Our subdomain hosts content that can not be optimized (static videos) - should I de-index it?
-
We host static tours on a subdomain that points to the video tour host. I can not add meta or optimize any of these video pages and there are thousands. Should I de-index the entire subdomain? I am seeing errors for no meta, dup content etc in MOZ reporting.
If yes, do I add the Disallow: /subdomain.root.nl/ to the primary domain's website/CMS or in DNS records ? Our web company is saying the no follow needs to be added in DNS but I feel like it should be added to the robots.txt file if SERP's are going to acknowledge the sub is no longer to be crawled and the primary is no longer to be penalized.
Thank you so much in advance!
-
Thanks you Serge! Sorry for the delay - I appreciate your help so so much!
So...
the primary is masonmorse.com
the subdomain is tours.masonmorse.com - all the content on the subdomain can not be optimized and there are thousands of video pages that all appear the same (they load them by broker name) - it has no other content and we do not want these to be indexed (we post them elsewhere and optimize) nor do we want to be penalized for the duplicate content and missing meta.
I thought our web company could ad the disallow txt file on the main site (masonmorse.com) but they are telling me I need to add it to the DNS record. Could you guide me to where the disallow needs to be added since the web company we work with seems to not understand my request at all.
Thank you!
-
Hi there,
A few things:
- If there are thousands of pages on your site that only contain a video per page, that would be considered thin content from an SEO perspective. If you are trying to fix that I would recommend adding a noindex tag to all of the video pages, resubmitting those URLs to search console (or wait until Google crawls them), and then once the pages are removed from in the index I would add a disallow rule in the robots.txt file to prevent Google from crawling them.
- Another question: does the subdomain have any other content? Are the videos used elsewhere? It sounds like the videos themselves could be valuable from a business perspective and SEO is only one part of a site's success - I'd be thinking about how else I could utilize them in search (or other channels).
- Happy to look further if you want to post the subdomain - hopefully I understand correctly.
Hope that helps!
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
-
No Index thousands of thin content pages?
Hello all! I'm working on a site that features a service marketed to community leaders that allows the citizens of that community log 311 type issues such as potholes, broken streetlights, etc. The "marketing" front of the site is 10-12 pages of content to be optimized for the community leader searchers however, as you can imagine there are thousands and thousands of pages of one or two line complaints such as, "There is a pothole on Main St. and 3rd." These complaint pages are not about the service, and I'm thinking not helpful to my end goal of gaining awareness of the service through search for the community leaders. Community leaders are searching for "311 request service", not "potholes on main street". Should all of these "complaint" pages be NOINDEX'd? What if there are a number of quality links pointing to the complaint pages? Do I have to worry about losing Domain Authority if I do NOINDEX them? Thanks for any input. Ken
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KenSchaefer0 -
Same content on other domain owned by de company. Canonical is not working
Hi! I am analyzing a website right now. It's a school, let's name it NEWSCHOOL. This school is owned by other school, let's name it, BIGSCHOOL NEWSCHOOL is specialized in tourism degrees, and the BIGSCHOOL is a bigger and older one with a lot of different degrees. What happens is that NEWSCHOOL has a course, let's name it TOURISM DEGREE.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | teconsite
BIGSCHOOL has that course too, with the same content, trying to help to promote the content, because this school is older, well known and has a consolidated brand internationally. BIGSCHOOL, has placed a canonical tag, telling Google that content comes from NEWSCHOOL. What is happening is that the result of newschool is beeing omited by google. The first result is the BIGSCHOOL content, and then a lot of training portals, where the degree content is too to increase its visibility. So, I would like to know, how can we do to say google that the content that it should show is the one of NEWSCHOOL and not the one in BIGSCHOOL. It's pretty clear that Google knows that those portals are closed related, because it is omitting the NEWSCHOOL results. I know that we can send a link from the content area from one portal to the other in the content we want. But... would it solve the problem... and y we have to repeat that for each degree, woudn't it be a little dangerous? Would like to know your points of view! Thanks!0 -
Client wants a seperate .tv domain for their media/videos instead of a subdomain/subfolder. What is the best way to pass of link equity to a new domain?
