Search traffic hit after switching magazine to subdomain
-
Hi there,
I'm fairly new at all of this and would appreciate any help with understanding why our website has taken a hit in traffic. We curate an online magazine, which was previously accessible through: forensicoutreach.com. It was receiving about 2,000+ unique visitors per day up until a week ago, when we changed a few things.
However, the magazine doesn't reflect what our business does, so we created a product-focused web presence on forensicoutreach.com, and moved the magazine (which everyone loved) to library.forensicoutreach.com (DA 37, PA 1).
We thought separating the properties was a good idea, but now I'm not so sure. Our traffic on library.forensicoutreach.com is 1,500 (so 500 less than usual!) and our main property has about 56 unique visits a day. It's pretty substantial.
A few questions:
1. If we move the library to forensicoutreach.com/library, will that make any difference?
2. Where did we go wrong here and how can we fix it?
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
-
Thanks -- this was indeed the issue. Appreciate your help.
-
Thanks very much for your response. I've changed it back to the subfolder setting and we've regained our lost traffic. Amazing!
-
If your audience is the same as the audience for your business, I'd highly advocate keeping this in a subfolder like /library/ rather than a subdomain.
If your audience is different, then I'm not certain why you're doing the magazine, so let's assume that's not the case.
You will see a drop in organic traffic by moving to a subdomain for the reasons covered in the Whiteboard Friday that Dmytro shared. Regardless of whether you leave it on the subdomain or the subfolder, you'll need to create proper 301 redirects as Eric mentioned.
Please let us know if you have questions on that process, but to clearly answer the question of "If we move the library to forensicoutreach.com/library, will that make any difference?", YES, we recommend doing that /library/ subfolder.
-
Whenever you change to a new subdomain, or you change domains, you'll need to tell Google that you're doing it. Here's what we recommend:
1. Set up 301 Permanent Redirects from the old URLs to the new URLs. This will forward/redirect users to the new location, including the search engine crawlers.
2. Verify the new location (the new subdomain) in Google Search Console and use the Change of Address Tool to tell Google that you've moved.
3. Update Google Analytics so that it reflects the new URL.
By verifying the site you'll see the traffic in the Google Search Console and Google will recognize that change faster if you use the Change of Address tool.
-
Hi,
I think what might be causing the traffic drop is the fact that you have moved your library to a submain as oppose to keeping it under the root domain.
Have a look at this whiteboard Friday. https://moz.com/blog/subdomains-vs-subfolders-rel-canonical-vs-301-how-to-structure-links-optimally-for-seo-whiteboard-friday
This should give you some heads up.
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
-
Over the last few months i have seen a huge spike in traffic from foreign countries
In GA i have seen a huge spike in traffic from foreign countries like japan, china, brazil, germany. the bounce rates are almost all 100%. any ideas why this is occurring?
Reporting & Analytics | | dhanson240 -
Yahoo and Bing Ranking Hits
Morning, Has anyone else in the UK seen a massive ranking shift on Bing and Yahoo over the last week? One of our eccommerce client's main keywords was ranking #3 and #11 on Bing and Yahoo respectively last week, but today they've dropped to #32 and #35. It seems rather strange as pretty much all of the main keywords have increased on Google. In fact, pretty much all of the Google rankings are the highest they've been since the SEO campaign commenced in October/November! Cheers, Lewis
Reporting & Analytics | | PeaSoupDigital0 -
Drop in direct traffic
Hi, I help look after two websites and have been tracking traffic sources for a couple of years. I have noticed that both sites have seen a drop in direct traffic over 2 years. Has anyone else noticed this and do you have a hypothesis as to the reason? Overall, on both sites traffic has increased. Thanks, Amelia
Reporting & Analytics | | CommT0 -
Universal cookie loss specific traffic
Hi there, A month ago we have installed the Universal Analytics tracking code on our website (www.smartphonehoesjes.nl). Since that time, direct traffic has risen unnaturally and organic traffic dropped unnaturally. I dived into this problem and I discovered there is a cookie loss on when visitors are switching from /cart to the first step checking out. The problem is that not all browsers cause these cookie issues, only Safari and IE older versions (9 and older) and some cases of Chrome. All iPads cause cookie issues (50% of all cases). iPhones cause not a single problem because we are using a separate mobile (m.) site which does not cause cookie problems. We don't have a mobile site for tablets yet, soon it will come. My biggest question is: how can I fix the Safari desktop cookie loss after switching domains from /cart to the first step of the chckout process? Olders versions of IE will slowly fade out and the iPad problem will be fixed when the mobile website is available for tablets. I hope someone can help me.
Reporting & Analytics | | MarcelMoz
Thanks in advance. Marcel0 -
Does PPC affect SEO Traffic?
Last week my website (www.cooke.co.uk) started PPC advertising with Google. This has been successful in increasing the amount of overall traffic to the site. However, since we started the PPC advertising, our traffic from organic search has decreased significantly. Our rankings haven't changed dramatically enough to warrant such a decrease. Has anyone else been in a situation where organic traffic has dropped as a result of launching a paid campaign? What did you do to rectify it? Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | AAttias0 -
Direct traffic decline
I've noticed a few of our sites (tour, hotel, and local attraction) which are very established and reasonably high brand recognition that have experienced a significant decrease in branded traffic (-20-30% compared to same period from the previous year) the past few months. There have been no changes in offline marketing though we are seeing a slight decrease in visitor arrivals (-5%) and higher hotel room rates. Is there a chance that Google's not set may be affecting direct traffic numbers? Any other thoughts on how we can figure out why brand traffic is dipping? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | SoulSurfer80 -
Best way to measure local search keyword rank
I have several clients that have a regional or local presence and want to track their rankings for various keywords, but only in the areas they are located in. What are the best ways to track keyword rank in specific locations or regions of the US?
Reporting & Analytics | | TheURLdr0 -
Google Analytics subdomain ecommerce tracking flatlines :-(
Buongiorno from 19 degrees C wetherby UK 🙂 This website http://www.philpotts.co.uk/ contains a shop sub domian @ http://shop.philpotts.co.uk/. I configured the site Ga analytics code to include the subdomain (see below code). I had to do this as i was getting refferal data from the actuall subdomain. But after following the instructions on p117 of cutroni's ga book things have gone wrong, mainly now eCommerce data has dissapeared 😞 So my question is please: "Why has installing the GA code above caused eCommerce tracking to suddenly go dead?" Grazie tanto,
Reporting & Analytics | | Nightwing
David0