Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Ranking drop after sub domain to sub directory migration. Usual?
-
Hi all,
We had our help articles on sub-domain help.website.com. Then we moved it to sub directory website.com/help/. We expected ranking improvement of website.com as there is a wide saying of benefiting from sub domain to sub directory migration. We have noticed that ranking improvement of new sub directory pages (website.com/help/) but not for any main website pages (website.com). I presume that link juice from main website has benefited new sub directory pages but main website lost ranking due to the page rank dilution. Do you agree? Any ideas?
Thanks
-
Hmmmm - that is interesting then
I'd of done exactly what you've done. I take it you mean you're home page has dropped in rankings? Are the sub domains outranking it?
How's your internal link structure/navigation back to the home page.
As I say I don't think you've done anything wrong - A link building campaign to the home page might benefit you but even then I'd be tempted to ignore it and focus on the sub domains - ask yourself as a user - When was the last time you used a home page as a landing page as opposed to a page that served your specific request?
-
I can say the website got affected in between not benefited and suffered.
Main website pages are around 130 where new sub directory have almost 1000 pages. But we do have other sub domains and sub directories. Especially, we have blog as sub directory which have hundreds of pages.
-
If it's a sub directory and it's been migrated correctly and the old sub domain has been removed/redirected then yes it will be considered part of the new website.
It sounds like the sub directory has has benefited (albeit eventually) are you saying the main website a. hasn't benefited or b. actually suffered?
Whilst from an SEO standpoint the main site should have benefited as a whole from the new sub directory from a UX standpoint I probably would only expect the sub directories to massively change.
How big is the website? did the sub directories double the amount of content? Or just add a few pages - What you've done is right, from an SEO and UX perspective (in my opinion) but I think you might be hoping for too much from it.
There isn't always a silver bullet when it comes to rankings... just a lot of hard slog
-
Eventually new sub directory pages gained the ranking improvement, but not main site pages. I can say that the fall hasn't happened overnight. I actually expected to be performing better but main website didn't pick up as per the estimation. This is what concerns me more. And competitors have almost stable rankings over the period.
One confident answer I been expecting from you is, if the sub domain has been migrated to sub directory, Google will consider it as a pert of the website. So the traffic of the sub directory will fall into website. Then the visits of the new sub directory will benefit the website or not?
-
Has you're traffic and rankings actually dropped or remained static over that top?
Is that to the main site or the sub directory?
and don't forget - ranking factors aren't always down to what you've done. You could be doing everything fine but if you're competitors are doing something better you'll still be doing everything right and experience a drop.
-
Hi James,
Thanks for such response. You made it almost clear. But the migration to new sub directory happened months back and we don't see any other reason for our main website drop or not improving as expected. Most of the keywords people land on new sub directory are brand related searched as it's all about help guides of our product. I just wonder why main site hasn't benefited when new sub directory even after months. So, do you agree with my expectation that more number of visitors from different IP addressed to our website or sub directory will benefit in rankings? And you mentioned that you need more detail to answer this question. Please let me know the exact details you need for better understanding of the scenario.
Thanks
Satish
-
I'm not sure there's enough detail here to answer the question correctly
You say the sub directory has benefited which for me would have been the main goal of this exercise - I wouldn't have expected much short term benefit to the main site. You're right, in the long term the extra content/traffic will help (assuming the sub directory is serving peoples searches) but I'd assume the Homepage and the sub directory will have different key words with the sub domains being more specific or long tail.
If the sub directory has benefited I'd just sit back and wait for the rest to happen - that won't be overnight though as Google builds up a view of people using those pages
You may have been hoping for a bit too much overnight I'm afraid.
-
Hi Becker,
Thanks for the response. As I told, sub directory pages are ranking good. That's because they are now part of our main website and root domain is influencing them. But I thought this migration will help as the visitors of new sub directory counts as visitors of website and that's how we gonna benefited from Google. But seems like it didn't workout as expected. I think main reason is because of more internal links increased, PR got diluted.
-
There are not a lot of reasons for a better ranking root domain. Möge dir improvement of the help content. Why did u expected a better ranking for the Rest? There was "No" change, Just some new internal links. They have been there before, nur from another URL.
Main Website lost? Thats the Strange Part, if true.
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
-
Does an EAT score on my YMYL site impact my rankings?
I've read some conflicting information on YMYL and EAT. If the Google Quality Raters are out there reviewing YMYL pages and scoring them on EAT, does that site's score have an impact on that page's/site's ranking?
Algorithm Updates | | BFMichael0 -
How can I discover the Google ranking number for a keyword in Brazil?
Hello, how can I discover the Google ranking number for a keyword in Brazil location. I need to know what is the position in Brazil location for the keyword "ligação internacional" in the Google search engine for the webpage www.solaristelecom.com/ligacao-internacional. I tried to use the Moz tools to discover it but only shows that I am not in the top 50, then I want to know where I am, and if I am listed or not. I tried to search it in my browser and didn't show the name of my website. Thank you.
