
We are getting a duplicate content error, with "online form/" being returned numerous times. Upon inspecting the code, we are calling an input form via jQuery which is initially called by something like this: Opens Form Why would this be causing it the amend the URL and to be crawled?
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0