Effect of temporary subdomains on the root domain

[ICON_Malta]

Hi all,

A client of ours tends to have a number of offers and competitions during the year and would like to host these competitions on separate sub-domains. Once a competition is over (generally these last for approximately a month) the sub-domain gets deleted and pointed back to the main site.

I was wondering whether this would have any effects on the root domain.

Can I get your opinion please?

[crackingmedia]

Hi Daniela

The only impact would be after a sub-domain is deleted. It may be better to leave the sub-domain active for a time afterwards so you can manage the knock on for pages that have been indexed on the sub-domain after the competition/promotion has finished. Also, any links that existed on the sub-domain to your root domain

If you left the sub-domain active you could then just have a single page on there to say something like "The competition has now finished" and directing a visitor who has linked there with a link on the page to the home page of the main domain.

All other links to the sub-domain pages and any resulting from it to the domain which are then redundant, could be managed through 301 redirects back to the main domain to the best landing pages for them.

I hope that helps,
Peter

[ICON_Malta]

Hi Peter

Thanks for taking the time to answer my question.

So I shall suggest to keep the subdomain a little longer after the competition (generally this is a one-pager) with a notification that competition is closed and a link back to the root domain.

After a while the subdomain redirects (301) to the root domain.

Correct?

Daniela

[crackingmedia]

Hi Daniela

That's almost correct. You need to do the wrap up in two stages really.

When the competition is over just have your "competition is finished" page active on your sub-domain say for a week with a link that people can use to go to your root domain home page.

But then, when you remove that page, because inbound links to your sub-domain would still be active in search engines and on Internet links, you still need to leave your sub-domain in place on your server for a time but with a 301 redirect active stored in the sub-domain folder. That would just need a single redirection in place that automates any visits to your sub-domain to your root domain home page.

After say a month or so, you will probably then be safe to remove the sub-domain.

I hope the above makes sense.

Peter

[ICON_Malta]

Makes sense to me.

Thank you Peter!