Moving to subdirectory from subdomain, where subdomain PR is equal to root domain PR
-
Hi all,
I'm currently in the process of revitalizing my company's blog. Currently, the blog sits on a subdomain (blog.rootdomain.com). SEO best practice dictates that I should move this (and 301 redirect the old URLs) to rootdomain.com/blog to concentrate link equity and avoid the risk of having search engines treat the subdomain as separate from the root domain.
However, the PageRank Status extension for Chrome is reporting that the PR for the blog on the subdomain and the root domain are the same. Is there any benefit to migrating the subdomain to a subdirectory? Is that data accurate enough to base decisions off of?
-
That logic seems incorrect since it doesn't account for root domain links that point to the subdomain. This would only apply if all the inbound links were from other root domains.
For example, my blog on the subdomain has 1.4M inbound links, 1.35M of which come from the root domain. I'm guessing this is because it's a footer link. So, the PR6 of the blog seems largely inherited from the root domain, which has a PR of 6.
Were you just trying to oversimplify it?
-
I am actually going to recommend you doing that as one of my client is going through the same problem and after a week or two of the instance conversation I convinced him to move from sub domain to a sub directory!
From the SEO point of view there might not be 4 +4 = 8 kind of thing but still at least you will end up having your DA nearer to double.
Just go for it!
-
I second to Egol's opinion here. Its great to have the sub-domain's PR equal to that of the root domain. You should move the sub-domain to sub-directory to leverage the link popularity of the sub-domain along with all SEO goodies that will further bolster the authority of the root domain. Previously, we faced an issue with sub-domain strategy despite unique content on all those sub-domains. We then moved the content from all the sub-domains to their respective sub-directories, deployed a 301 redirection pointing all the sub-domains' content to their corresponding pages on the sub-directories. The results were amazing. We not only regained the traffic loss but also had an increase in the organic traffic. Since then, I have been a keen advocate of sub-directory/folder structure.
Best of luck to you.
Devanur Rafi
-
In math class you probably learned that 4 + 4 = 8?
Same principle here.
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
-
301 Redirecting from domain to subdomain
We're taking on a redesign of our corporate site on our main domain. We also have a number of well established, product based subdomains. There are a number of content pages that currently live on the corporate site that rank well, and bring in a great deal of traffic, though we are considering placing 301 redirects in place to point that traffic to the appropriate pages on the subdomains. If redirected correctly, can we expect the SEO value of the content pages currently living on the corporate site to transfer to the subdomains, or will we be negatively impacting our SEO by transferring this content from one domain to multiple subdomains?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chris81980 -
Unrelated subdomain hurts domain rankins?
Hi All, One of our subdomains has lot of content created by different users and mostly they are outgoing links from landing pages. Moreover the top ranking content is about "cigarettes" which is nowhere related to our niche. Will this hurt our domain rankings?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
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 -
Why does a site have no domain authority?
A website was built and launched eight months ago, and their domain authority is 1. When a site has been live for a while and has such a low DA, what's causing it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | optimalwebinc0 -
Domain vs Subdomain for Multi-Location Practice
I have a client who has 2 locations (Orlando & Tampa) and would like to keep the current domain for both locations (DA 29). We want to target additional cities within each service area (Orlando & Tampa). Each service area would target 2 cities on the main pages and 4-5 cities with "SEO" pages which contains unique content specific to the given city. Would I be better off creating sub domains (www.orlando.domain.com & www.tampa.domain.com), creating subfolders (www.domain.com/orlando, etc) or keeping the domain as is and create SEO pages specific to each city? We want to spread the domain authority to both locations.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Red_Spot_Interactive0 -
Merging Domains... Sub-domains, Directories or Seperate Sites?
Hello! I am hoping you can help me decide the best path to take here... A little background: I'm moving to a new company that has three old domains (the oldest is 10 years old), which get a lot of traffic from their e-letters. Until recently they have not cared about SEO. So the websites have some structural, coding, URL and other issues. The sites are indexed, but have a problem getting crawled and/or indexed for new content - haven't delved into this yet but am certain I will be able to fix any of these issues. These three domains are PR4, PR4, PR5 and contain hundreds of unique articles. Here's the question... They want to move these three sites **to their main company site (PR4) and create sub domains for each one. ** I am wondering if this is a good idea or not. I have merged sites before (creating categories and/or directories) and the end result is that the ONE big site, is much for effective than TWO smaller, less authoritative sites. But the sub domain idea is something I am unsure about from an SEO perspective. Should we do this with sub domains? Or do you think we should keep the sites separate? How do Panda and Penguin play into this? Thanks in advance for the help! SD P.S. I'm not a huge advocate in using PR as a measurement tool, but since I can't reveal the actual domains, I figured I would list it as a reference point.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | essdee0 -
Best strategy behind moving country subdirectory to dedicated TTLD wo/ loosing organic search volume?
Community, We are about to move one of our most popular country sub directories from brandname.com/de/.. to brandname.de . We have just purchased the domain so while the domain has been registered in 2009 the URL has zero domain authority. What is the best strategy to execute the move while being cautious about loosing too much organic search volume the subdirectory is receiving right now? Obviously it will take some time to build up DA on the TTLD so maybe it is a good idea to keep the country directory for a little longer and start on the TTLD with just a static landing page, place some links, wait until it receives some DA builds up and then perform the move. Thoughts? /TomyPro
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tomypro0 -
Are sites that leave out www from domain at a disadvantage to domains with www in url
I know this has been discussed but was wondering what would be the best approach from an SEO perspective. I quite like the idea of setting up websites with domains without www but always worry that setting up domains without www has a disadvantage because user are use to referring to sites with the www included. Thus one of my fears are that users would link back using www version which will mean even if you do a 301 redirect that some of the link juice would be lost. I know some famous sites have used this convention such as http://searchenginewatch.com/ so think it would be possible but still concerned that for new sites it would be better to rather stick to conventions. What are your opinions about this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SABest0