Sub domain is KILLING my rankings - will *this* help to fix the issue?

[Martin N Smith]

Hi all,

A question to all those knowledgeable Warriors

* I have a website - e.g mywebsite.com

* The content on this website is 100% unique.

* I have a sub domain on the above website - e.g shop.mywebsite.com

* The sub domain is where visitors to my website can purchase products online.

* The content within the sub domain is 100% duplicate as it's managed by a white label provider (that has over 100 of the same white labels across the www).

* For SEO purposes, and to ensure that Google doesn't penalise the main website (mywebsite.com), i've blocked the spiders from crawling the sub domain (shop.mywebsite.com).


Now, here's the issue.

95% of the visitors to the main website (mywebsite.com) click on a big red 'buy this product' button on the home page.

This button links to the sub domain / white label shop (shop.mywebsite.com).


As a result of the above process, the main website (mywebsite.com) is affected in two ways:

1. The Bounce Rate is 91%

2. The Average Time On Site is 14 seconds.

.....according to Google Analytics.

Given the above, it's pretty clear that Google is NOT going to rank the main site (mywebsite.com) highly in the SERPS if their search visitors leave the main site (mywebsite.com) after just 14 seconds on average and only 9% click through to a second page.

So, what do I do?

Or to put that another way, whilst I don't want Google to crawl the sub domain (due to the duplicate content issue), how can I *tell* Google that the sub domain IS still part of the main website (mywebsite.com) so visitors are still effectively on site, thus reducing the 1. The Bounce Rate and 2. The Average Time On Site?


Any help / feedback would be really appreciated.

Cheers,
Martin