Should I move my forum to a subdomain?
-
My forum causes a lot of 403, 404, soft 404 and 522 errors. I worry about this dragging down the value of my domain and wonder if I should move it to a sub directory. forum.domain.com.
I was forced to do this with a very similar site and seems to have not suffered any google penalty (I implemented a 301 redirect to each page to its corresponding page on the subdomain.
-
Hello, you mentioned you have previously done this with 301 redirects. It is possible to do without penalties or losing rankings on your primary domain.
However, the problem arises that you are essentially splitting page authority with the sub-domain which can potentially be treated as a separate website. I would not recommend using sub-domain for your forum to avoid the issue of competing with your primary domain. Forums can be a great source of content and traffic so I would give it the best opportunity to do so on your domain. It would also be good to spend some time on maintenance to correct those errors and moderate poor quality / spammy / and thin content if necessary.
If you do decide to use a sub-domain, you would want to make sure to provide relevant links on every page back to your primary domain. Best of luck with your forum.
-
Well, as long as you still keep the sub domain open to search engines I don't think that would really solve the actual issue which is fixing the errors that you have. For now I wouldn't move the forum and focus on fixing the errors. Forums in general can be a great source of quality content in my opinion that can drive a ton of quality traffic + links that your SEO will benefit from. Moving it to a sub domain, even with a normal 301 redirect will cause more downside longer term for the root domain.
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
-
White Label Subdomain Competing with Top Level Domain?
Hi All, We have a top level domain that is a comparison site for companies in our industry. We also manage a white label website for a specific company in the same industry, which was originally set up as a subdomain. In other words we have: "example.com" and "companyname.example.com." The sites are treated as separate websites--the subdomain site isn't filling a role like a subfolder would. It has it's own branding, navigation/url structure, etc. Since these sites are in the same industry, there is obviously a huge overlap in the keywords we want each to rank for. In fact 100% of the keywords for the subdomain, are targets for the top level domain. My question is, are we hurting ourselves in google rankings by having two sites under the same top level domain competing for the same keywords? We want both sites to be as successful as possible. Would we be better served by kicking the subdomain out into a new top level domain? Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | Rodrigo-DC0 -
SEO threats of moving from [.com.au] domain to [.com] domain for a 15yr old SAAS company.
Hey Guys. I work for a 15 yr old SAAS company which originally started with a country-specific [.com.au] domain and later got a [.com] domain as the business grew. The AU website has a DA:56 while the [.com] has as DA: 25. Now we are looking to have everything migrated to the [.com] domain. But, my concern is that we might lose the SEO value of the AU domain. I was wondering if anyone has any experience in this or recommend a case study on this topic. Thanks! Allan
Algorithm Updates | | allanhenryjohn0 -
What happens when a de-indexed subdomain is redirected to another de-indexed subdomain? What happens to the link juice?
Hi all, We are planning to de-index and redirect a sub domain A to sub domain B. Consequently we now need to d-index sub domain B also. What happens now to the link juice or page rank they gained from hundreds and thousands of backlinks? Will there be any ranking impact on main domain? Backlinks of these sub domains are not much relevant to main domain content. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz1 -
What happens when we delete all the outgoing links from a forum at once?
Hi all, We have our forum and is filled with spammy content and external nofollow links. I am just wondering if we can make all these links as plain text from hyperlinks (if we can); it's technically deleting all the external links. Will this impact negatively or positively anyhow as per Google? Please share your ideas. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Moving to https and back to http, would it it hurt?
We have redirected everything on our blog from http to https. Our blog is in a subfolder so that now it looks like this: https://ourdomain/blog; But everything else i.e. our shop continues to be on http at http://ourdomain We are wondering: 1- Does the domain authority for SEO purposes have different values for the http and the https version of a domain? 2- If yes, is there a way to check the difference in authority between the http and the https version? 3- If we do have a higher authority on our http version (as historically we have been mostly on our http), would it make sense to go back to the http for the blog to enjoy that authority too? 4- Would changing our mind and going back to http after a few months of just having moved to https from http send any negative signals to Google? Would Google care if we do a back and forth essentially? Many thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | TVape0 -
Complete website redesign: original domain vs subdomain vs new domain ?
Hello dear community fellas!
Algorithm Updates | | PayPro
The story goes like this: my company has a good ol' website launched back in 2008 and since then nothing much was updated there. Our rank dropped significantly because, well, barely any SEO was done for it. Me and my team decided to redesign the whole thing: content, structure, visuals, links, everything but this time really making it right. However, with our oldie we managed to get a nice user base, so we still want to get all the traffic juice out of it. Now the questions is where do you think is the best place to publish our new website: Our original domain www.companyname.com? Create a subdomain new.companyname.com? Totally new domain www.namecompany.com? Cheers!0 -
Should I use subdomains?
I'm thinking of a little project website, but wonder whether I should use subdomains, or just simply categorize the site. For example, (I haven't chosen my domain yet) If I had www.flowers.com, and wanted to produce pages for each type of flower, should i use rose.flower.com
Algorithm Updates | | Gordon_Hall
or
flower.com/rose For SEO purposes, or usability, does it matter? Thanks in advance.0 -
Affect in SERPs when moving footer links off the homepage
I have several pages that rank highly in the SERPs and these pages are linked directly to my homepage in the footer. I want to clean up my footer because I have too many site wide links but don't want to hurt the SERP rankings during the transition. Will removing these page links from the footer impact SERP rankings?
Algorithm Updates | | braunna0