How best to redirect sub-domains to main domain

[Pass the Dutchie]

We have realized that setting up sub-domains for country variations is not very practical and have decided to move the four of the five subdomains to the main domain. For example, www.england.domain.de will be redirected to www.domain.de/england/

The main domain is about 4 years old and the subdomains are about 3 years old.

We have rather neglected the main domain as most visitors locate the site via the relevant sub-domain.

Sites are all hosted on the same Apache server so a 301 redirect using .htaccess from subdomain to main domain seems to be the way to go.

Firstly, should I redirect all 4 subdomains at the same time? Or should I do it in stages? If I do it in stages how long should I leave between? Reason I ask is because two of the older sub-domains have accumulated over 400-500 links each and I don't want to shock the main domain with this sudden influx of links.

I will be using a very similar site structure and apart from the index page all other page names will remain the same.

Secondly the sub/domains have been registered in Webmaster Tools for 3-4 months and I have submitted sitemaps etc.

How best to I proceed with Webmaster Tools? Should I 301 redirect and then remove the domains from WT or redirect and inform WT that the pages for the sub-domains no longer exist?

I feel that if I don't do the switch now it will become even more problematic down the road but I am very worried that I could wipe out all my sites.

Many thanks for the advise.

DB

[mikedee]

Some people claim that 301'ing can harm your results, but I have done almost site wide 301's without any problem.

If I were you I would redirect them all at once and update the sitemap at the same time. Google will quickly re-index the new pages. I didn't see any drop in serps (I got a slight increase because the new pages were SEO'd).

Make 100% sure that the server is actually returning 301 not 302 (which is the default). I use LiveHTTPHeaders to check.

There is a small chance of a problem, but I doubt it. You should weigh up the pros and cons (I assume there are very good reasons for changing something that works).

[Pass the Dutchie]

Thanks Mike Dee.

Do you think that after I have redirected the sites I should remove the sub-domain accounts from Google's Webmaster Tools?

I would appreciate if anyone else would share their views.

[tedster]

Yes, I do think you should remove the subdomains from Webmaster Tools.

I've seen many 301 redirects go smoothly, and I've also seen a few blow up badly. A lot seems to depend on the level of trust that Google has previously extended to the domain. If there's some kind of darker area in a domain's history, then en masse 301 redirects can run into some trouble. If the domain has a clean history with Google, and if the redirect is done in a technically sound fashion, then often it goes quite smoothly with Google.

However, several people have mentioned to me that 301 redirects from a subdomain never seem to fully transfer the link juice and PR the way that a domain-to-domain 301 does. I have no hands-on experience here, but I pass on others comments - people I give a decent level of credibility to.

[Pass the Dutchie]

Thanks again Ted,

Four months back the domain was temporarily removed from Google's index. After fixing the incorrect DNS setting and making a re-inclusion request, 4 weeks later the sites bounced back and traffic was higher than it ever was. After a month the sites began to loose momentum and all domains slipped to a point where I am almost convinced it has in part lost a certain amount of trust rank for certain keywords.

This is one of the reasons why I should, for long terms sake, move away from creating sub-domains with a theme that is too close to the main domain and consolidate the site under one domain.

So for this reason I am taking your comments very seriously. However, if my hunch is right and the domains have lost trust rank due to its sub-domains I am somewhat caught in a catch-22 situation. Damed if I do and damed if I don't.

If only there was a way to 'inform' Google before making the change so that it can be referred to if the $#*& hits the fan. I have posted my concerns on Google Webmaster Help but as expected no reply as yet.

Any more opinions would be greatly appreciated as 60% of my business relies on these sites.

[Pass the Dutchie]

I have had reply from Google Webmaster Help. The resceted poster points out that there is a minimal risk of pointing subdomains to directories within the main domain. The poster claims that this method should not overload the main domain with a sudden rush of additional back links.

Anyone care to comment?

[tedster]

I think the point about avoiding a sudden flood of backlinks to the root domain has a kind of logic to it, but I have no solid data to back that up. It might just be over-cautious. You said there a 4 subdomains and two of them have 400-500 backlinks. How many backlinks doe the current root domain have?

Also, I'm not clear about your analysis on why this move is necessary. You said your traoubles followed a DNS issue - how is that related to thefour subdomains?

[Pass the Dutchie]

Here is the current Yahoo! Inlink count for this domain:

linkdoman:mysite.com Inlinks (2,880)
linkdoman:www.mysite.com Inlinks (507)
linkdoman:sub1.mysite.com Inlinks (1,843)
linkdoman:sub2.mysite.com Inlinks (185)
linkdoman:sub3.mysite.com Inlinks (134)
linkdoman:sub4.mysite.com Inlinks (221)

Reason for consolidating the subdomains:

- Poor performance of www.mysite.com especially for single terms.
- All sub-domains outperform main domain
- Each sub-domain acts as its own, individual site and has no central navigation point such as an overall 'site Homapage'. If the user feels that the 'product' on the subdomain is not what they are looking for they navigate back to the SERP's increasing bounce rate. This is partly due to poor navigation back to the main domain but even if there was good navigation back to the main domain does this not count as a bounce from that sub-domain?
- Suspect that the reason for the poor performance of the main-domain is due to the sub-domains and overall sporadic site organization.

[Pass the Dutchie]

how is that related to the four subdomains?"

I don't think there is a direct relation. The DNS was a separate problem but after requesting re-inclusion there may have been something else that the reviewer did not like. So although the sites were re-included four weeks later a dampening effect may have been manually imposed on the domain as a whole. If this is the case then I think that the site structure my have have something to do with it. It's not to say that the sub-domain names them self were keyword stiffed but the way the site was organized and the similarity of topic between domain and sub-domains.