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.
Ecommerce store on subdomain - danger of keyword cannibalization?
-
Hi all,
Scenario: Ecommerce website selling a food product has their store on a subdomain (store.website.com). A GOOD chunk of the URLs - primarily parameters - are blocked in Robots.txt. When I search for the products, the main domain ranks almost exclusively, while the store only ranks on deeper SERPs (several pages deep).
In the end, only one variation of the product is listed on the main domain (ex: Original Flavor 1oz 24 count), while the store itself obviously has all of them (most of which are blocked by Robots.txt).
Can anyone shed a little bit of insight into best practices here? The platform for the store is Shopify if that helps. My suggestion at this point is to recommend they all crawling in the subdomain Robots.txt and canonicalize the parameter pages.
As for keywords, my main concern is cannibalization, or rather forcing visitors to take extra steps to get to the store on the subdomain because hardly any of the subdomain pages rank. In a perfect world, they'd have everything on their main domain and no silly subdomain.
Thanks!
-
I posted a bit of a Reddit rant here under my personal SEO alias of "studiumcirclus":
(click "View Entire Discussion")
Mainly these things vex me about the platform:
"In basic terms, Shopify is limited by its vision. They want to make sites easy to design for the average-joe, which means they have to spend most of their platform dev time on the back-end of the system and not the front-end of the sites which it produces
_ If they're always bogged down making extra tick-boxes to change things in the back-end, how can they be keeping up with cutting edge SEO? With WordPress you have a much larger dev community making add-ons, many of them completely free and still very effective. Because everyone is on WP, when new Google features, directives or initiatives come out they are quickly embraced (putting all sites on WP one step ahead)_
_ With smaller dev communities, platforms like Shopify or Magento lag behind. Why do people always expect that 'average' will rank 'well'? Ahead of the curve ranks well, average ranks averagely_
_ Also Shopify has some nasty Page-Speed issues which they won't acknowledge and they just argue about instead of fixing things. It's just not good for SEO_"
Other "Shopify is bad" evidence:
https://moz.com/community/q/main-menu-duplication#reply_391855 - just contains some of my thoughts on why Shopify isn't that good
https://moz.com/community/q/site-crawl-status-code-430 - a relatively recent problem someone had with their Shopify site, scroll down to see my reply
https://moz.com/community/q/duplicate-content-in-shopify-subsequent-pages-in-collections - someone else having tech issues with their Shopify site. While my answer was probably right, they probably couldn't implement the fixes
-
This was incredibly helpful. Right now their funnel starts on the store (adding product to cart), but there's definitely a benefit to it starting on the main domain to better track how the channels perform and overall user behavior.
-
In summary - firstly echo effectdigital on Shopify. It is an interesting platform sold very well by Shopify zealots - but we have had to bend too many times to Shopify platform limitations to believe it is the right answer for most. It is awesome if your a bikini start-up with no CRM or ERP - however the moment it comes to a decent integration - it often gets ugly quickly.
On to your query - the shortened version to the answer is no-one knows. Why? because the algorithm treats subdomains differently for different sites. https://moz.com/blog/interview-searchlove There is a good piece on subdomains v subfolders in this WBF. In summary a good discussion on subdomains.
The click through to the subdomain should be a normal step, ie so assuming on the subdomain your landing on the relevant contextual page within the funnel to transact. That is normal for some back ends. You are correct ideally in my view all on the root domain.
Overall if the subdomain pages are critical and you want to rank, then need to treat subdomain for SEO as a separate site. However, if the subdomain is just the end part of the sales funnel.. then may not need to rank..
Hope that is helpful.
Regards
-
One reason we got out of shopify. Gets complicated quickly. There was a brilliant WBF on subdomains about 2 months ago - by the british dude from distilled who pops up from time to time. Will try and find it if get time, but would check that out as a starting point.
-
Yeah, I'm trying to figure out the best way to present to them all the pertinent information regarding how terrible Shopify is. The way they use Collections then block any sort of parameters in their unalterable Robots.txt file is insane.
-
That sounds like a hell of a mess. Instead of tying your name to one proposed implementation and saying "yes, this IS the way" - I'd get the complexity of the issue across to the client / boss
I'd then present your idea and say "I want to test this, but if results suffer we will need to revert the changes". I think that with such a complex architectural nightmare (on a HORRIBLE platform like Shopify, which is just awful for SEO) - it would be extremely foolish to charge off into the night without making the risks clear
The best practice is really to not have built such a terrible site to begin with. In making things better, there may be growing pains. There may be NO options which would result in 100% growth and 0% losses
My recommendation would be to continue blocking Google's access to the original, default product variations (as those are already happily ranking on the main site. Don't fix what ain't broken). I might allow Google to crawl the sub-variations which are inaccessible from the main site. I might alter the main site's UX to include links to the sub-variants on the 'shop.' subdomain
In the end though, it's a very tangled web they have spun
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
-
Replacing keywords by synonyms. Will it increase risk of google keyword stuffing penalization?
