Subdomain pdfs - do you track them?
-
We've enabled event tracking to monitor clicks to pdfs on our website. All of these pdfs are hosted in a subdomain.
The thing is, we offer some valuable pdfs that get a lot of traffic from search engines but I can't track them on Google Analytics. Do you track such pdfs?
I can't place tracking code as they are pdfs on a subdomain.
Thoughts?
-
No problem
-
Do you have your Google Analytics configured to track data across your domain and subdomain? The default analytics code is set up to track data for a single domain. To manage tracking data on both the domain and subdomain, you need to modify your analytics code.
Once you have your analytics configured to track both the domain and subdomain, you "should" be able to setup event tracking to keep track of downloads.
I hope this helps.
Mike
-
Thank you!
-
There is a solution for this by using server-side PHP tracking to monitor your PDFs, even when they're on subdomains - here's an awesome tutorial that shows you exactly how to do it - http://www.lunametrics.com/blog/2013/06/04/tracking-pdfs-google-analytics-server-side/
Hope that helped
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
-
Should I move my blog from subdomain to subdirectory?
Hi there, We have a pretty strong organic presence on our consumer facing blog. Around 5.7 million organic clicks Year to Date. It's currently housed in Wordpress on a subdomain. Our team is considering migrating our blog from Wordpress to Sitecore, where our parent organization resides. With that consideration, we're trying to determine if we should preserve the subdomain or move to a subdirectory of the parent brand. Moving to the parent brand would also result in a loss of our custom global nav - we would inherit the global nav of the parent website. We're not concerned about traffic loss risk - we know that we'll lose some but we think the move to subdirectory might be more beneficial in the long run from an SEO perspective. We're mostly concerned about the users getting lost without the global nav specific to the blog. Thoughts/concerns? Thank you!
Web Design | | Jessdyl0 -
Internally linked pages from different subdomain must be well optimised?
Hi all, We have guide/help pages from different subdomain (help.website.com). And we have linked these from 3rd hierarchy level pages of our website (website.com/folder1/topic2). But help.website sumdomain & pages are not well optimised. So, I am not sure linking these subdomain pages from our website pages hurts our rankings? Thanks,
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Subdomain to sub-directory migration: New subdirectory not yet indexed
Hi all, We have recently migrated a sub-domain to sub-directory to claim it's traffic in our website. Like demo.website.com to website.com/demo. We have also set a redirect for same which is working fine; but still old subdomain is showing in google search results and new directory haven't been indexed. We have submitted the new sub-directory in search console multiple times and it got partially indexed as per the status. We have allowed crawlers. Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
How to prevent development website subdomain from being indexed?
Hello awesome MOZ Community! Our development team uses a sub-domain "dev.example.com" for our SEO clients' websites. This allows changes to be made to the dev site (U/X changes, forms testing, etc.) for client approval and testing. An embarrassing discovery was made. Naturally, when you run a "site:example.com" the "dev.example.com" is being indexed. We don't want our clients websites to get penalized or lose killer SERPs because of duplicate content. The solution that is being implemented is to edit the robots.txt file and block the dev site from being indexed by search engines. My questions is, does anyone in the MOZ Community disagree with this solution? Can you recommend another solution? Would you advise against using the sub-domain "dev." for live and ongoing development websites? Thanks!
Web Design | | SproutDigital0 -
Is it possible to redirect the main www. domain - but keep a subdomain active?
Hi Mozzers, Quick question, which I hope one of you can answer... Let's say I have a website (i) www.example.com and on that a subdomain exists, (ii) subdomain.example.com. Let's say I want to change my main domain from www.example.com to www.newwebsite.com. I'd 301 all content, use GWT to notify Google of a change of address etc etc. Having done that, is it still possible to keep the original subdomain active? So, even though www.example.com has been redirected / transferred to www.newwebsite.com, subdomain.example.com would still exist. If that is possible, what is the implication for Domain Authority? On the one hand, I have transferred the main site (so DA from that will transfer to the new site); but part of that root domain is still active. Make sense? Any answers? Thanks everyone...
Web Design | | edlondon0 -
Am I on the right track -- still not seeing results in rank, traffic, etc.
I am a complete novice, but I tend to learn quickly. My site is one year old, and I have very low traffic. I also rank poorly. I have recently learned a ton, and made some changes: 1. Put in meta no follow, no index tags on certain pages 2. Found and fixed some horrid content -- I had forgotten to finish certain pages (!) and they had been left up for months -- a good example is /California-homeschool.html basically said "Washington homeschool, blah, blah, blah" for about 8 months before I fixed it (!) 3. Added new content, changed the look and navigation of the site, added social media links and have been working to build those up (FB, Twitter, etc) 4. Started blogging regularly. Those are the main things I have done. I plan to continue to add content, tweak the navigation, and blog regularly. From what I can tell, link building should happen organically. My question is: Am I on the right track? Here is a link to my site: http://www.i-school-at-home.com Am I missing anything -- there seems to be so much info out there. Because there is a time lag between making changes and seeing results, I just would love to know if I am on the right track, before I devote more time to this strategy. What I would like to do is be the #1 homeschool website (long term goal) and generate revenue (eventually) from affiliate marketing and creating my own curriculum and resources. Thank you!!!!!!
Web Design | | WendyKKelly0 -
Subdomain vs Sub Folder
Hi. This is my first question here guys and gals so please be gentle. We are creating a town based website that will hold news, events, articles and relevant local content. We are also creating a business directory that will be part of this. My question relates to an issue we have regarding how the directory will be treated as part of the "network". Although we aren't 100% sure on the domain name yet, we want the directory to be found as easily as the domain itself. Even better, if the two could be treated seperately but strengthen the overall theme for the domain we'd be in keyword heaven. Therefore in your opinion (hopefully with pro's and con's) which do you think will rank better in Google, Yahoo and Bing (or all three);
Web Design | | rufo
The directory seperate as a subdomain or as a folder within the main domain? So for example - providing we are including links between the two sections and the site is www.sitetown.com Which is better for the directory itself? http://www.sitetown.com/directory http://directory.sitetown.com or you're mad Steve, use a seperate domain altogether www.sitetowndirectory.com I hope you can help, obi-wan, you're my only hope..... PS - seomoz still rocks. Thanks
Steve0 -
Should I disable track backs?
All the trackbacks I get on wordpress sites are spam. How would disabling trackbacks effect my SEO efforts.
Web Design | | jmansd0