How to optimize for new subdomain when root domain has all link juice and built up authority?

[devinjy]

We recently took control of a root domain for a business that was not doing e-commerce. They just had a single page business card website at the root domain. However, it had been around long enough to have built up some amount of domain authority and link juice.

When we took over to enable the site with e-commerce, we redirected the root domain to point to a www subdomain where the store is now located.

Now, in my seomoz campaign, i see that all the link juice and authority stats are in the root domain metrics, and the subdomain we are tracking has nothing.

What is the best way for me to take advantage of all the built up authority for the root domain to help with the newly enabled ecommerce site at the subdomain? or am I basically starting from scratch since i have been reading that link juice does not flow as well from root domains to subdomains.

thank you and happy new year to all!

[EGOL]

I'd move the ecommerce into a folder on the root domain instead of into a subdomain.  Then you get the authority  benefits of the root domain.

[devinjy]

thanks for the comment!

i'm sorry i made a mistake saying recently. i had actually meant that we had been running the store on the subdomain for almost a year now, and there is no content at all at the root domain.

i believe we just did a 301 redirect from the root to the sub once the store went live.

is moving the ecommerce into a folder on the root domain still helpful since there is no content at all in the root domain? our original intent was to just take over the domain completely and turn the root domain into an ecommerce enabled site.

[EGOL]

I honestly don't know.

Since it has been there for a year, I would probably not move it.

[MoosaHemani]

I personally believe 301 will help as it will allow you to transfer the juice from main domain to the sub domain. Remember 301 redirection will lose some of the juice when transferring from main to the sub domain.

hope this helps!

[devinjy]

thanks moosa! actually i did not mention that the first thing we did was implement a 301 redirect from the root to the sub. this resulted in content in our e commerce store to immediately achieve decent rankings in the SERPS.

now I am working on getting the backlinks pointing to the root domain to point to our new subdomain.

do you think, that because of the 301 redirect, and possibly due to the use of a decent ecommerce platform, we were able to achieve rankings for keywords so quickly in the subdomain?

thanks!