Sub Domain vs. New Root Domain for New Brand
-
Would you recommend a new brand be placed as a subdomain to the existing parent company or create a separate root domain for this new brand?
-
Unless there is a very strong reason, I would go for a separate TLD - sub domains are a lot less popular than they used to be and do tend to be more for sites that perhaps have lots of country specific content or really want to keep it all together, as William said.
And if you went for a sub domain, do you not think that the new brand will be just as visible as if you went for sub folders? If not more so?
Cheers,
Andy
-
Thanks for your help Andy. To answer a few of your questions:
-
The Brand will only exist in the US market.
-
There are no plans for product expansion
-
The brand is connected to the parent company as they are the main distributor and provider of most of the raw materials.
We have already decided against using a sub-folder because the brand will be more visible to consumers than the parent company is.
-
-
If they are two entirly different bands and you are not using the same content I would say break it out into it's own so you can develop the reputation for it and you could say sister company of Brand A.
Sub domains are more for stuff like video.domain.com but I have seen more companies break it out.
Now if this is just another service offering I would find a way to include it somewhere in your main domain to reduce confusion.
-
A number of other questions need to be asked here first...
- Is this brand completely separate from the parent?
- Do you plan on expanding on it?
- Is the market UK, European, Asia, etc? A country specific TLD might be a better choice
Those are just a few considerations - I have to say, I am not a fan of sub domains as it does tie the site into the parent long term and if you ever have a need or requirement to break away, it just makes it more awkward.
The reason I asked about the brand being seen as a part of the company, has the parent not thought just about moving to the existing site structure? www.parent.com/brand
Cheers,
Andy
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Domain vs Sub Domain and Rankings
Hi All Wanting some advice. I have a client which has a number of individual centres that are part of an umbrella organisation. Each individual centre has its own web site and some of these sites have similar (not duplicate content) products and services. Currently the individual centres are sub domains of the umbrella organisation. i.e. Umbrella organisation www.organisation.org.au Individual centres are sub domains i.e. www.centre1.organisation.org.au, www.centre2.organisation.org.au etc. I'm feeling that perhaps this setup might be affecting the rankings of the individual sites because they are sub domains. Would love to hear some thoughts or experience on this and whether its worth going through the process of migrating the individual centre domains. Thanks Ian
Technical SEO | | iragless0 -
Div tags vs. Tables
Is there any reason NOT to code in tables (other than it being outdated) for SEO reasons?
Technical SEO | | EileenCleary0 -
Redirect to new domain
We are moving our website from http://mysyncpad.com to http://syncpadapp.com The old site ranks pretty well for some specific keywords, will a 301 allow the new site to rank as well or will it be penalized by good for the transfer?
Technical SEO | | fifthlayer0 -
Showing My domain twice
I have a question, I am showing my domain twic, how can i have page rank 32 and page rank 44 for the same page? Regards | The UK's Leading Probate Brokers - Lowest Probate Quote guarantee! Probate experts. http://finalduties.co.uk/ 83 (over by 13) 32 1 The UK's Leading Probate Brokers - Lowest Probate Quote guarantee! Probate experts. http://www.finalduties.co.uk/ | 83 (over by 13) | 44 | 112 |
Technical SEO | | Chris__Chris0 -
301 for old domain to new domain - Joomla plugin or cpanel?
A client changed domains and both are being indexed. There are thousands of content pages. I can install a 301 redirect Joomla plugin and configure it so that each page redirects to the new domain. I have a feeling I will need to manual set every page. OR I can create a domain level redirect setting in cpanel using wildcards. I think this will automatically pass every old URL to the new URL. Which is the better approach? The cpanel option sounds like less work.
Technical SEO | | designquotes0 -
Homepage/Root domain de-indexed by Google
This morning I discovered that the homepage/root domain of our company site, http://www.collegeplus.org/, has been de-indexed by Google and Bing. Out IT dept. is claiming it's our fault because we changed the meta title on our homepage. But they will not give me access to GWT to see if there's any issues. I believe the issue lies within our robots.txt file - http://www.collegeplus.org/robots.txt I also don't believe we're suffering a penalty because all of our tier 2 pages are still indexed when any type of branded search is performed. We don't do things that can get a site de-indexed like this. Any ideas on what the issue may be? Or at least something to convince our IT dept. that simply changing a meta title won't get your homepage totally de-indexed? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | explorionary0 -
New Forum: SEO considerations.
We're going to add a new forum to our website. We don't anticipate very large volumes of users. I read somewhere in The Art of SEO that forums should be 'built in bbPress'. I'm very much a programming novice so I'm still trying to get to grip with the basics of forums. I'd be grateful to know the main SEO considerations (however basic) that I should tell my web developer who is building the new forum.
Technical SEO | | JacobFunnell0