How Can A SubDomain Out Perform A Root Domain?

[Prae]

Hi guys!

I have a rather strange SEO question. It may not be that strange at all actually.

If a site has a subdomain or a shopping cart that is on a subdomain through a third-party shopping cart provider, can the third party shopping cart transfer value to the subdomain causing the subdomain to have greater domain authority than the main site or root domain?

Another question, this subdomain, up until yesterday, blocked google from crawling it with robots txt, however it has a much higher domain authority than the root domain. The root domain has a really low domain authority, despite not blocking google from crawling it. How is this possible?

I hope these questions make sense. I am a little stumped & trying to figure out why the subdomain is out-performing the main site despite being hidden from search, if that's even the case. Please let me know if I have it all wrong..

[Dalessi]

Hi,

Sure it is possible for a sub domain to have higher scores than the root domain. If a lot of link building is done for the root domian it could have some pretty strong "sub Domain and Page" scores. If the root domain got little or no seo work done for it. That can be a problem but if you step up the SEO link building for the root domain then things will get better.

I understand this is really all just one site and you are just putting your shopping cart on the sub domain. Just start pushing your offsite seo and then you will have a strong root and sub domain.

Personally I feel the Root Domain scores are very important and in  competitive search terms the Domain scores are usually more important to ranking well.

Best Regards

[Prae]

Thanks so much for your answer! This makes a lot of sense!