Hi everyone,
About a year ago, this company moved its blog from domainname.com/blog to blog.domainname.com. Since then, organic traffic and conversions have declined, possibly due to CTA buttons placed at the bottom of some articles.
Could this change impact the SEO performance of both the blog pages and the other static pages?
Yes. It will impact SEO performance. Always use a 301 redirect from old to new pages.
Unless they are already 301 redirected, you shouldn’t be too concerned. Optimise the webpage as usual. But you still need to do some analytics housekeeping to ensure that blog.domain.com is tracked in Google Search Console and Google Analytics.
On a side note, I am not a fan of subdomains for blogs. Unless there are exceptional conditions that require subdomains for blogs, I would like to keep everything in one dominant domain.
Moving a blog from domainname.com/blog to blog.domainname.com can impact SEO performance due to several factors. Firstly, it separates SEO authority and link equity from the main domain, potentially diluting overall domain authority. Changes in URL structure during migration can lead to temporary drops in keyword rankings until search engines re-crawl and re-index the new URLs. Internal linking effectiveness may diminish, affecting how search engines interpret content relevance across the site. Additionally, user engagement may suffer if CTA buttons at the bottom of articles discourage interaction. To mitigate these effects, ensure proper 301 redirects are in place, optimize internal linking strategies, and monitor keyword rankings and traffic closely post-migration to address any issues promptly and potentially improve SEO performance.
A subfolder is better for SEO because it is easier to maintain and allows for better link equity distribution to the blog index, category pages, and individual posts.