Can subdomains avoid spam penalizations?
-
Hello everyone,
I have a basic question for which I couldn't find a definitive answer for.
Let's say I have my main website with URL:
And I have a related affiliates website with URL:
Which includes completely different content from the main website. Also, both domains have two different IP addresses.
Are those considered two completely separate domains by Google? Can bad links pointing to affiliates.mywebsite.com affect www.mywebsite.com in any way?
Thanks in advance for any answer to my inquiry!
-
Sure, I understand, that makes sense. Thank you for your help!
-
Hi Fabrizo,
As answered by Joshua Belland in above answer, you will need to be careful with how you plan it out.
The IP and DNS need to be on a different server.
Be careful about how prtovide link for these with each other.
Regards,
Vijay
-
Sorry guys, I wasn't enough clear with my first question above, it was actually too generic.
To cut to the chase, I am talking about our main website:
www.virtualsheetmusic.com (IP 66.29.153.48)
and our affiliate website which is:
affiliates.virtualsheetmusic.com (IP 66.29.153.50)
They have 2 different IPs, but they are on the same server and same network, of course their are on the same IP block.
And I'd like to know to what extent the activity/status of one site can affect the other, but from what you are asking, I guess they could affect each other to some extent. I mean, Google could understand that they are part of the same "network" and then associate them anyway... right?
-
Are these subdomain properties on different A class ip blocks or different C class ip blocks?
It think this all depends. If the IP addresses are in the same neighborhood or on the same subnets as each other then I would say yes. But beyond that you have to think about several other foot prints to look for:
- Are the nameservers the same?
- Are these ip addresses assigned to different regions?
- Are you interlinking these web properties?
- Even the fact that the subdomain is still associated with the domain makes nervous and only because that is easy for Google to track. If you think about how may other data points they use to find footprints in their algorithm, I don't see why that wouldn't be one of them.
I would be careful with RankBrain continuously evolving and seeing how much turbulence there has been in the serps lately. Personally, my small PBN is completely on separate A Class IPs, with custom name servers, different hosts, and I only put premium content on it. It's not great for quick affiliate gigs, but it certainly helps sustain long term growth.
-
Hi Fabrizo,
Yes, they would be treated as different entities, as a precaution, I would recommend the geographical location of the server IP to be far off and not from the same IP block.
Thanks,
Vijay
-
Thank you Vijay for your extensive answer, but as I wrote above, each sub-domain has its own separate IP address. So... if each sub-domain has its own IP address, are they treated as two completely different websites?
-
Hi Fabrizo,
A subdomain is treated a different entity, however since it comes from the same IP, it's risky to create backlinks to main the site and subdomain. Let me try to answer your question by giving you an example, where we experimented with the idea of subdomain and main site linking , it would help you understand how google treats them as different entities.
We had a client who runs one of his donation campaign for his project from his subdomain and used the main domain for commercial purpose.
He was linking both domains in reciprocal links to send traffic to donation subdomain from the main site and vice versa. The results were shocking as the donation website was ranking far better on even commercial keywords better than main website. We did a deeper analysis and found out the donation website was out-performing main website in terms of high authority contextual backlinks. After some time, the main site started dipping more on the organic traffic and results, we analysed and concluded it was reciprocal linking that was the source of the problem.
We had to make a choice either to remove reciprocal backlinks or test the subdomain on a separate IP. First, we removed the reciprocal links (even if the client was not ready easily) just to prove to the client that it was subdomain links that were causing the problem, the results were good as the main site recovered the ranks and traffic (we also implemented our planned off-page for both the sites) .
Now, this helped us conclude that same IP + subdomain was an issue but we were not sure whether moving to another server would help (not only IP, we had made clear that we wanted a separate location for server IP from hosting company). We shifted the IP first and then watched the results , the donation site was steadily improving on donation related keywords and dipping on commercial keywords, on the other hand, the main website crept up slowly in ranks on commercial keywords (they were medium-high competition keywords).
We made it clear to the client, that this time the links won't be reciprocal and he has to decide his priority about which site he wants to give follow and no follow links. The client wanted the backlinks from donation to the main site with do-follow links, so we created the same. This further helped our commercial website rank to improve, we are still running the websites in the same mode and the results are good.
