Multiple domains vs single domain vs subdomains ?
-
I have a client that recently read an article that advised him to break up his website into various URL's that targeted specific products. It was supposed to be a solution to gain footing in an already competitive industry. So rather than company.com with various pages targeting his products, he'd end up having multiple smaller sites:
Etc.
The article stated that by structuring your website this way, you were more likely to gain ranking in Google by targeting these niche markets.
I wanted to know if this article was based on any facts. Are there any benefits to creating a new website that targets a specific niche market versus as a section of pages on a main website?
I then began looking into structuring each of these product areas into subdomains, but the data out there is not definitive as to how subdomains are viewed by Google and other search engines - more specifically how subdomains benefit (or not!) the primary domain.
So, in general, when a business targets many products and services that cover a wide range - what is the best way to structure the delivery of this info: multiple domains, single domain with folders/categories, or subdomains? If single domain with folders/categories are not an option, how do subdomains stack up?
Thanks in advance for your help/suggestions!
-
I just posted this in another thread but believe that it applies here as well....
========================================
Let me just call this... "logical speculation"....
If you chop a domain's content in half and place it on two different websites, you have also just chopped all of the links, likes, mentions, etc in half.
If you do that you should expect every ranking everywhere to drop - because you now have less domain authority - you cut it in half.
========================================
-
Splitting a client's website into multiple domains could affect you in branding (unless you incorporate the brand name and the vertical you want to split into the domain).
Subdomains only make sense if you really want to target different audiences and there is little chance of cross-over (i.e. there would be a slim chance that customers would overlap if you sell cosmetics on one domain and DYI products on another). The danger of subdomains is that if content is not properly managed, you will run into all sorts of content issues.
I would rather focus on a single domain with a good product category structure, product pages and a good set of landing-/conversion pages to target the different verticals.
I also think that a single domain will afford you better long-term value (both from a SEO and SEM perspective).
-
As is often the case, I think it depends on your specific business and products. I have seen the niche site idea work extremely well, and not work at all. Something to really take into account when considering the multi-site option is: Do you have the resources to develop manage and market multiple sites?
I am an in-house SEO for a company that just launched a micro-brand. They could have opted to put these new products on their existing Web site, but the products and customers were going to be vastly different than the core customer persona of the main site, although they are all church ministry related.
Our main site is very large and I have advised that it would be better to separate out the three subsections of the site because, again, the customers of each leg of the business are completely different. We are in a highly competitive category too, so this makes it extremely hard to rank for important keywords because our messaging is trying to address three different businesses with one Website.
If you have the resources to handle multiple sites, and you're in a competitive space, I'd say go for the niche sites. But beware of Exact Match Domains. Google is crackin' down!
Hope this perspective helps a bit.
-
I used to have a lot of hotdog stand websites... then built a big site that quickly defeated all of them and most of their competitors.
Who is kicking all of the ass out there right now?. The hotdog stands? Or, the big sites like wikipedia, about, amazon, ebay, ??
If you are going to attack the US Navy which would you rather have? One battleship or ten potato guns?
I used to run subdomains and then redirected them into folders on the main site and the results have been kickass. Kickass.
There is always a question about how google is going to treat subdomains but there is never a question about how they are going to treat a big website.
As far as conversions go and impressing your visitors. Which is going to do a better job.. A hotdog stand or a supermarket? Which will produce better shopping cart totals though cross selling?
Your questions have been asked in this Q&A over and over again. If you use search you will find lots of opinions that support the above?
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
-
How can I write unique and seductive product descriptions about multiple, very similar products?
We are an eCommerce store who sell personalised phone cases, macbook covers, mugs and the like. Our target market is primarily 16-25 and female. We're in the process of redesigning our website www.mrnutcase.com and we desperately need some more enticing product descriptions before the redesign goes live. The problem is that most of our products are exactly the same. For example iPhone 5 case, iPhone 5S Case etc. At the moment our product descriptions are almost the same, but written in a slightly different way. Not only is this dangerous in terms of duplicate content, but it's also extremely boring for the user. With our users being young and female, writing about boring technical specifications isn't going to cut it with the crowd. Obviously, i want each of our pages to rank in Google so I don't want to NoIndex or canonicalize any pages or anything. How can I write unique and enticing product descriptions for very similar products? Would appreciate any ideas! Thanks, Danny
On-Page Optimization | | DannyNutcase0 -
Indexed/Submitted URLS vs Total Indexed
Hello, My site is www.colbysphotography.com. I have Total Indexed 195 while I have 87 URLs submitted and only 79 URLs Indexed. What is the difference and is there a problem? Thanks ahead of time,
On-Page Optimization | | littlecolby
Colby0 -
"og:description" vs. name="description"
According to Rock Your SEO with Structured Social Sharing "OG description overrides meta description tag." Moz Crawl Diagnostics seems to ignore og:description and only look for meta name="description" - does that mean my meta descriptions tags should be meta name?
On-Page Optimization | | leighw0 -
"Heading 1" vs. "Title" Style for SEO
In Word, you can specify "Heading 1" text which Google presumably treats the same as an HTML tag. Is there any benefit in using the "Title" style? Is it the equivalent of a web page's title?
On-Page Optimization | | BlueLinkERP0 -
Duplicate content on domains we own
Hello! We are new to SEO and have a problem we have caused ourselves. We own two domains GoCentrix.com (old domain) and CallRingTalk.com (new domain that we want to SEO). The content was updated on both domains at about the same time. Both are identical with a few exceptions. Now that we are getting into SEO we now understand this to be a big issue. Is this a resolvable matter? At this point what is the best approach to handle this? So far we have considered a couple of options. 1. Change the copy, but on which site? Is one flagged as the original and the other duplicate? 2. Robots.txt noindex, nofollow on the old one. Any help is appreciated, thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | CallRingTalk0 -
Is it possible to add language tag on a single foreign language page?
I have some pages are written in foreign language, is it possible to just add the language tag on this single page to enable it to target specific audience? eg, if I have a page written in German, how do I add the language tag to help it get a better rank in google.de? Thank you Mozzers
On-Page Optimization | | JonnyGreenwood0 -
Should we consider redirecting a high ranking subdomain page to our homepage?
My site bluecotton.com sells custom printed t-shirts. Our DA is 46. Our homepage is PA 55. The design studio is where users create their designs. Over the years the design studio has received a lot of fan fair including links from gizmodo and adobe. When I rank against our biggest competitors customink, ooshirts, uberprints.com I find that our domain as a whole doesn't look all that great. However, when I look at the history of our subdomain I see that we are more trusted and credible than all of our competitors. We have 10k links pointing to the design studio. Here is my question. What if I did 301 redirect of bluecotton.com/studio.html to bluecotton.com? Then I created a new url for the DS. This would not cause users any problems. In fact for many they would get more context around what we are trying to do and what we offer. Is this crazy? I never find results in google for the design studio. It always shows our home. That is pretty much what happens to all of our competitors on the higher traffic terms that are driving real sales. So why do i ask? If my subdomain is more valuable becuase of the design studio links then I wonder if I redirected it to the homepage if it would supercharge my homepage and propel is forward in the serps. Thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | bradwayland0 -
Schema.org vs data-vocabulary.org
Hi, I am implementing the rich snippets on an e coomerce site. Should we implement schema.org or data-vocabulary.org? As i feel data vocabulary is more used by google in showing rich snippets.
On-Page Optimization | | rahijain0