Secondary Domain Outranking Master Website
-
IEEE is a large professional association dedicated to serving engineers. The IEEE Web Presence is made up of flagship sites like IEEE.org, IEEEXplore, and IEEE Spectrum, mid-tier sites like Computer.org, and smaller sites like those dedicated to specific conferences.
It is unclear exactly when this started - but searches in Google for [ieee] currently return ieeeusa.org before ieee.org. This is troublesome, as users are typically looking for IEEE.org with such a general query. ieeeusa.org is a site that has a much narrower focus - it is dedicated to public policy.
IEEE.org is one of the strongest domains - I am thinking that this is a glitch of some sort. I am removing a stale sitemap that is referenced in robots.txt (though again, I'm not seeing any issues with other pages - its just two queries that are trouble: [ieee] and [about ieee]. And its noticeable in analytics
http://ieee.d.pr/hMg0/YhklCw7Z
What do you think?
-
Hi Thomas,
As Vahe said, searching from outside of the US is bringing up the .org site first, so I agree that this is probably a geolocation issue. The .org has many times more backlinks than the US site. It's essentially a glitch, but one Google has probably done with the best of intentions, meaning to show US content to a US audience. Is the US site geotargeted to the United States in Webmaster Tools? Unless the site has some rankings that you are very concerned not to lose, try removing that geotargeting for now and monitor results for about four weeks.
-
Thomas,
I reckon this is just a geo personalisation factor and not an issue with site authority or optimisation. What I mean by this is, is that because you are based in the US and the IEEE US website is more strongly associated with a US audience, then Google is likely to rank the US domain first.
When I do a Google US search I see the exact same "issue" issue you are having - https://www.google.com/search?q=ieee&gl=us&pws=0
But I don't see this issue here when searching from Australia - https://www.google.com.au/search?q=ieee&pws=0. In fact the US domain doesn't appear at all on the first page.
To have the IEEE domain outranking over the US, there are two on-page elements you could potentially focus on:
1. Content - IEEE USA has a alot more content implicitly targeting "IEEE" on the homepage. Providing overview content about the organisation, can probably help with providing context and initial value to users to define a brief org background and how they can use the site.
2. Cannonicalisation - Cross link between all IEEE owned websites (maybe in the footer) to provide signals to Google that these sites all essentially sit under the IEEE brand. And because the IEEE.org site is the most authoritative, there is a higher likeliehood of the site outranking the other.
I hope this helps.
Regards,
Vahe
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
-
Why Moz is showing Spam Score at my New Domain?
Hi folks I just registered a new domains boring magazine but I forgot to check the spam score. Recently, I checked and it showing spam score of 46% without any backlinks. You can check the domain age is 30 Days only till now. Need your recommendations on how can I reduce it and on which basis Moz showing it as spams? sp.PNG
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ImranZahidAli0 -
Posting same content multiple blogs or multiple website - 2018
Submitting same content on multiple site or blog using original source Links. Its good or bad in term on Ranking and SEO. Can we post same content on multiple website with orginal post reference same like Press release site technique.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | HuptechWebseo0 -
Increase in spammy links from image gallery websites i.e. myimagecollection.net
Hi there I've recently noticed a lot of spammy links coming from image gallery sites that all look the same, i.e.: http://mypixlibrary.co/ http://hdimagegallery.net/ http://myimagecollection.net/ http://pixhder.com/ Has anyone else seen links from these? They have no contact details, not sure if they are some form of negative SEO or site spam. Any ideas how to get rid? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Kerry_Jones0 -
I've purchased a PR 6 domain what will be best use of it ?
I've purchased a PR 6 domain what will be best use of it ? Should make a new site or redirect it to my low pr sites? Or I wasted my $100 ?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | IndiaFPS0 -
Whay are low-quality exact match domains still ranking well for our biggest term?
There are a number of low-quality “exact-match” domains that are ranking well for the term “locum tenens”. I don’t want to specifically mention any sites, but there are some with poor content and very few quality backlinks that are on page one. The only reason I can see for them ranking so well is the fact that “locum” and/or “tenens” are in the URL. It’s very frustrating because we have worked hard to do all the right things (regular blogging, high-quality content, quality backlinks, etc.) to build our domain authority and page authority so they are better than these sites, yet they still out-rank us. Our site is www.bartonassociates.com. Could it have something to do with the term “locum tenens”, which is a latin phrase? Is it possible that because it is a latin term that it somehow slipped through the cracks and avoided the update that was supposed to eliminate this? If so, what can we do to get some justice?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ba_seomoz0 -
301 domain name URL variants for canonicalization question in htaccess?
