Are multiple domains for my website hurting my Google ranking?

[shwoodshop]

Hello,

I currently have two domains showing up in google search:

shwoodshop.com

shop.shwoodshop.com

These domains are currently ranked in the #2 and #3 spot, however my page is much more trafficked than the current #1 ranking.  I am wondering if the fact that I have two domains competing for the #1 spot is hurting my search ranking.  If so, what is the best way to remedy this issue and get back my #1 spot?

I'm rather new to SEO and teaching myself as I go, so I appreciate the feedback!

[blacey]

As far as I know Google will treat content on a subdomain as a separate website, so chances are you're splitting the domain authority over the two websites.

As far as PageRank is concerned this is on a **per page basis (n**ot per site). Every page is ranked on its own individual merits.

[SEOExecutive20]

Hello Taylor,

Is this a trick question?  The reason I ask is because the shop.shwoodshop.com you are talking about already redirects to http://shwoodshop.com/collections/all.  Also I notice an important factor that might help your site rank better.  I recently suggested this to a client and within a few days his site moved to 1spot from 4th position.  I am not guaranteeing it will work but its actually an issue that needs to be resolved anyhow.  If your utilizing the SEOMOZ software then the first thing you will notice if running a campaign is a notification from the software stating the following:

We have detected that the domain www.shwoodshop.com and the domain shwoodshop.com both respond to web requests and do not redirect. Having two "twin" domains that both resolve forces them to battle for SERP positions, making your SEO efforts less effective.

I suggest that you fix this by either 301 redirecting the non www to www or vice versa.  It all depends for which version you already have keywords ranking on.  In other words if your already ranking for keywords on the www version then you will want to redirect the non www to it.  If it's the non www that you are already ranking for then you will benefit from directing the www to the non www.

I hope that helps

[JamesNorquay]

This use to be the case but recently Google now treats the sub domain as internal links see the changes here: http://searchengineland.com/new-google-classifies-subdomains-as-internal-links-within-webmaster-tools-91401

Overall I do not think this will be a problem having your sub domain and your main url rank for a term, that been said if both the sub domain and main website have unique content and are well linked it can be a good strategy.

I remember one website in a local insurance niche doing this well for a long time

[mediabase]

Hi Taylor, As I had done some of the analysis for your both domains. If you use both domain then it will hurt your ranking according to google.

The analysis that I had done as below:

shwoodshop.com

This is website that have Page rank =5

Google Indexing Backlinks=274

Secondly your shop.shwoodshop.com is redirect to http://shwoodshop.com/collections/all   these page which have following factors:

This is website that have Page rank =4

Google Indexing Backlinks=274

One of the most important issue that I found that your website does not have 301 redirect error set up.

This would results that there are two separate domains i. e http://www.shwoodshop.com/ & http://shwoodshop.com/, so it is better to redirect it to the one & only single page according to their preferred domain.

Below there is a link which tells you that multiple domain are bad for SEOm& website too:

http://www.seo.com/blog/multiple-domains-seo/

&

http://blog.ineedhits.com/tips-advice/why-owning-multiple-domain-names-is-bad-for-seo-02539442.html

I hope that your query had been solved.

[shwoodshop]

Thanks so much for your response!  I went ahead and used the 301 redirects to direct everything to www.shwoodshop.com.

Now that everything is pointing to the same place, is there any harm in having both www.shwoodshop.com and www.shwoodshop.com/collections/all show up in a google search?  These pages aren't competing now, correct?

According to the SEOmoz data, my page www.shwoodshop.com is much stronger than my competitors' when googling "wood sunglasses" so I just want to see if there are any obvious factors limiting my search strength.

Thanks again everyone!

[SEOExecutive20]

These are 2 completely different pages so you should be fine now.  As for the question "will it hurt if Google indexes both?", not at all.  Actually it's every SEOs dream to get 2 pages from one site indexed on 1st page.  Although, it's best practice to make sure that each page's content and meta tags are unique to each other.  The reason is that sometimes these can also battle for serp position if they are closely alike in terms of content and meta tags.  Just make sure there unique and focused on what that specific page has to offer.  But then once again if your already have a keyword ranking on 1st page for both urls then its probably best to leave them as is and see what the result 301 redirect will accomplish for you.  Allow for it to be re-indexed by Google again.

[shwoodshop]

Perfect!  Thanks again for your input.  I really appreciate your help!

[blacey]

Glad to see you also sorted out the non-www to www permanent redirect on shwoodshop.com. I would say that this is the quickest way to get site wide content duplication.

Now that you have these redirects put in place your site will be ok. Just make sure you don't delete the redirects!

[Dr-Pete]

Google hasn't been clear on this - they stated later (I can't recall where, unfortunately) that this change was only an accounting change in Google Webmaster Tools. It didn't change how they actually pass link-juice across subdomains. I've found it can go both ways. Some subdomains fragment and get treated as separate domains, and others seem to get more tightly integrated. It depends a lot on the site, structure, duplication, etc.

[Dr-Pete]

FYI, it looks like you're 302-redirecting the "shop." sub-domain to a deeper page on the root domain. This can be the worst of both worlds, in some cases. I'm not clear on the reasoning, but if "shop." is the e-commerce/store sub-domain, I'd rather see you 301-redirect it to "/shop" or something like that.

I realize you may have technical constraints that require the e-commerce site to be on a subdomain. There are ways around that, like a reverse proxy.

From a purely SEO standpoint, you can potentially rank 2 sub-domains (Google keeps changing their mind on that, it seems), but you're also potentially splitting the link-juice between those sub-domains. In most cases, I don't find the sub-domain approach to be a good long-term strategy. On the other hand, if you're ranking #2 and #3 and aren't seeing a downside, you've got to consider that data.

[KeriMorgret]

Here's the post on Search Engine Roundtable that discusses Google's comments about this not being a ranking change.

http://www.seroundtable.com/google-subdomains-webmaster-tools-13968.html