Moving External TLD To Subfolder of Corporate Domain?
-
Our Challenge:
Our corporate site receives about 20,000 visits per week. Unfortunately, nearly half of those visitors are "looking" for a link we provide in our navigation link found on our homepage that takes them to our “Employee" focused site which resides on a separate TLD.
Because so much of the traffic to our corporate site lands on our homepage only as a stepping stone en route to the "Employee" site, the bounce rate, time on site and Average page views for our corporate site are all negatively impacted. Meanwhile, the "Employee" site gets more than 100,000 visits per month and enjoys enviable metrics- low bounce rate, high average page views and average time on site.
Our Goal:
- minimize or eliminate the negative impact of so many visitors using our corporate site as a stepping stone to reach the employee site.
- leverage the traffic volume and positive metrics enjoyed by the employee site to improve the search engine authority of our corporate site.
Our Solution:
- Move the "Employee" site to a subfolder of our corporate site – for example www.oursite.com/employees
- Install Google Analytics on all pages within the subfolder
- Provide a 301 redirect from old "Employee" domain to new employee subfolder
The expected result is an increase in overall corporate site traffic, more page views, higher time on site, and lower overall bounce rate from merging these two website properties.
Our Need:
After comparing the subfolder option to subdomain approach, we feel that the proposed solution is our best course of action and are looking for validation or an alternate recommendation.
-
The page views and time on site information will be of limited benefit since most of the pages involved wont be viewable to Google since they are behind a login filter.
While many people believe that Google considers the factors you mention in their algorithms, I am not aware of any solid evidence or statements from Google confirming this information. In fact, Matt Cutts has specifically stated that no Google Analytics data is used in rankings at all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgBw9tbAQhU
It makes perfect sense to me the factors you mention can be considered as part of the ranking process. I am sure many other SEOs believe they are as well. I would love to see any evidence to this effect. I think most people make this assumption.
With the above understood, if you felt the move was a low level of effort, I would probably go ahead with the change. It sounds like it can be a bit nicer for employees to stay on the same site. If this was considered a big project, I would not make the move without solid evidence you will achieve the benefits you desire.
-
Hi Ryan,
Great questions!
- Yes, some of the pages are currently indexed (see more info on #2)
- Some of the employee pages are indexed, however the large majority of them require users to be logged in to access certain pages. While we understand that many pages are not visible to Google due to this, that is ok with us. Our main concern is to be able to increase the corporate site time on site, number of page views, and reduce the domain bounce rate. By installing Google Analytics across all pages (logged in & logged out) we think over overall site metrics would increase?
As for the "employee" pages offering value or interesting content, I would say no in that these pages are contain some personal information that is not to be shared with others. There are some generic information pages such as how to use the site, etc. which are in front of registration. We are not particularly interested in ranking these "employee" pages/subfolder within search engines, but rather want to increase our overall site metrics for user activity in the eyes of Google Analytics by combining the two domains in question (employee & corporate domains).
By increasing these important metrics of our corporate domain as a whole, we hope to ultimately increase our corporate domain authority and in turn rank our "important" pages a little bit easier.
Please let me know if you have any additional questions. Thanks!
-
Hi Chris.
I have a few questions which will help myself and others to better answer your question.
Are your employee pages currently indexed?
Do employees need to login to access the employee site?
Do your employee pages offer anything of value for the internet? Do you have content that others may be interested in finding?
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
-
Why some domains and sub-domains have same DA, but some others don't?
Hi I noticed for some blog providers in my country, which provide a sub-domian address for their blogs. the sub-domain authority is exactly as the main domain. Whereas, for some other blog providers every subdomain has its different and lower authority. for example "ffff.blog.ir" and "blog.ir" both have domain authority of 60. It noteworthy to mention that the "ffff.blog.ir" does not even exist! This is while mihanblog.com and hfilm.mihanblog.com has diffrent page authority.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rayatarh5451230 -
Can you give me some advices to rank this domain?
Hi Moz community, I've a coleague that's working to rank this site: www.devsar.com. The selected keywords are:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gaston Riera
Mobile development
Web development
Django Development
Python Development I've checked the site: It's fast and clean. Has a good PA and DA. It's responsive and good lookking. Meta description , title, hreflang.. everything in order. Link profile a little rare (checked with ahref.com), it's because someone made a mistake redirecting some expired domain Can you help me to help my mate out?
Thanks
GR.0 -
Parked Domain question
Hi, If a domain has been parked for more than 12 years, and has never been used for a project so far, does this has an impact on SEO or its like having a fresh new domain? Sebi
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheHecksler0 -
Unique domains vs. single domain for UGC sites?
Working on a client project - a UGC community that has a DTC model as well as a white label model. Is it categorically better to have them all under the same domain? Trying to figure which is better: XXX,XXX pages on one site vs. A smaller XXX,XXX pages on one site and XX,XXX pages on 10-20 other sites all pointing to the primary site. The thinking on the second was that those domains would likely achieve high DA as well as the primary, and would passing their value to the primary. Thoughts? Any other considerations we should be thinking about?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | intentionally0 -
Domain and Sitemap Question
Hi - I am hoping you can help me with this issue we are currently trying to solve. We are hosting our mobile site's content on a different domain than what the URL of the site is, though owned by same company. In Google Webmasters tool we have the mobile sitemap under "sitemaps.xyz.com", however the URL of the site is "m.xyz.com". We have submitted 60MM pages in the mobile sitemap, but only 1MM pages have been indexed. Do you think this set up causes confusion with the bots? Does this affect the crawlability of the site? Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ladylana
Eva0 -
301 redirect from one domain to other domain, How To?
Hi, I need to redirect 150 products pages from http://www.filtrationmontreal.com/ to http://www.furnacefilterscanada.com/ How can I do this? Is there a tool or anything I can do to do 301 from one domain to another one? Can I use Google Webmaster Tool? Thank you, BigBlaze
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BigBlaze2050 -
Redirect on exact match domain to Brand domain question :)
Hi, If I have a website with the domain crazysocks.co.uk and a title tag 'black socks' would I see any benefit redirecting blacksocks.co.uk to crazysocks.co.uk, to give my keyword 'black socks' a boost in the SE's from the EMD. I see it loads where an EMD is indexed for its term but when you click the result it redirects to a branded domain. I personally cant see this being true but wanted to double check.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | activitysuper0 -
How important are domain names?
Hi All, Question: How important are domain names when trying to rank for a competitive keyword? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wazza19850