I hope this answers your query and would help you have a decision. if you have further questions, please feel free to respond and ask.
Regards,
Vijay
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
-
How to Avoid Improper Special Characters from Being Pulled into SERPs
If you Google "Progressive careers," for the Progressive.com result you'll see a result where Google pulls in content from the page outside of the meta description (not uncommon) and also pulls in an in-page carrot that indicates a link. This character displays as a square on desktop / Android devices. The site includes this character as an accessibility best practice to indicate a link from a heading for screen readers. On iPhones, that square shows up as a soccer ball emoji even though the entity code is different than our character's entity code (our entity code= , soccer ball entity code is ⚽). Clearly, not the best experience. I know we cannot control what piece of the page is pulled in as the meta description, but does anyone have any tips to hide or help avoid pulling in that special character?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | P-C-A0 -
Changing URL to a subdomain?
Hi there, I had a website www.footballshirtcollective.com that has been live since July. It contains both content and eCommerce. I am now separating out the content so that; 1. The master domain is www.footballshirtcollective.com (content) pointing to a new site 2. Subdomain is store.footballshirtcollective.com (ecommerce) - pointing to the existing site. What do you advise I can do to minimise the impact on my search? Many thanks Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mjmaxwell0 -
SEO: Subdomain vs folders
Hello, here's our situation:We have an ecommerce website, say www.example.com. For support, we use zendesk which offers a great platform that makes publishing FAQ and various resource articles very easy. We're torn between publishing these articles on our actual website, or publishing them via Zendesk. If we publish them on our website, the url would be something like:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yacpro13
www.example.com/articles/title_article.html On the other hand, if we publish them via zendesk, the url would look like:
support.example.com/articles/title_of_article We would like to publish them via Zendesk, however, we do no want to miss out on any SEO benefit, however marginal it may be. Doing it this way, the domain would have all of the ecommerce pages (product and category pages), and the subdomain would have ALL other types of pages (help articles and also policies, such as return policies, shipping info, etc etc). I know a long time ago, folders were preferred over subdomains for SEO, but things change all the time.Do you think setting up all the ecommerce pages on the domain, and all content pages on the subdomain, would be a lesser solution? Thanks.0 -
How Can Google tell, if a anchor text is exact match
So, I was thinking to myself today. Couldn't Google say everything is an exact match anchor text in reality? Such as, Hyundai in Boston, Or cars in boston? I'm just concerned, that's all. Thanks for your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeterRota0 -
Can google read ajax
Looking to load a one page product view instead of 10 pages of pagination. Does google read ajax and see all 10 pages as 1 page.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Archers1 -
What reports should I run, what else can i improve?
Hi, I ran a full Ranking analysis report for "empresa diseño web" for Google Mexico. From what I could see, my site has better metrics in most items than many of the top 10 sites for those keywords. What other reports should I run in order to gain some insights on how to improve on my site and improve my position? Thanks and regards, Rosario
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | prointernacional0 -
Website redesign - how do I avoid screwing up my site SEO?
We are preparing to launch a newly designed (and much improved) website in the next few months. I want to be very careful to ensure we do not mess up any rankings (and hopefully actually improve rankings) when switching over the site. I'm particularly concerned about one key phrase that our homepage currently ranks on. After the redesign it would be more appropriate for our of our subpages to rank for that term, but I'd rather have our homepage rank (less relevant for this keyword than the subpage) then nothing at all. I know about 301 redirects, and we are planning on creating a few comprehensive diagrams to ensure we redirect old pages to the correct new pages. Beyond that, what can I do to preserve our rankings? Thanks! -Ryan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RyanD.0 -
Can I use the same source for two different websites?
I have developed a successful portal based website but would like to grow my portfolio of sites by expanding into new niches and sectors. I would like to use the same source code to fast track new sites but I'm not sure of the dangers involved. Content, meta details etc. will all be unique and the only similarity will be the html code. Another example of how I want to use this is that my current site targets the UK but I want to target a global market with a .com domain and this would involve using the same source. Is this possible without a penalty or am I overlooking something?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mulith0