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.
Does linking to a subdomain give link juice to the main domain?
-
I have a few domains that I'm going to use for link building, will the link juice from the sub domains transfer to the main domain?
-
Yeah it can get really confusing. Here's the concept. Each Root domain can have many subdomains, as well as sub-folders.
Any link pointing to any subdomain or subfolder will provide some linking value to the entire root. It's not as much as that individual subdomain or subfolder gets, however the cumulative impact is there and it's real.
The reason is pretty straight forward - any sub, (domain or folder) is naturally associated with the root. It contributes to the overall weight of that root.
It's not unlike the branches of a tree. While the rain may fall directly on a branch, some of the water has the ability to work it's way back to the main trunk of the tree.
Just like water that seeps into the ground and soaks into the roots, can and will work it's way up the trunk and to the branches.
-
I always thought that a link to a subdomain did not benefit the main domain. Alan, can you explain this more? If an external website links to subdomain.mydomain.com will mydomain.com get link juice from this?
-
If you mean - if we get an inbound link pointing to the subdomain, will the root domain benefit?" the answer is yes to a certain extent. How much will depend on how closely related the subdomain topical focus is to the root domain, as well as how strong the link is from the perspective of the source site.
If you mean - if we point a link from within a subdomain to a page on the root domain, will the root domain benefit?" Then the answer is also yes, but how much depends on many other factors. And those links will carry less value than most quality inbound links coming from other root sites not in your control.
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
-
Creating a subdomain or subdirectory for each major city for our main website...
If our website is abc.com I am wanting to create a subdomain or subdirectory for each major city for SEO targeting purposes. But I want each domain to go to our see the same content from the main website abc.com. What's the best way to accomplish this? Duplicating our main page over and over sounds terrible , especially when trying to make changes down the road. Should we create an alias for each location? example.. abc.com/new-york, abc.com-chicago, etc...? If we go that route how does google acknowledge that? Would that mess up our SEO or help? Thanks!
Link Building | | michaelfisk0 -
My site is linked from over 900 "The Globe"-domains - disavow or not?
Hi! As some of you may be familiar with, there is a giant spam-network with the same design and same page title on all domains: "The Globe - The world's most visited web pages". For example: theglobe.at
Link Building | | Sindre
theglobe.co.za
www.internet-search.us I've now discovered that over 900 of these spam-domains link to my site. My plan was of course to disavow them all, but Google is explicit on telling me to be careful. «Only disavow if you are certain that the links are damaging to your rankings». And to be honest, I'm not sure. Also: it seems drastic to disavow almost a thousand pages. I'm afraid to mess something up. What would you do?3 -
Back link from site with DA of 72 to a website domain. Clicking on the link redirects to our website not the attended one.
Hi,
Link Building | | JIMBO16
I've ran a back link check and discovered a good back link to a site which then gets redirected back to my company's website. I have a feeling that an old SEO agency has purchased a small website which has a decent link back from a relevant organisation with a high Domain authority and then redirects the domain to our website to get the link juice. What are your thought on this? Is this really bad practise and possibly damaging? Thanks, Jim0 -
Root-Domain vs Subdomain Linkbuilding
Hello Mozzers! Couple of days ago I received a request to start optimizing a wordpress website, the domain itself has been around for around 10-12 years so it's it can be considered as one that has real history behind it. The page has been moved from HTML/FLASH to wordpress about 3 - 4 years ago and hasn't been any SEO maintenance on it. The site used to rank for first position with several keywords, but now understandably, it has greatly decreased. My main question would be, that when I've checked the root domain's and the subdomain's metrics with MOZ Open Site Explorer, the sub domain (with "www.") showed a PA 40 and 90 external links while the root domain (without "www.") only has 27 PA and 6 External links. I know that the 301 or server redirects only transfers about 90% of the link juice to the targeted URL but the difference between the 2 results seem way too big for me. What do you think? Is this normal?
Link Building | | adamdankhazi
During future link building is it more beneficial to target the root domain so the page won't lose that "10%" by redirecting the new link from sub-domain to root domain?
Is it possible to get more juice transferred? Thank you very much,
Adam0 -
How do we optimise links from a parent company to a subsidiary on different domains
So we are the agent for an industrial company. They don't have a great website (well its pretty but doesn't rank) and have 5 product pages with a variety of products on each. We've taken those products and turned them into 50 pages with good on page optimisation. Now they've just agreed to give us a link on each page and I'm trying to figure out what the best text and link will be. As far as I can see there are three options Visit our agent for X region - sending to the home page If you are from X region you can request a sample of product group from our agent - sending to home page and product category page on our site If you are looking for X, Y, Z or P, Q, R in this region contact our agent there. - sending to home page and individual product pages The aim of this is to boost my page authority as 98% of the top 10 in SERPS have pages with zero authority and rely on the on page optimization and DA. Is this the best approach or are there other better ways of approaching the problem. It's worth noting that there is a total separation of control and ownership of the websites. I'm also starting to work with them to improve their on page optimisation and get links from their parent company to increase link juice
Link Building | | Zippy-Bungle0 -
Footer Links And Link Juice
I'm starting to learn about link juice and notice in GWMT > Traffic > Internal Links, that the list is in this order by the links counted on each page. Some are in the footer and some are in the header, with some being more important than others commercially i.e. /register /privacy /terms /search /sitemap /disclaimer /blog /register So I am wondering if I should add a 'no-follow' attribute to the footer links i.e. privacy, terms, disclaimer and leave the others as they are? Does this help retain link juice on each page where the links appear? Or am I missing the point all together? This is my website: http://goo.gl/CN0e5
Link Building | | Ubique0 -
Linking to sites that link to porn or casinos, my site getting penalized?
I have some link exchanges with some sites to get web traffic but when i ran the bad neighborhood link checker, i found that one site links to some casinos and another site has one link to a porn site. Is this getting me penalized? should i remove the links to these sites? Thanks, Ron
Link Building | | Ron100
