How to Properly Set Up My Campaign

[mstanwyck]

My url www.pcf.org redirects to ttp://www.pcf.org/site/c.leJRIROrEpH/b.5699537/k.BEF4/Home.htm because of my old CMS and this cannot be changed.

Should I set it up as a Subdomain, root domain, or folder?

For example using the homepage url http://www.pcf.org/site/c.leJRIROrEpH/b.5699537/k.BEF4/Home.htm I get the following results:

subdomain:

You've decided to set up a subdomain campaign, but entered the subfolder path:
www.pcf.org/site/c.leJRIROrEpH/b.5699537/k.BEF4.

Don't worry, we'll switch that for you and crawl everything on your subdomain: www.pcf.org.

If you meant to set this up to only crawl pages in the subfolder /site/c.leJRIROrEpH/b.5699537/k.BEF4, click "Go back and Change" and choose the subfolder option in step 1.

root domain:

You've decided to set up a root domain campaign, but entered the subfolder path:

www.pcf.org/site/c.leJRIROrEpH/b.5699537/k.BEF4.

Don't worry, we'll switch that for you and crawl everything in the subfolder /site/c.leJRIROrEpH/b.5699537/k.BEF4.

subfolder:

It looks like you submitted a URL that relates to an individual file:

www.pcf.org/site/c.leJRIROrEpH/b.5699537/k.BEF4/Home.htm
rather than a folder:
www.pcf.org/site/c.leJRIROrEpH/b.5699537/k.BEF4.

Don’t worry, we’ll switch that for you and crawl everything in that folder instead. If you meant to set this up for a different folder, click ”Go back and change” and enter a different path.

To complicate things further, as you move through the site, the only part of the URL that starys consistent 100% of the time is: http://www.pcf.org/site/c.leJRIROrEpH/

Depending on where you are on the site, it appends the url. For example:

One page is

http://www.pcf.org/site/c.leJRIROrEpH/b.6185669/k.9792/Sherry_Galloway.htm

while another is

http://www.pcf.org/site/c.leJRIROrEpH/b.5800843/k.94DE/Everyday_Heroes.htm

[Guest]

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[Cyrus-Shepard]

Howdy,

Whoa - this looks like snakes nest of redirects!   Here's what I got using the Mozbar

| 10. 302 Moved Temporarily | http://www.pcf.org/ |
| 11. 301 Moved Permanently | http://www.kintera.org/site/lookup.asp?c=leJRIROrEpH&b=5699537 |
| 12. 200 OK | http://www.pcf.org/site/c.leJRIROrEpH/b.5699537/k.BEF4/Home.htm |

I know you stated you couldn't alter the nature of the redirects due to your CMS, but this looks like something you would want to address. Looks like Google has done a decent job of indexing your site, but all these redirects through other domains and 302s could send confusing signals, result in loss of link equity, and cause a loss of your search visibility.

Regardless, you have 3 options in setting up a campaign, and it depends how you enter the URL.

1. For a root domain campaign, enter pfc.org

2. For a subdomain campaign, enter www.pfc.org

3. For a subdirectory campain, enter http://www.pcf.org/site/c.leJRIROrEpH/b.5699537/k.BEF4/

In this case, I'd recommend setting up a root domain campaign starting at pfc.org. This will crawl every url found on your site that contains pfc.org in the URL.

This will set up your campaigns, but because of your crazy redirects you might run into a couple problems:

• I'm not quite sure how the SEOmoz crawlers will handle a redirect that points to another domain. The crawl might stop dead there.
• The same thing happens with the subdirectory, which returns a string of 302 redirects.

The truth is, if SEOmoz crawlers have a hard time crawling your site, you could infer that for Google, it's a less than ideal experience.

Regardless, I hope this gives you some direction to think about. Best of luck and if you have any trouble with your account, feel free to contact the SEOmoz Help Team directly at help@seomoz.org.