Subdomain cannibalization
-
Hi,
I am doing the SEO for a webshop, which has a lot of linking and related websites on the same root domain. So the structure is for example:
Root domain: example.com
Shop: shop.example.com
Linking websites to shop: courses.example.com, software.example.com,...Do I have to check which keywords these linking websites are already ranking for and choose other keywords for my category and product pages on the webshop? The problem with this could be that the main keywords for the category pages on the webshop are mainly the same as for the other subdomains.
The intention is that some people immediately come to the webshop instead of going first to the linking websites and then to the webshop.
Thanks.
-
Hello Mat,
I don't think I'm seeing the same SERPs as you. Is there any way you could give me an example of one of these subdomains?
And yes, you're absolutely right that the same problem of keyword cannibalization would apply to subdirectories as well.
If it's the woltersk....lu domain I am getting non-secure warnings from Firefox when I try to access it.
How many different subdomains are there / will there be? Is it just shop.domain.lu and www.domain.lu or are there others? I didn't see any for "courses." or "software." in the SERP example you provided with the link. If it's just one, I think that's manageable. For example, maybe www. could focus on informational queries (e.g. JavaScript course) and shop. could focus on transactional ones (e.g. Buy Acme JavaScript course). Maybe one could focus on reviews and comparisons, or long-tail queries while the other focuses on short-tail queries. Without knowing more about the domains and your business, it is difficult for me to say. If you have three or four subdomains all going after the same keywords, that's definitely a problem and I don't think you can avoid cannibalization. At that point, it would be best to choose the strongest domain/subdomain and focus your efforts on ranking one of them instead of watering down your efforts over several.
-
Thanks for your answer Everett.
The structure was indeed created some years ago, when ranking with different subdomains wasn't really a problem. It is quite normal that there is an overlap between the webshop subdomain and other subdomains. The subdomains dive deeper into a specific part of the business (tax, legal, formations,...) but on the webshop all of these different products from the subdomains are sold.
However, for some search terms, some of the subdomains all rank on the first page. For example: https://www.google.com/search?q=successierekenaar&oq=successierekenaar&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j0.3257j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
As you can see, the root domain as well as two subdomains and a link to an app, take the first four positions in the SERP.Key question is: if there is a possible search term to rank for, but one of the subdomains already ranks for this term, can it still be used? Otherwise, it won't be easy to find a unique search term with a high enough search volume for each product, since it is a market with very specific products.
On the other hand, if subdirectories were used, it basically comes down to the same: never try to rank two pages for the same search term. -
Also, don't forget to use Google Search Console's "Property Set" feature. However, I think they're about to start auto-created property sets by aggregating subdomains soon anyway: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-console-domain-property-26645.html
-
The short answer to your question is: Yes, you should know what keywords each of your subdomains rank for and should adjust strategy accordingly.
The long answer is that I want to see this website because it doesn't sound like something I'd recommend doing in the first place. It used to be that subdomains were treated completely differently from the parent domain and you could, theoretically, take up the entire first page of results with your subdomains. Content mills like About.com took this to the extreme and Google responded so you don't tend to see that happen much anymore. As I understand it, Google also attempts to make a determination as to whether this is the same "site" or multiple, unrelated sites, such as site.blogspot.com subdomains and treats them accordingly.
These days, the general consensus is that you should be using subdirectories/folders instead of subdomains for a variety of reasons, unless the subdomain is for a different site, or something you don't really need to have indexed, like a closed app.
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
-
Can subdomains hurt your primary domain's SEO?
Our primary website https://domain.com has a subdomain https://subDomain.domain.com and on that subdomain we have a jive-hosted community, with a few links to and fro. In GA they are set up as different properties but there are many SEO issues in the jive-hosted site, in which many different people can create content, delete content, comment, etc. There are issues related to how jive structures content, broken links, etc. My question is this: Aside from the SEO issues with the subdomain, can the performance of that subdomain negatively impact the SEO performance and rank of the primary domain? I've heard and read conflicting reports about this and it would be nice to hear from the MOZ community about options to resolve such issues if they exist. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BHeffernan1 -
No Control Over Subdomains - What Will the Effect Be?
Hello all, I work for a university and I my small team is responsible for the digital marketing, website, etc. We recently had a big initiative on SEO and generating traffic to our website. The issue I am having is that my department only "owns" the www subdomain. There are lots of other subdomains out there. For example, a specific department can have its own subdomain at department.domain.com and students can have their own webpage at students.domain.com, etc. I know the possibilities of domain cannibilization, but has any one run into long term problems with a similar situation or had success in altering the views of a large organization? If I do get the opportunity to help some of these other domains, what is best to help our overall domain authority? Should the focus be on removing similar content to the www subdomain or cleaning up errors? Some of these subdomains have hundreds of 4XX errors.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jeff_Bender0 -
How Can A SubDomain Out Perform A Root Domain?