#1 RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^xyz.com [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.xyz.com/$1 [L,R=301] What I want to do here is to redirect URLs that have omitted the “www.” prefix to the full “www.xyz.com” home page URL. That means the home page URL http://xyz.com will not resolve on its own, but instead will redirect to http://www.xyz.com (without trailing slash). #2 RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /([^/]+/)*(default|index).(html|php|htm)\ HTTP/ [NC] RewriteRule ^(([^/]+/)*)(default|main|index).(html|php|htm)$ http://www.xyz.com/$1 [L,R=301] What I want to do here is to ensure that any home page URL that includes several versions of explicit page name references, such as default.htm or index.html, will be redirected to the canonical home page URL, http://www.xyz.com (without trailing slash). Are the rewrite rules correct? Thanks in advance!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | esiow20130 -
Unique businesses - unique domain names?
A client of mine owns a studio space where he teaches yoga and martial arts. It's a new business and we're deciding how to create the website(s) and which domain(s) to buy. The idea right now is to have 3 websites for each side of the business, and I'm looking for validation of this idea. I haven't been able to find an answer in the Q&A forum that quite applies to our situation. Website 1: for the studio itself. The audience is other yoga teachers, martial arts teachers, or personal trainers. He will rent out the studio space to them and they bring in their own clients. Content and keywords will relate to this. Website 2: yoga classes. The audience is members of the public who want to take yoga classes. Content and keywords will relate to this. Website 3: martial arts. The audience is members of the public who want to take martial arts classes. Content and keywords will relate to this. We will make certain there's no duplicate content on the sites, but it makes sense for them to link to each other because they're similar in nature (personal health and fitness at the studio), and the latter 2 services are offered at the studio, of course. Question 1: (a) is it a good idea to get a separate domain for each site? for example: www.city-studio.com, www.unique-name-yoga.com, www.unique-name-martial-arts.com (b) Or would it be better to keep it all under city-studio.com and use subdomains like yoga.city-studio.com and martial-arts.city-studio.com? In either case, the keywords "yoga" and "martial arts" would be in the domain name, which has benefit. Does that still apply for subdomains? (c) Or would these services even be considered similar enough that I just use www.city-studio.com/yoga.php and www.city-studio.com/martial-arts..php There will of course be several pages on yoga and several on martial arts. Question 2: if registering multiple domains, they will interlink as much as possible. (a) what do we consider when buying the domains? (b) use a different address for WHOIS of each domain? (c) can technical contact be the same address (mine, the consultant)? (d) use a different credit card for each? (e) ok if the name on the credit card is the same? (f) can we register them all the same day? (h) same domain registrar? (i) same host? we don't want to appear black hat by having multiple sites, but I think it's very legitimate to have the business split into 3 sites like this just because they're separate sides of the business with different audiences, content, keywords. Question 3: when the domains come up for renewal in 1 year (or more), would it be safe to switch them all over to one credit card then, for convenience to the owner? Question 4: is there anything important I haven't mentioned here? I appreciate any input and discussion.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Kenoshi0 -
Creating multiple domains with key phrases and linking back and forth to them
There are several of my competitors who have built multiple sites with keywords in their domain names such as localaustinplumber.com, houstonplumbers.com, Dallasplumbers.com, localdallasplumbingservices.com...you get the picture. (These are just made up examples to illustrate what they are doing) They put unique content on each page and use alias whois using a different credit card to set up each domain to hide the fact from Google that they are the same entity and then link back and forth to each of the domains with appropriate keywords in the anchor text. They are outranking me on a lot of key search phrases due to the fact that they have the keywords in the domain name. They have no other outside links other than the links from the domains that they own. Is this a good idea? is it black hat? are they going to get slapped if someone reports them as a link farm? It's frustrating for me staying white hat and getting legitimate links and then these competitors come in and out rank me after only a few months with this scheme. Is this a common practice to rank highly for certain key phrases? Thanks in advance for your opinions! Ron10
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Ron100