Thanks Rand - that's great information.

When you talk about rankings rising, did you see them rise for the KW's associated with http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo or are we talking about rankings for other Moz pages ? - IE did adding http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo contribute to a rise in rankings across the whole domain or just that subfolder.

I hope you consider making this into one of your WBF's / Posts, as I think it would be fascinating to see the "What you did", "What were the results" etc, and also get feedback from what others have experienced.

Many thanks

Hi,

I am drawing your attention to Moz's Domain basics here: http://moz.com/learn/seo/domain

It reads:

"Since search engines keep different metrics for domains than they do subdomains, it is recommended that webmasters place link-worthy content like blogs in subfolders rather than subdomains. (i.e. www.example.com/blog/ rather than blog.example.com) The notable exceptions to this are language-specific websites. (i.e., en.example.com for the English version of the website)." I am wondering if this is still Moz's current recommendation on the subfolders vs subdomains debate, given that the above (sort of) implies that SE's may not combine ranking factors to the domain as a whole if subdomains are used - which (sort of) contradicts Matt Cutts last video on the matter ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MswMYk05tk ) which implies that this is not the case and there is so little difference that their recommendation is to use whatever is easiest. It would also seem to me that if you were looking through the eyes of Google, it would be silly to treat them differently if there were no difference at all other than subdomain vs subfolder as one of the main reasons a user would use a sud-domain is a technical on for which it would not make sense for Google to treat differently in terms of its algorithm.

I notice that in terms of Moz, while most of the site uses subfolders, you do have http://devblog.moz.com/ - and I was wondering if this is due to a technical reason or conscious decision, as it would seem to me that the content within this section is indeed linkworthy (as it has external links pointing to it from external sources), therefore it would seem to not be following the initial advice that is posted in Moz's basics on domains. Therefore I am assuming it is due to a technical reason - or that Moz's adive is out of date with current Moz thinking, and is indeed in line with Matt C in that it doesn't matter.

Cheers

I would if possible try and concentrate on a single brand/domain as opposed to multiple domain - on the assumption that an identical piece of content will rank higher on a single strong domain than it would on any of your less strong segmented domains.

With a single domain you also don't have the issue of worrying about how to cross market across domains (although as you point out many sites do so - Moz / OSE being one example) . Of course this also gets rid of the worry about whether google may see cross linking between multiple domains as a 'Link Network' - unlikely if it is just a few domians but if you are talking about 10's of different domains then this could well raise a flag in googles alogrithm.

It is still unclear as to how google treats multiple domains owned by the same companies, and on the same theme. Many websites have sub domains for their blogs and other sub-sections and the standard thought a few years ago was that you were better off moving those into folders. However, I think things have now changed such that if there are enough connecting signals it doesn't matter if its a sub domain or sub folder. When considering this, as a subdomain is technically a separate site, you would think that if similar connecting signals where to appear between 2 separate domains, then Google could (and probably should) treat them as they would sub-domains. However, whether there is some, all or no truth in this is likely to be a debate that will be speculation until Google confirms something along these lines.

Do they cause you any other issue than effecting your bounce rate?

If not, then I would not try to stop them visiting your website, but just segment the bounce rates as you have done above.

The reason I say this is three fold:
1/. Trying to prevent SE's not displaying you to certain countries etc, could be fraught with problems and you could well end up damaging the SERP's in your key countries.

2/. 'Country by IP' is not an exact science - and you may exclude some people who are located in your target countries.

3/. If you ever expand into the countries you want to currently block, would it not be nice to already have traffic from that market? What about customers who are from your target countries but searching while they are on holiday abroad?

Hope that helps

Hi Rob & Rand,

Many thanks for helping explain the concept. What I am trying to understand is if DA is a calculation based on PA of all pages on that domain (or if it is possible to work out DA from PA of all pages on that domain) or a totally separate calculation which incorporates other metrics. EG
A domain has 2 pages A (PA 50), B (PA 40). Is it possible to work out what DA is for this domain from these 2 values alone?

Many thanks

Hi,

I have noticed when using OSE and enter a domain you very often see a higher Page Authority than Domain Authority.

If someone could explain why this would happen then I would be very grateful - its my current understanding that page authority would ALWAYS be LESS THAN Domain Authority but that is not always the case (I have seen cases where PA is more than 10 higher then DA)

Here's an example where PA > DA

http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links.html?site=www.primelocation.com

Thanks