Moving External TLD To Subfolder of Corporate Domain?
-
Our Challenge:
Our corporate site receives about 20,000 visits per week. Unfortunately, nearly half of those visitors are "looking" for a link we provide in our navigation link found on our homepage that takes them to our “Employee" focused site which resides on a separate TLD.
Because so much of the traffic to our corporate site lands on our homepage only as a stepping stone en route to the "Employee" site, the bounce rate, time on site and Average page views for our corporate site are all negatively impacted. Meanwhile, the "Employee" site gets more than 100,000 visits per month and enjoys enviable metrics- low bounce rate, high average page views and average time on site.
Our Goal:
- minimize or eliminate the negative impact of so many visitors using our corporate site as a stepping stone to reach the employee site.
- leverage the traffic volume and positive metrics enjoyed by the employee site to improve the search engine authority of our corporate site.
Our Solution:
- Move the "Employee" site to a subfolder of our corporate site – for example www.oursite.com/employees
- Install Google Analytics on all pages within the subfolder
- Provide a 301 redirect from old "Employee" domain to new employee subfolder
The expected result is an increase in overall corporate site traffic, more page views, higher time on site, and lower overall bounce rate from merging these two website properties.
Our Need:
After comparing the subfolder option to subdomain approach, we feel that the proposed solution is our best course of action and are looking for validation or an alternate recommendation.
-
The page views and time on site information will be of limited benefit since most of the pages involved wont be viewable to Google since they are behind a login filter.
While many people believe that Google considers the factors you mention in their algorithms, I am not aware of any solid evidence or statements from Google confirming this information. In fact, Matt Cutts has specifically stated that no Google Analytics data is used in rankings at all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgBw9tbAQhU
It makes perfect sense to me the factors you mention can be considered as part of the ranking process. I am sure many other SEOs believe they are as well. I would love to see any evidence to this effect. I think most people make this assumption.
With the above understood, if you felt the move was a low level of effort, I would probably go ahead with the change. It sounds like it can be a bit nicer for employees to stay on the same site. If this was considered a big project, I would not make the move without solid evidence you will achieve the benefits you desire.
-
Hi Ryan,
Great questions!
- Yes, some of the pages are currently indexed (see more info on #2)
- Some of the employee pages are indexed, however the large majority of them require users to be logged in to access certain pages. While we understand that many pages are not visible to Google due to this, that is ok with us. Our main concern is to be able to increase the corporate site time on site, number of page views, and reduce the domain bounce rate. By installing Google Analytics across all pages (logged in & logged out) we think over overall site metrics would increase?
As for the "employee" pages offering value or interesting content, I would say no in that these pages are contain some personal information that is not to be shared with others. There are some generic information pages such as how to use the site, etc. which are in front of registration. We are not particularly interested in ranking these "employee" pages/subfolder within search engines, but rather want to increase our overall site metrics for user activity in the eyes of Google Analytics by combining the two domains in question (employee & corporate domains).
By increasing these important metrics of our corporate domain as a whole, we hope to ultimately increase our corporate domain authority and in turn rank our "important" pages a little bit easier.
Please let me know if you have any additional questions. Thanks!
-
Hi Chris.
I have a few questions which will help myself and others to better answer your question.
Are your employee pages currently indexed?
Do employees need to login to access the employee site?
Do your employee pages offer anything of value for the internet? Do you have content that others may be interested in finding?
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
-
When domain a buys domain b (whose links direct to c), does domain a has links redirecting to domain c ?
Hi, I really need to know what happens when a company or domain (a) acquires another company with domain (b) with its links pointing to yet another location (c). Does company a then have redirects to c?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Yeshourun0 -
301 Old domain with HTTPS to new domain with HTTPS
I am a bit boggled about https to https we redirected olddomain.com to https://www.newdomain.com, but redirecting https://www.olddomain.com or non-www is not possible. because the certificate does not exist on a level where you are redirecting. only if I setup a new host and add a htaccess file will this work. What should I do? just redirect the rest and hope for the best?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | waqid0 -
Moving to a new domain for second time - critical, help needed fast!
Hello, Important: please do not ask why we need to change the domain, its not the matter at all, thank you for understanding. Over a month ago we successfully changed our domain name, 301 redirected, did GWT 'change of address' and all. The old domain was 2 years old, ranking very well, the new domain change of address was a success and traffic back on the new domain after a week. Today we need to change the domain name again, unfortunately, for some reasons, we have to, however we are not sure what to do in GWT, when I went to 'change of address' in the domain (the new first domain), i saw the following message (screenshot attached too): This site is undergoing a move Old URL | New URL If any URL on the left should not be moved, you can withdraw its move request. To do this, click the URL and then Withdraw. Now our questions: 1. For second time moving to a new domain, we should move from the old first domain (301 from the first old domain) or from the second domain (301 from the second domain)? 2. If from the old first domain, should we Withdraw from the first domain (lift up the first change of address in GWT) and then redirect the old first domain to the second new domain (the one we want to move now)? If yes, what to do with the first new domain (the one which we moved to a month ago) 3. If we should move from the first new domain, then what to do? The situation is clear but confusing what to do? It's just that we need to change the domain name again, move to a new one, for the second time, now we should redirect from the first old domain or first new domain? I purchased MOZ just to get help from you guys here, the only place i thought I could be helped. Of course gonna use Moz service too now that i have puurchased it 🙂 Awaiting your quick help guys. Thank you! 8csVpOZ2QoiYCoTR1t_SnQ.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mdmoz0 -
Parking page for domain names
Hi all, I represent a hosting company which has thousands of domain names that is parked for the clients until they start using them. Currently we are presenting the client and visitors information about the situation in the top of the pages and we have placed information about all the main products in the last part of the page. You can see an example here:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | proisp-no
http://prodesign.no/ Would you recommend utilizing these pages in a better way than how we are doing today (SEO wise towards our own website)? We have the ability to instantly change all of these pages at once and we are also able to present different pages for every single parked domain name if we want to. Best regards,
Jon0 -
Sub domain vs. sub folder
I know this has probably been asked many times and answered too, but things change a lot, so I would like to know with current search engine algos and co. The scenario is as follows: Building an ecommerce site and also want to incorporate a Q&A section, for support and FAQ's and such. should we go ahead and sub domain this like: community.test.com or rater go with test.com/community. I would really like to know why, why not and maybe some real life examples. Thank you all
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | s-s0 -
Root Domain v Subdomain
Hi, Just doing some analysis on a domain, and the (external) linking root domains show as:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs2010
21 to Root Domain
4 to Subdomain The site is hosted under the www. subdomain version and there is no 301 from domain to www.domain Should the site be: Hosted on the root domain instead of subdomain 301 all incoming requests on domain to point to www.domain (subdomain) Any comments and experience on this type of situation appreciated!0 -
Impact of Domain Authority on Keyword ranking
Experts Please advise if there is any impact on Keyword rankings due to high or low Domain authority?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | INN0 -
Cross-Domain Canonical and duplicate content
Hi Mozfans! I'm working on seo for one of my new clients and it's a job site (i call the site: Site A).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MaartenvandenBos
The thing is that the client has about 3 sites with the same Jobs on it. I'm pointing a duplicate content problem, only the thing is the jobs on the other sites must stay there. So the client doesn't want to remove them. There is a other (non ranking) reason why. Can i solve the duplicate content problem with a cross-domain canonical?
The client wants to rank well with the site i'm working on (Site A). Thanks! Rand did a whiteboard friday about Cross-Domain Canonical
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/cross-domain-canonical-the-new-301-whiteboard-friday0