Effect of temporary subdomains on the root domain
-
Hi all,
A client of ours tends to have a number of offers and competitions during the year and would like to host these competitions on separate sub-domains. Once a competition is over (generally these last for approximately a month) the sub-domain gets deleted and pointed back to the main site.
I was wondering whether this would have any effects on the root domain.
Can I get your opinion please?
-
Makes sense to me.
Thank you Peter!
-
Hi Daniela
That's almost correct. You need to do the wrap up in two stages really.
When the competition is over just have your "competition is finished" page active on your sub-domain say for a week with a link that people can use to go to your root domain home page.
But then, when you remove that page, because inbound links to your sub-domain would still be active in search engines and on Internet links, you still need to leave your sub-domain in place on your server for a time but with a 301 redirect active stored in the sub-domain folder. That would just need a single redirection in place that automates any visits to your sub-domain to your root domain home page.
After say a month or so, you will probably then be safe to remove the sub-domain.
I hope the above makes sense.
Peter
-
Hi Peter
Thanks for taking the time to answer my question.
So I shall suggest to keep the subdomain a little longer after the competition (generally this is a one-pager) with a notification that competition is closed and a link back to the root domain.
After a while the subdomain redirects (301) to the root domain.
Correct?
Daniela
-
Hi Daniela
The only impact would be after a sub-domain is deleted. It may be better to leave the sub-domain active for a time afterwards so you can manage the knock on for pages that have been indexed on the sub-domain after the competition/promotion has finished. Also, any links that existed on the sub-domain to your root domain
If you left the sub-domain active you could then just have a single page on there to say something like "The competition has now finished" and directing a visitor who has linked there with a link on the page to the home page of the main domain.
All other links to the sub-domain pages and any resulting from it to the domain which are then redundant, could be managed through 301 redirects back to the main domain to the best landing pages for them.
I hope that helps,
Peter
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
-
Value of dormant domain
My client used to own a successful domain. They sold the business, the domain was not used by the purchaser. My client bought back the business and redirects the original STRONG domain to their new domain. How can I find out current page rank, traffic, etc of the original domain? Mik
Technical SEO | | mcorso0 -
301 - Specific Domain
In Google our main website page url is <cite class="_Rm">www.wheelchairparts.com</cite> it has 25 root domain links & PA 34. When you go to our website from there, the homepage url is http://www.wheelchairparts.com/store/pc/home.asp it only has 3 root domain links & PA 27. Do I need to add a 301 Redirect here? What kind of redirect is on it now? Thanks, - Mike Bean
Technical SEO | | Mike.Bean0 -
Blog.domain or domain.com/blog
My client can't do domain.com/blog because he's on wix. I'm thinking blog.domain.com. Do you have any resources for the pros and cons of this? I understand that google looks at them very similarly now, is that true for google +?
Technical SEO | | tylerfraser0 -
Umbrella company and multiple domains
I'm really sorry for asking this question yet again. I have searched through previous answers but couldn't see something exactly like this I think. There is a website called example .com. It is a sort of umbrella company for 4 other separate domains within it - 4 separate companies. The Home page of the "umbrella" company website is example.com. It is just an image with no content except navigation on it to direct to the 4 company websites. The other pages of website example.com are the 4 separate companies domains. So on the navigation bar there is : Home page = example.com company1page = company1domain.com company2page= company2domain.com etc. etc. Clicking "home" will take you back to example.com (which is just an image). How bad or good is this structure for SEO? Would you recommend any changes to help them rank better? The "home" page has no authority or links, and neither do 3 out of the 4 other domains. The 4 companies websites are independent in content (although theme is the same). What's bringing them altogether is under this umbrella website - example.com. Thank you
Technical SEO | | AL123al0 -
I've consolidated other domains to a single one with 301 redirects, yet the new domain authority in MOZ is much less that the redirected ones. Is that right?
I'm trying to increase the domain authority of my main site, so decided to consolidate other sites. One of the other sites has a much higher domain authority, but I don't know why after a 301 redirect, the new site's domain authority hasn't changed on over a month. Does MOZ take account of thes types of things?
Technical SEO | | bytecgroup2 -
Domain redirection and seo implications
We have an existing site that is a subdomain but we recently acquired an exact match domain. Will building links to the exact match domain and having the domain point at our existing subdomain work or should we convert the entire site and redirect our existing subdomain to the new domain? What I'm trying to figure out is how to maximize the benefit here and how the existing mass of links pointing to our existing subdomain (shop.domain.com) can be used. New domain: keywordshop.com Existing URL: shop.domain.com
Technical SEO | | CHarkins0 -
Any way around buying hosting for an old domain to 301 redirect to a new domain?
Howdy. I have just read this QA thread, so I think I have my answer. But I'm going to ask anyway! Basically DomainA.com is being retired, and DomainB.com is going to be launched. We're going to have to redirect numerous URLs from DomainA.com to DomainB.com. I think the way to go about this is to continue paying for hosting for DomainA.com, serving a .htaccess from that hosting account, and then hosting DomainB.com separately. Anybody know of a way to avoid paying for hosting a .htaccess file on DomainA.com? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | SamTurri0 -
New Sub-domains or New Directories for 10+ Year Domain?
We've got a one-page, 10+ year old domain that has a 65/100 domain authority that gets about 10k page views a day (I'm happy to share the URL but didn't know if that's permitted). The content changes daily (it's a daily bible verse) so most of this question is focused on domain authority, not the content. We're getting ready to provide translations of that daily content in 4 languages. Would it be better to create sub-domains for those translations (same content, different language) or sub-folders? Example: http://cn.example.com
Technical SEO | | ipllc
http://es.example.com
http://ru.example.com or http://example.com/cn
http://example.com/es
http://example.com/ru We're able to do either but want to pick the one that would give the translated version the most authority both now and moving forward. (We definitely don't want to penalize the root domain.) Thanks in advance for your input.0