I have a page which is ranking already pretty well for a relative competitive keyword.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
Google also ranks us on first page for synonym of keyword we optimize the page for (even though synonym does not appear on our page). I am now considering to replace some occurences of the keyword in the page by different synonyms, in the hope that our ranking may further improve for these synonyms.
However I am concerned that google may penalize me for keyword stuffing if I am using a wide range of synonyms of one keyword on our page. My plan is only to replace some occurences of keyword with synonyms. I am a bit nerveous here since page is already ranking quite well in a competitive niche. Any thoughts?0 -
Proper Title Tags for ecommerce
In terms of E-commerce title tags. We are a manufacturer of our own clothing products. We are new to the SEO landscape so if this question is an obvious answer, then i apologize for wasting any one times in advance. We Manufacture our own clothing. Each item has a name. The names are American womens names such as amanda or lori or jenniffer etc. When we create the title tag for them should we include the name of the item itself at the beginning or end. For example should it be Item Name - Keyword - Keyword - Brand Name(aka manufacturer) or Keyword - Keyword - Item Name - Brand Name (aka manufacturer) The reason we ask this is because we think it would be a waste to rank for actual American names such as Jennifer and Jessica. All that we have read on Moz suggests that it seems to be better to have pertinent keywords in the beginning of the title as opposed to the end. In terms of our brand name we already rank number 1 for every combination of our brand. So we would like to start picking up traffic for the different product types we sell and there respective synonyms. Not sure if i am making any sense. Sorry in advance, and any help is very very much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Imagination0 -
Dev Subdomain Pages Indexed - How to Remove
I own a website (domain.com) and used the subdomain "dev.domain.com" while adding a new section to the site (as a development link). I forgot to block the dev.domain.com in my robots file, and google indexed all of the dev pages (around 100 of them). I blocked the site (dev.domain.com) in robots, and then proceeded to just delete the entire subdomain altogether. It's been about a week now and I still see the subdomain pages indexed on Google. How do I get these pages removed from Google? Are they causing duplicate content/title issues, or does Google know that it's a development subdomain and it's just taking time for them to recognize that I deleted it already?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
Subpage ranking for homepage keyword
Hi all, May seem like a simple scenario and I might be missing something, but my subpage seems to be ranking for my main homepage keyword. The subpage PR is 28 and my domain authority is 17, how can I get my main home page to rank instead of the sub page (product page)? I want to stay away from exact match anchor text links, any suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SO_UK0 -
301 Redirect of subdomain?
Fellow Mozzers, I'm having a hard time wrapping my brain around a redirect issue and thought it was worth posing the question to the Moz community. I did a search first but couldn't find the exact answer I was looking for. How does a 301 redirect work when you redirect a sub domain example.homepage.com to www.homepage.com but you keep the sub directories of example.homepage.com/page-1 active and are trying to rank them? I'm dealing with a current project where this is happening and this doesn't make sense to me, to redirect the subdomain if you're also trying to rank/create search traffic for pages, sub directories on example.homepage.com. This also get's into the debate of if a sub domain site is viewed as it's own website and therefore has to rank itself. If this is true, it seems like we're kind of killing the authority of the site by redirecting it. Additionally, www.homepage.com has a much stronger link profile than example.homepage.com I hope this makes sense. Any thoughts are appreciated. Thanks for your time.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SMG-Texas0 -
Sitemap on a Subdomain
Hi, For various reasons I placed my sitemaps on a subdomain where I keep images and other large files (static.example.com). I then submitted this to Google as a separate site in Webmaster tools. Is this a problem? All of the URLs are for the actual site (www.example.com), the only issue on my end is not being able to look at it all at the same time. But I'm wondering if this would cause any problems on Google's end.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | enotes0 -
Keyword Phrases - Can You Break Them Up?
Can you break up a search query across a sentence and have Google still recognize which query you are targeting? Let's say I'm trying to rank a page for the phrase "best haircuts calgary". Is Google's algorithm advanced enough to look at page title "Best Haircuts - Where To Get Them In Calgary" and know it's targeting the query "best haircuts calgary"? If it can't do this right now, I could see it advancing to this at some point in the future, which would then change the game quite a bit in terms of how creative you can get creating pages for queries.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | reidsteven750 -
How To Best Close An eCommerce Site?
We're closing down one of our eCommerce sites. What is the best approach to do this? The site has a modest link profile (a young site). It does have a run of site link to the parent site. It also has a couple hundred email subscribers and established accounts. Is there a gradual way to do this? How do I treat the subscribers and account holders? The impact won't be great, but I want to minimize collateral damage as much as possible. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AWCthreads0