Subdomain Redirection Question

Question

I am working on a site and it has a sub domain which has almost 25K pages indexed in Google. This subdomain is of no use anymore and its main site (root domain) has the same content. My question is how to effectively handle this.

1. Redirect all the pages to the root domain.
2. Take down these pages and send URL removal request in search console.
3. no-index them only.

PS - this subdomain has Page authority of 49/100 and total links are - 39 only and most of these links are coming from the site owners other sites.

Answer 1

Basically, the steps are:

1. Ensure that both the subdomain and main domain are verified properties in Google Search Console.

2. Redirect (301 permanent) all pages from the subdomain to the main domain. (This is the most important step.)

3. Use Google's change of address tool to specifically tell Google that the "site" has moved from the subdomain to the main domain. (You can only do this if you have completed steps #1 and #2 above.)

Take down these pages and send URL removal request in search console.

Do not "send URL removal request". This will simply remove the URLs from the SERPs. You want Google to recrawl these pages and see the redirect.

no-index them only.

No. The pages have simply moved and you want them indexed at the new location (at the main domain).