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I have 2 different websites with identical sub domains, example -

invest.abc.com and invest.xyz.com, now both of these sub domains are ranking for different terms, so for 1 term only one sub domain is ranking while for other search term, another sub domain is ranking. However, I just want to keep invest.xyz.com in Google index and get rid of invest.abc.com, also to add invest.abc.com has some external links as well as being linked from other internal sites. Same with the invest.xyz.com.

So, what should be the strategy here to get rid of the duplicate subdomain which is invest.abc.com. Few suggestions comes to min -

  • Noindex and nofollow?
  • 301 redirect - to abc.com or to invest.xyz.com?
  • Canonicals?
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  • Or just delete the sub-domain. – closetnoc Apr 3 '17 at 16:04
  • I want to delete it but as I said above, some of the pages on unwanted sub domain are ranking, so if we remove it, users will land on a 404 page and might not find the answer they were looking for. – NRose Apr 3 '17 at 16:22
  • If you delete the sub-domain, Goole will quickly remove it from the SERPs. As well, the sub-domain will not resolve - the user will not see a 404. When you delete the sub-domain, you other sub-domain will begin to rank. – closetnoc Apr 3 '17 at 16:35
  • Assuming your link profile on the sub-domain is not worth saving, deleting the sub-domain is the simplest and fastest method. Cheers!! – closetnoc Apr 3 '17 at 16:38
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You have two options:

  1. 301 redirects: Redirect each page on one subdomain to the corresponding page on the other.
  2. Canonical URL tags.

Either would meet your objective of getting search engine traffic to one of the two and preserving rankings and inbound links.

Deleting on of the subdomains would leave its inbound links hanging and not help the other subdomain.

Noindex and nofollow would also prevent link juice from being passed the way you want it.

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