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.
How can you promote a sub-domain ahead of a domain on the SERPs?
-
I have a new client that wants to promote their subdomain uk.imagemcs.com and have their main domain imagemcs.com fall off the SERPs.
Objective? Get uk.imagemcs.com to rank first for UK 'brand' searches.
Do a search for 'imagem creative services' and you should see the issue (it looks like rules have been applied to the robots.txt on the main domain to exclude any bots from crawling - but since they've been indexed previously I need to take action as it doesn't look great!).
I think I can do this by applying a permanent redirect from the main domain to the subdomain at domain level and then no-indexing the site - and then resubmit the sitemap.
My slight concern is that this no-indexing of the main domain may impact on the visibility of the subdomains (I'm dealing with uk.imagemcs.com, but there is us.imagemcs.com and de.imagemcs.com) and was looking for some assurance that this would not be the case. My understanding is that subdomains are completely distinct from domains and as such this action should have no impact on the subdomains.
I asked the question on the Webmasters Forum but haven't really got anywhere
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/webmasters/1Avupy3Uw_o/hu6oLQntCAAJCan anyone suggest a course of action?
many thanks,
Nathan
-
Sorry for delay - thanks for this - will most likely give your suggested steps a try!
-
Hi there,
Yeap, subdomains are different sites to google from the root domain.
What you are willing to do is to non index the root domain.
Of course one way is to make a 301 redirect, if you still want to preserve the root domain visible I'd do these steps:
1. Set canonical tag in the home to the sudomain
2. Set meta robots tag to noindex in the root domain
3. Update the sitemap, leaving only what you want in the root domain. Update in SC.
4. Create a SC profile for the subdomain, create a sitemap and upload it to SC.
5. WaitHope I've helped.
Best luck.
GR.
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
-
Forwarding a .org domain to a .com domain: any negative impact to consider?
Hello! I have a question I've been unable to find a clear answer to. My client's primary domain is a .com with a satisfactorily high DA. My client owns the .org version of its domain (which has a very low DA, I suppose due to inactivity) but has never forwarded it on. For branding/visibility/traffic reasons, I'd like to recommend they set up the .org domain to forward to the .com domain, but I wanted to ask a few questions first: 1. Does forwarding low-value DA domains to high-value DA domains have any negative authority/SEO impact? 2. If the .org domain was to be forwarded, am I correct that an SSL cert is not necessary for it if the .com domain has an SSL cert? Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | mollykathariner_ms1 -
English and French under the same domain
A friend of mine runs a B&B and asked me to check his freshly built website to see if it was <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">SEO</acronym> compliant.
Technical SEO | | coolhandluc
The B&B is based in France and he's targeting a UK and French audience. To do so, he built content in english and french under the same domain:
https://www.la-besace.fr/ When I run a crawl through screamingfrog only the French content based URLs seem to come up and I am not sure why. Can anyone enlighten me please? To maximise his business local visibility my recommendation would be to build two different websites (1 FR and 1 .co.uk) , build content in the respective language version sites and do all the link building work in respective country sites. Do you think this is the best approach or should he stick with his current solution? Many thanks1 -
Redirect typo domains
Hi, What's the "correct" way of redirecting typo domains? DNS A record goes to the same ip address as the correct domain name Then 301 redirects for each typo domain in the .htaccess Subdomains on typo urls still redirect to www or should they redirect to the subdomain on the correct url in case the subdomain exists?
Technical SEO | | kuchenchef0 -
Moving my domain to weebly
I am thinking of moving my html website to weebly. They offer a 301 redirect for my domain name. Is that ok for SEO?
Technical SEO | | bhsiao0 -
Localized domains and duplicate content
Hey guys, In my company we are launching a new website and there's an issue it's been bothering me for a while. I'm sure you guys can help me out. I already have a website, let's say ABC.com I'm preparing a localized version of that website for the uk so we'll launch ABC.co.uk Basically the websites are going to be exactly the same with the difference of the homepage. They have a slightly different proposition. Using GeoIP I will redirect the UK traffic to ABC.co.uk and the rest of the traffic will still visit .com website. May google penalize this? The site itself it will be almost the same but the homepage. This may count as duplicate content even if I'm geo-targeting different regions so they will never overlap. Thanks in advance for you advice
Technical SEO | | fabrizzio0 -
We have set up 301 redirects for pages from an old domain, but they aren't working and we are having duplicate content problems - Can you help?
We have several old domains. One is http://www.ccisound.com - Our "real" site is http://www.ccisolutions.com The 301 redirect from the old domain to the new domain works. However, the 301-redirects for interior pages, like: http://www.ccisolund.com/StoreFront/category/cd-duplicators do not work. This URL should redirect to http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/category/cd-duplicators but as you can see it does not. Our IT director supplied me with this code from the HT Access file in hopes that someone can help point us in the right direction and suggest how we might fix the problem: RewriteCond%{HTTP_HOST} ccisound.com$ [NC] RewriteRule^(.*)$ http://www.ccisolutions.com/$1 [R=301,L] Any ideas on why the 301 redirect isn't happening? Thanks all!
Technical SEO | | danatanseo0 -
Any way around buying hosting for an old domain to 301 redirect to a new domain?
Howdy. I have just read this QA thread, so I think I have my answer. But I'm going to ask anyway! Basically DomainA.com is being retired, and DomainB.com is going to be launched. We're going to have to redirect numerous URLs from DomainA.com to DomainB.com. I think the way to go about this is to continue paying for hosting for DomainA.com, serving a .htaccess from that hosting account, and then hosting DomainB.com separately. Anybody know of a way to avoid paying for hosting a .htaccess file on DomainA.com? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | SamTurri0 -
Is there such thing as a good text/code ratio? Can it effect SERPs?
As it says on the tin; Is there such thing as a good text/code ratio? And can it effect SERPs? I'm currently looking at a 20% ratio whereas some competitors are closer to 40%+. Best regards,
Technical SEO | | ARMofficial
Sam.0