We have a client that wants to place their video content on a .tv tld instead of a subfolder/subdomain in their .com website. They believe that the .tv domain will better represent the media experience of their business. We can understand this client's position however we are concerned about their .tv domain will lose out on the link equity if it were no longer placed in the .com's subdomain/subfolder. Here are our questions: 1. What would be the best way to pass of link equity from .com website to a new .tv domain? Should we just have a video link on the .com website that 301 directs to the new .tv domain? 2. Is there any SEO benefit of having a .tv domain for Google Video queries or even Youtube? 3. Is there any long term value of having two different websites? For link equity purposes we understand that it would be better if everything was in a .com. However is a .tv domain ideal for a better representation of their media content? We appreciate any feedback.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
Title tags seem to be going against Rand and suggestions here, what can I do? Can you help me please?
Hi to all, Ok so I have been beating myself up trying to figure out how to create a good ranking title for my websites homepage. My competition uses commas in its title tags But these are 100% against what Rand and many posts say here. I watched his whiteboard where he says don't use commas. There are posts that say, don't use commas. The biggest one is mortonbuildings(dot)com - followed by - lesterbuildings(dot)com They basically have the same title tags with commas. So what's the catch here? What am I missing? of course these sites have Great Domain Authority, but I swear what they are doing is going against what Rand and many other seo professional's are preaching. I thought it should read better for visitors? But to me it looks like keyword stuffing with a brand name? Any help is greatly appreciated to let me know if these commas and strategies are good to do? or bad news? Again thank you for your time to help a small business. Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | asbchris0 -
Turning off a subdomain
Hi! I'm currently working with http://www.muchbetteradventures.com/. They have a previous version of the site, http://v1.muchbetteradventures.com, as sub domain on their site. I've noticed a whole bunch of indexing issues which I think are caused by this. The v1 site has several thousand pages and ranks organically for a number of terms, but the pages are not relevant for the business at this time. The main site has just over 100 pages. More than 28,400 urls are currently indexed. We are considering turning off the v1 site and noindexing it. There are no real backlinks to it. The only worry is that by removing it, it will be seen as a massive drop in content. Rankings for the main site are currently quite poor, despite good content, a decent link profile and high domain authority. Any thoughts would be much appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Blink-SEO0 -
Moving some content to a new domain - best practices to avoid duplicate content?
Hi We are setting up a new domain to focus on a specific product and want to use some of the content from the original domain on the new site and remove it from the original. The content is appropriate for the new domain and will be irrelevant for the original domain and we want to avoid creating completely new content. There will be a link between the two domains. What is the best practice for this to avoid duplicate content and a potential Panda penalty?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Citybase0 -
How do I list the subdomains of a domain?
Hi Mozers, I am trying to find what subdomains are currently active on a particular domain. Is there a way to get a list of this information? The only way I could think of doing it is to run a google search on; site:example.com -site:www.example.com The only issues with this approach is that a majority of the indexed pages exist on the non-www domain and I still have thousands of pages in the results (mainly from the non-www). Is there another way to do it in Google? OR is there a server admin online tool that will tell me this information? Cheers, Dan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | djlaidler0 -
Blog content - what to do, and what to avoid in terms of links, when you're paying for blog content
Hi, I've just been looking at a restaurant site which is paying food writers to put food news and blogs on their website. I checked the backlink profile of the site and the various bloggers in question usually link from their blogs / company websites to the said restaurant to help promote any new blogs that appear on the restaurant site. That got me wondering about whether this might cause problems with Google. I guess they've been putting about one blog live per month for 2 years, from 12/13 bloggers who have been linking to their website. What would you advise?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0