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Have you managed 301 redirects for 1000s of pages? I have 3 questions about how to correctly 301 redirect 1000s of pages from our subdomain to a subfolder without dropping out of Google's index. Here's our issue:
We have a high authority subdomain that we are considering moving into a subfolder in order to boost the authority of our main site, so our main site can move up a few notches for our target keywords in Google.
blogs.example.com to example.com/blogs
However - the blogs.example.com site is really much like a blog network. We have
blogs.example.com/blog1
blogs.example.com/blog2...
blogs.example.com/blog22
This is 1000s of pages. If we were to 301 redirect them all the new url structure would be
example.com/blogs/blog1
example.com/blogs/blog2... giving us an extra slash in our url
We use Typepad for hosting, so there is limited customization of code we can do. The URL structure of Typepad will then become
http://example.com/blogs/blog_title/category/index.html for Category List
http://example.com/blogs/blog_title/page_title/index.html for Page
http://example.com/blogs/blog_title/year/month/post_title.html for Post Title (which cuts off after 15 characters)
Questions:
1) I understand that the more slashes a url has, the more spammy Google treats the url, and that it is better to not exceed 4 slashes. How true is this? Will a 5th slash strongly impact our SEO efforts
2) Rewriting the urls in a fast, automatic way isn't a problem. However, I am concerned that Google won't be able to crawl the new pages fast enough, and that the ones that don't get crawled will drop out of the Index, resulting in downtime.
3) What do we need to research/ consider to make this move properly?
I'm unsure how much trouble it would be to try to get the orphaned pages indexed.
How can we do this correctly so that we aren't hit with downtime or a some other unforeseen mess?
Thanks in advance!
[edited by: pageoneresults at 8:38 pm (utc) on May 16, 2008]
[edit reason] Examplified URI References [/edit]
...moving into a subfolder in order to boost the authority of our main site, so our main site can move up a few notches for our target keywords in Google
Is there a particular reason you believe this will be the case? You need to be careful about deciding whole sites should actually have been placed somewhere else.
the more slashes a url has, the more spammy Google treats the url
Personally, I think this is very debatable. If your filing system and internal links match your URL, I don't think the number of slashes is really an issue.
I am concerned that Google won't be able to crawl the new pages fast enough, and that the ones that don't get crawled will drop out of the Index, resulting in downtime.
But if Google doesn't visit the urls, it won't even know what the contents are ;)
In any case, you say that you have a "high authority subdomain" and your proposal is to downgrade this in favour of it becoming a subsection of another site. Without knowing any of the specifics, I would advise a bit of caution.
But if Google doesn't visit the urls, it won't even know what the contents are ;)
Not sure what you mean by this - our blog subdomain content ranks better than our main domain content for our relevant keywords. So we know that our urls are crawled by Google.
Regarding using subdomain to boost rankings for main domain you said:
Is there a particular reason you believe this will be the case? You need to be careful about deciding whole sites should actually have been placed somewhere else.
Hmmm - let me ask you what factors you consider to be a strong argument to move from subdomain to subfolder?
We have 50-60K backlinks in our subdomain, and the content is all relevant to our main domain. Our main domain is our main business - it would be more important for us to leverage our subdomain in a way that increase our rankings above our competitors.
Would this be best achieved by moving the subdomain to a subfolder or do you think this can be best achieved with our subdomain as a stand-alone site, linking back to our main domain?
Cheers,
our blog subdomain content ranks better than our main domain content for our relevant keywords
The obvious question is: why does the blog perform better?
it would be more important for us to leverage our subdomain in a way that increase our rankings above our competitors
So why was the subdomain created in the first place? I apologise if this seems blunt, but the implication is that you are failing to capitalise on the subdomain(s) you've created. That isn't a question of how many slashes are in the filename, or whether it's a subdomain or subfolder.
The blog (actually there are 20+ blogs) performs better because our main domain sells stuff and is full of marketing messaging, and our blogs address best practices on how to get the most out of our suite of products.
People find the info useful, bookmark and link back to it.
We actually plan to expand to have a blog per product - so our blogs will grow. We expect the backlinks to grow as well, because much of it is quality content written by experts.
Why to subdomain? Not sure. It's part of our community site, which is actually a collection of subdomains knit together for a uniquely branded experience external to our main site. I came on after this was all created - my job is to reorganize and help the company achieve its SEO objectives (and its priority is the main site).
What do you recommend Andy? Subdomain or subfolder?
What factors would you consider? Please bullet point and explain ; >
Also keep in mind that it is possible one of your host domains may have a higher PageRank™ then the root domain. I've seen this happen and I think its kind of cool. Once you are above the root, you're working the pyramid from an upside down perspective and "pushing" down. ;)
The blog (actually there are 20+ blogs) performs better because our main domain sells stuff and is full of marketing messaging, and our blogs address best practices on how to get the most out of our suite of products.
Doesn't that answer the question? my feeling is that you don't have a technical problem at all. Your customers just prefer a different site ;)
My suggestion would be that you bridge the gap between the site that is popular and the site that you would rather users frequent.
Why to subdomain? Not sure.
If you aren't sure if you need a subdomain, then you don't need a subdomain. :)
I don't think our users will notice one way or another that the site has been moved to a subfolder - the look and feel of our community site (which includes blogs) is distinct from our main site.
So - do you think moving the blogs subdomain will boost our rankings for our root site?
Yes or no?
Yes or no?
No.
But one-syllable answers are a dangerous thing ;)
Based on the information in this thread, I'd say you would be more likely to see a drop in overall visitor numbers in the short-medium term. The suggestion is that the subdomain also has a different focus/theme from the main site, so I'd be sceptical that you'd see any advantage long term either.
I would look instead at how you link together the two (in both the general and technical sense of the word) and save yourself what may be an unnecessary redirection headache.
Can anyone please actually tell me the code to redirect the subdomain blogs to the sub pages of the same domain website ?
I meant i have
blogs.example.com
blogs.example.com/blog1 and so on
& i want to redirect all of these (cuz there are very few pages of subdomain blog but cached in Google) to www.example.com/blogs/
whtcode is to use in .htaccess file in Apache server
Thnx in Advance :)
What sort of linking is currently being done between the two? Have you exhausted all linking possibilities that could increase rankings for the main domain?
Since the domain and subdomain are treated as two separate sites in big G, you could potentially have 4 listings at the top of the serps. While it doesn't happen very often, just imagine having spots 1-4 for a competitive keyword:)
