Domain sub-directory not performing

[benj45]

We've restructured our site over the past 6 months and I'm going to run you through the whole scenario as I would love any feedback you guys have.

6 months ago we had 2 websites http://boulders-climbing.com (climbing facility) and http://bouldersuk.com (shop).

We made the decision to merge the websites and leverage the SEO on 1 site. Although boulders-climbing.com was the older and more established domain, the company wanted to use bouldersuk.com so a whole new website was designed and boulders-climbing.com was redirected to bouldersuk.com. The climbing facility website now sits at bouldersuk.com and the shop was moved to bouldersuk.com/climbing-shop with 301's for all shop pages.

This has lead to a significant a increase in domain rank for bouldersuk.com and much better rankings for the climbing centre related terms. The desired effect has been achieved, well half of it anyway.

The search rankings for bouldersuk.com/climbing-shop have never reached the previous heights and are still heading in the wrong direction, even though the overall domain ranking has increased by 50%.

What can I do to get the SEO for /climbing-shop working again? We're adding fresh content to our latest news with links through to products and categories, all category pages have A grades. we are attempting to link build but it is much more difficult for e-commerce than for the facilities pages.

Is the SEO of the main site hampering(masking?) the /climbing-shop?

All feedback on the whole process would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

[AlanMosley]

A sub directory is never going to rank like the home page. you can look at linking to try and improve the rank http://thatsit.com.au/seo/tutorials/a-simple-explanation-of-pagerank I would try and push PR from all shop pages to the shop main page, not the root.

Myself I would create a sub domain shop.bouldersuk.com, you will stil be seen as the same site, but will be easier to have the main shop page seen as a home page