Hi guys! I have a rather strange SEO question. It may not be that strange at all actually. If a site has a subdomain or a shopping cart that is on a subdomain through a third-party shopping cart provider, can the third party shopping cart transfer value to the subdomain causing the subdomain to have greater domain authority than the main site or root domain? Another question, this subdomain, up until yesterday, blocked google from crawling it with robots txt, however it has a much higher domain authority than the root domain. The root domain has a really low domain authority, despite not blocking google from crawling it. How is this possible? I hope these questions make sense. I am a little stumped & trying to figure out why the subdomain is out-performing the main site despite being hidden from search, if that's even the case. Please let me know if I have it all wrong..
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Prae0 -
Choosing root domain for a subdomain
We own two root domains in the .edu space. According to Open Site Explorer, one has a domain authority of 76, while the other has a DA of 94. We operate a collection of degree microsites as subdomains of the lower-ranking root domain, e.g. www.degreename.domain76.edu. All other things being equal, would these sites benefit if we migrated them to www.degreename.domain94.edu? The question seems to hinge on whether subdomains inherit any of the root domain's authority, and the answers I have seen to that question are "sometimes" and "maybe". Lastly, as an alternative, would we realize greater SEO improvements by moving the degrees to a directory structure under domain94, i.e. www.domain94.edu/degrees/degree-name? Thank you for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | UWPCE0 -
Archiving a festival website - subdomain or directory?
Hi guys I look after a festival website whose program changes year in and year out. There are a handful of mainstay events in the festival which remain each year, but there are a bunch of other events which change each year around the mainstay programming.This often results in us redoing the website each year (a frustrating experience indeed!) We don't archive our past festivals online, but I'd like to start doing so for a number of reasons 1. These past festivals have historical value - they happened, and they contribute to telling the story of the festival over the years. They can also be used as useful windows into the upcoming festival. 2. The old events (while no longer running) often get many social shares, high quality links and in some instances still drive traffic. We try out best to 301 redirect these high value pages to the new festival website, but it's not always possible to find a similar alternative (so these redirects often go to the homepage) Anyway, I've noticed some festivals archive their content into a subdirectory - i.e. www.event.com/2012 However, I'm thinking it would actually be easier for my team to archive via a subdomain like 2012.event.com - and always use the www.event.com URL for the current year's event. I'm thinking universally redirecting the content would be easier, as would cloning the site / database etc. My question is - is one approach (i.e. directory vs. subdomain) better than the other? Do I need to be mindful of using a subdomain for archival purposes? Hope this all makes sense. Many thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cos20300 -
Wordpress.com content feeding into site's subdomain, who gets SEO credit?
I have a client who had created a Wordpress.com (not Wordpress.org) blog, and feeds blog posts into a subdomain blog.client-site.com. My understanding was that in terms of SEO, Wordpress.com would still get the credit for these posts, and not the client, but I'm seeing conflicting information. All of the posts are set with permalinks on the client's site, such as blog.client-site.com/name-of-post, and when I run a Google site:search query, all of those individual posts appear in the Google search listings for the client's domain. Also, I've run a marketing.grader.com report, and these same results are seen. Looking at the source code on the page, however, I see this information which leads me to believe the content is being credited to, and fed in from, Wordpress.com ('client name' altered for privacy): href="http://client-name.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/could_you_survive_a_computer_disaster.jpeg">class="alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-2050" title="Could_you_survive_a_computer_disaster" src="http://client-name.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/could_you_survive_a_computer_disaster.jpeg?w=150&h=143" I'm looking to provide a recommendation to the client on whether they are ok to continue moving forward with this current setup, or whether we should port the blog posts over to a subfolder on their primary domain www.client-site.com/blog and use Wordpress.org functionality, for proper SEO. Any advice?? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | grapevinemktg0 -
Subdomain or Subfolder for Locations?
I have a client who is ranking #1 for every term related to "bathroom renovations (main city)". They have now started to take on dealers/franchisees in neighbouring cities, and each location would now like to be ranking for THEIR cities. Is it better to use bathcompany.com/location or location.bathcompany.com? Considerations: The site has the address and phone number of the main location listed in the header, so if we do /location you will still see the main NAP. Using /location, If someone browses beyond the location landing page, they will venture into pages that target the main city (ex. "Bath Remodelling (Main City)") Using a subdomain will mean that we will need to duplicate content such as their image gallery, and we will have to create new content for their service pages or risk duplicate content. (ex. "shower remodelling (city)") Questions By using /location they will benefit from the strength of the subdomain, while using a new location-based subdomain will this mean we will have to start from scratch in terms of domain authority / link-juice? Will the NAP in the header affect the ranking of these location pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ATMOSMarketing560 -
Large volume of ning files in subdomain - hurting or helping?
I have a client that has 600 pages in their root domain and a subdomain that contains 7500 pages of un-seoable Ning pages. PLUS another 650 pages from Sched.com that also is contributing to a large volume of errors. My question is - should I create a new domain for the Ning content - or am I better off with the volume of pages - even if they have loads of errors? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | robertdonnell0