Trying to avoid splitting Search Engine juice, need advice
-
We currently have a political issue with one microsite we're trying to promote. The group that created the website, created it without the consent of the rest of the company and now, although it's allowed to live, we've been given a few restrictions. They main restriction is that when the microsite is linked from the main corporate website it needs to be referenced as a subdomain so http://microsite.company.com. We've been promoting the site as http://www.microsite.com (I'd include the actual websites but don't want to air their dirty laundry). The problem is that a lot of the listings in google are starting to show up using the http://microsite.company.com url instead of the actual url we're about to start promoting and I'm sure that's going to split rankings. Is there a way to appease both sides here. Keep the subdomain from the main site but transfer the juice from that main link to the microsite url?
To be clear, I can't just use a 301 redirect because that will change the url from the subdomain to the microsite url (unless i'm wrong) and corporate doesn't want that.
Does any of this make sense? Any help would be greatly appreciated
-
Hi, I know this is an old thread but I have a similar issue. The company I'm currently working with used to have 30+ subdomains all going to different versions of the same website, many with duplicate content. This was creating 30+ different google analytics accounts to look through and all sharing the same ink juice.
Now I have come on board, I have rebuilt the website so that it is one main website with franchisee pages like www.mainsite.com/uk/franchisee-location
Now what should be the best option for the 30+ subdomains that are left? At the moment they are all pointing to their respective page on the new website but I have a developer in the team that is adamant that Google is going to penalise us for having the 30+ subdomains pointing back to urls on the main.com website. I'm not convinced as I think this is a much cleaner way and a better user experience.
My question really is, what is the best action to take with the franchisee subdomains that are out there still in the Google index? Should I keep redirecting them to their new url (www.mainsite.com/uk/frachisee-location) or should they stay as franchiseelocation.mainsite.com and will Google penalise the domain for this?
Many thanks for any advice.
-
Hi Kalvin, can you share with us how things are going and what you decided? Are there any nuggets you can share that might help out the next person in a similar situation, and/or do you have more questions you'd like to throw out to the group? Don't forget that you can use private Q&A with just staff members as well.
-
I think his problem is that the department that created the microsite.com site wants to keep it seperate and brand it independantly while the whole company wants to bring it under their umbrella so doing a sub folder wouldn't actually really work at all, I suppose you could use URL redirection to get the microsite domain to pull up for the subdirectory.
-
Unfortunately the subfolder won't work either because they are on two separate platforms.
Chris: I've leaning towards Canonical option as well but wanted to pick the brains of a few experts (like yourself) to see if that was my only option or not. Thanks.
-
Well you could always use rel=canonical to declare that the canonical version of the page is microsite.com even when you link to it from microsite. company. com.
It would help Google understand that the proper version of the site is the microsite address while leaving links from the main company site pointing and rendering at microsite .company. com.
-
Unfortunately that won't solve it because the sub group that developed the site want to promote their own url. It's all a political issue where I have to keep both types of URLs visible but get all the rankings to flow to the microsite url.
-
What you may want to consider is doing a 301 of microsite.com to microsite. company. com if that's permissible. I'm assuming that you can't just 301 the link from company.com to microsite. company. com but you may be able to do it the other way around?
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
-
We are moving to HTTPS and wanted to know if our link building efforts were in vain or will the link juice pass to HTTPS?
We are switching to HTTPS and want to make sure the links we've gotten in the past will still transfer since they are pointing to HTTP? I'd hate to go back through and ask people to please add an s to the link.
Link Building | | bryant25560 -
SEOMoz directory list - some clarity needed FROM SEOMOZ STAFF
There are 455 directories (212 web, 188 social & 55 local) on the SEOMoz list.
Link Building | | Jeepster
Presumably they are there because SEOMoz recommends them. Yet common wisdom seems to be that web directories have negligible SEO benefit - see this recent SEOMoz Q&A discussion.
Matt Cutts advises against paid directories in this video (which >99% of them are)
In a private Q&A last month a member of the SEOMoz staff told me a link to my site from this directory, which appears on the list, was a "poor link". I think some better clarity in SEOMoz's guidelines on directories would be appreciated -- and I'd appreciate SEOMoz staff weighing in as promised when Private Q&As were ended -- especially as many SEOMozzers take most of what we learn here as near-gospel.1 -
Does Open Site Explorer show juice passing links
I'm a little confused between all the link types. Internal / External - easy Linking Root Domain - easy Followed / No followed - easy But then there's talk about "juice passing links" and I can't quite get how this is defined, and why it's something you can get from the API, but not from Open Site Explorer... or can you get that info from OSE?
Link Building | | eatyourveggies0 -
I need suggestion on how to increase our page authority.
I'm looking for specific suggestions on how to increase PA on different pages. Specific site I could link a page to link Pintrest to increase PA.
Link Building | | cfield_splashmedia.com0 -
Building separate pages for local searches
I found one of our competitors developed URLs for every state in the US. They linked all these sites back to their site and they are ranking very high for each of these states. Here are 2 examples http://metalbuildingsmississippi.com/ #1 for "metal buildins mississippi" http://metalbuildingsoklahoma.com/ #3 for "metal buildings oklahoma" these pages don't even have a PR. Would you recommend doing the same with my site, writing unique content for each URL and building links?
Link Building | | SEODinosaur0 -
Trying to get links to a pdp of an ecommerce site
hi all i am working for a ecommerce site doing seo and i am thinking of starting a blog for one of the brands im trying to rank for on the site and then have some links from the brandreview.co.uk/blog to the pdp page of the ecommerse site that im working for, is this a good way to go about things
Link Building | | Westernoriental0 -
Need ideas to get do follow links from highly competative niche "wedding"
I need to get high quality do-follow links and my target market/keyword is ‘Maui wedding’ and a few others. Because it is such a competitive market I am having a hard time getting links from local companies providing Maui Weddings (I know why because they are my competitors) and national companies sites aren't much help because they are trying to provide leads to their advertisers. I would like do-follow links from non-paid sources any ideas or resources you could help with would be much appreciated. Thanks.
Link Building | | photoseo10 -
Is it possible to find the highest authority websites for links based on a specific search phrase?
I am trying to find high relevancy websites that would possibly help my ranking for a search term. Any suggestions?
Link Building | | dbowmanfl0