Algorithm Updates | | lmoraes1 -
Google ranking impact: Returning visitor vs New visitor
Hi all, If a website's traffic increase in "New visitors"; will this impact rankings? Do the website overall traffic affect rankings? How much this is related with ranking improvement for main keywords? Just because thousands of visits increased for website, will it count as a strong ranking improvement signal? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Why is old site not being deindexed post-migration?
We recently migrated to a new domain (16 days ago), and the new domain is being indexed at a normal rate (2-3k pages per day). The issue is the old domain has not seen any drop in indexed pages. I was expecting a drop in # of indexed pages inversely related to the increase of indexed pages on the new site. Any advice?
Algorithm Updates | | ggpaul5620 -
Flat Structure URL vs Structured Sub-directory URL
We are finally taking our classifieds site forward and moving into a much improved URL structure, however, there is some disagreement over whether to go with a Flat URL structure or a structured sub-directory. I've browsed all of the posts and Q&A's for this going back to 2011, and still don't feel like I have a real answer. Has anyone tested this yet, or is there any consensus over ranking? I am in a disagreement with another SEO manager about this for our proposed URL structure redesign who is for it because it is what our competitors are doing. Our classifieds are geographically based, and we group by state, county, and city. Most of our traffic comes from state and county based searches. We also would like to integrate categories into the URL for some of the major search terms we see. The disagreement arises around how to structure the site. I prefer the logical sub-directory style: [sitename]/[category]/[state]/[county]/
Algorithm Updates | | newspore
mysite.com/for-sale/california/kern-county/
or
[sitename]/[category]/[county]-county-[stateabb]/
mysite.com/for-sale/kern-county-ca/ I don't mind the second, except for when you look at it in the context of the whole site: Geo Landing Pages:
mysite.com/california/
mysite.com/los-angeles-ca-90210/ Actual Search Pages:
mysite.com/for-sale/orange-ca/[filters] Detail Pages:
mysite.com/widget-type/cool-product-name/productid I want to make sure this flat structure performs better before sacrificing my analytics sanity (and ordered logic). Any case studies, tests or real data around this would be most helpful, someone at Moz must've tackled this by now!0 -
Having 2 domains with same name - Impact on SEO
Hi AllAs we still dwindle with the rankings not coming in line with the efforts.I have a question: We have 2 websites 1. http://www.example.com/ (which lost traffic and rank in Jan 2013). So we assumed that it was due to some penguin penalty. So we worked on disavow extra but nothing actually helped.Though there was no manual penalty mentioned in the GWT. Frustrated with this we thought of having another website 6 months back: 2. https://example.org/ - we did all the right things and by the book. But we are not seeing ranking here too. We did backlink analysis on all competitors and worked on only quality links they had. So all our links are highly highly relevant. But still the ranks are not moving beyond third page...in fact they moved to 6-7 page in last 2-3 days. Please suggest .. 1. is it due to same name of domain (our brand name) causing the issue. If yes should we go for 302 or 301 redirect to save ourselves from any penalty that our last website may have got. We can not leave that name unattended as our cataloges etc have that website mentioned. i will expect a scientific reply here not gut feeling please. 2. Is it to do with .org domain extension that it should not be with commercial organizations like us Kindly reply at the earliest Regards Aman
Algorithm Updates | | Aman_1230 -
Correlation of Rankings with Personal Pronouns?
Has there been any tests or studies that associate writing in the first person or using "emotional" feeling phrases to higher rankings. More specifically to a blog structure. I'm trying a blog option with a local telecommunications company, however I'm having flashbacks of writing those 5 paragraph essays when taking the SATs. The owner decided he should take on the responsibility and it's like he just can't bring himself to write from a personal perspective. He's a bit stuck in the "professional" mindset and worried about appearing unprofessional. I empathize with his perspective, but I know it's not going to work..or maybe it will? it's just not going to be interesting to readers, but perhaps google will appreciate the fresh content. I don't think letting an employee takeover will be an option as he's very protective of the company's image. So would you ditch the blog? or continue with the dull posts?
Algorithm Updates | | squareplug0 -
Rankings changing every couple of MINUTES in Google?
We've been experiencing some unusual behaviour in the Google.co.uk SERPs recently... Basically, the ranking of some of our websites for certain keywords appears to be changing by the minute. For example, doing a search for "our keyword" might show us at #20. Then a few minutes later, doing the same search shows us at #14, and then the same search a few minutes later shows us at #26, and then sometimes we're not ranked at all, etc etc. I know the algorithm changes a lot, but does it really change every couple of minutes? Has anyone else experienced this kind of behaviour in the SERPs? What could be causing it to happen?
Algorithm Updates | | d4online0