Hi all - hope this is a good place to ask this:
Without the whole story, we're stuck in a scenario where we redirect a whole subfolder in the following way:
via
subdomain.example.com/subfolder/abc
to end on
www.example.com/new-subfolder/abc
While I'm aware that best practice would not contain multiple step redirects, this currently isn't possible... however, we have noticed a bit more of a drop in rankings than i'd usually expect (there are other possible factors). Does anyone think that going via a subdomain specifically would be particularly harmful?
Thanks,
Alex
Hi Alex,
It's something one can't be sure. But, technically, a subdomain is another hostname where crosslinking signals would have a stronger decay than within the same hostname. So, hipotethically, redirecting through a subdomain would be equivalent to make internal linking go through a subdomain. It's very possible this may weaken your internal linking more than it would if it would go through the same hostname.
The only reliable way to test this, would be changing/fixing redirects for a portion of the website while leaving another portion unchanged, and see what happens.
Does the drop in rankings coincide with the implementation of these redirects? -- Consider periods of a couple of weeks before and after.