Pros and cons of seperate sites vs. subdomains
-
First timer and new to SEO
We are designing a website for a customer in south america that has 3 distinct divisions. We want to develop the site in the most SEO effective way possible.
Each division will have its own keyword focus, its own associations and its own links. They will all link to each other from the main page company.com.
we were thinking of creating 4 different seperate domains such as...
www.company.com - basic high level company information with links to the other external sites below.
www.company-contructionsoftware.com
so my questions are:
1- is it better in the long run to have domains that have the search terms in the url like specified above? We can optimize for the main site as well as the individual sites separately
2- would the result be the same using subdomains? for example, itservices.company.com
3- possibly hosting the 3 different sites in different locations?
We want to make sure that we are building using the the best possible architecture for future optimization and internet marketing.
What are the pros and cons?
Thanks!!!!
-
Wouldn't having sub-domains make each sub-domain rank better in serps for each individual thing. In this case construction software, IT services, & graphic design?
Each sub-domain could be built better to have more relevance for each individual category instead of having to split the "google juice" into all three.
I'm sure there is a lot of content that each domain would still have, and since it would be staying on close to the same topic, it has an opportunity to make it further in the serps.
It would be better for starting to create a "SEO Empire" This is an article I think I found off this forum, or maybe an article on SEOmoz somewhere. Anyway you can skip to about the second half of this rather long article where it says "let's begin"
-
Also consider that each sub-domain is considered by Google to be a separate domain.
So, actually building out sub-domains (like www.google.com and adwords.google.com for example) would be considered 2 separate sites wihtin the same company, and when starting to expand and build links too, those links to the sub-domain only stand for value to that actual domain - link value and 'juice' isn't passed through the whole domain to the rest of the site naturally.
It would be better to run with building sub-folders for the main domain like (google.com/adwords/ as an example) as the value of any links to /adwords/ sub-folder is passed all the way through the entire domain, even from a sub-folder.. as well as the other mentioned list above! It makes links building easier to manage without having to build links to all these individual channel sub-domains.
Hope this also helps you out!
Everything else also counts EGOL mentions above.
Cheers! Rob
-
thanks!!!!
-
but from an SEO perspective... are there reasons to put them all together?
-
only one site to promote
-
power of all content is united
I would do it for those reasons ignoring the other six listed.
-
-
these are all important issues to consider, but from an SEO perspective... are there reasons to put them all together?
¡Thanks!
-
I would make one site for a lot of reasons... just a few here... use your imagination to expand the list...
-
easier to cross sell
-
simplify design
-
simplify hosting
-
only one site to promote
-
power of all content is united
-
only one shopping cart
-
simplifies accounting
-
you can add more reasons..
(I know that this was not one of your choices... but I feel so strongly about consolidation that I had to toss this out)
-
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
-
301 redirecting a site that currently links to the target site
I have a personal blog that has a good amount of back links pointing at it from high quality relevant authoritative sites in my niche. I also run a company in the same niche. I link to a page on the company site from the personal blog article that has bunch of relevant links pointing at it (as it's highly relevant to the content on the personal blog). Overview: Relevant personal blog post has a bunch of relevant external links pointing at it (completely organic). Relevant personal blog post then links (externally) to relevant company site page and is helping that page rank. Question: If I do the work to 301 the personal blog to the company site, and then link internally from the blog page to the other relevant company page, will this kill that back link or will the internal link help as much as the current external link does currently? **For clarity: ** External sites => External blog => External link to company page VS External sites => External blog 301 => Blog page (now on company blog) => Internal link to target page I would love to hear from anyone that has performed this in the past 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Keyword_NotProvided0 -
Moving multiple Sites to One Site and SEO Impact/Ideas
Hi there, We are in the process of moving 2 sites with higher page authority to another site we own (that is our company brand), so essentially 3 sites into one. We're at risk of losing a lot of SEO from the original 2 sites that have all the product information. We are doing this since we merged companies a couple years back and need one web precense. Anyhow, the site launch date is in 3 months and the recommendation is to start moving content over prior to that for top pages, which is a big undertaking when we are launching all the pages again with new content, redeisgn and moving sites in 3 months. If it's the right move, we should do it, but I just wanted to get opinions on how others have handled something similiar when moving to a site with lower site authority and trying not to lose rankings.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lauramrobinson320 -
Adult Toys Sites
Does anyone know of any changes SEOwise when running an adult toy site versus a normal eCommerce site? Is there any tips or suggestions that are worth knowing to achieve rankings faster? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | the-gate-films0 -
One Site vs. Many
This is a question that I am not sure has a "right" answer. I am just wondering what everyone's thoughts are on this. I can see benefit of both sides of the coin. In your opinion, is it better to have one large e-commerce site with all of your content on the same domain or is it better to have multiple more targeted domains with your content broken up into smaller chunks? The reason I ask is, I feel like while multiple more targeted sites certainly have the benefit of focus, aren't you taking all your traffic and content, splitting it up and leaving you with several sites that most likely are getting less traffic than one large site would. All opinions welcome.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | unikey0 -
Real Estate Site Question
I'm working on this site: www.aldodavico.com - who is a real estate agent in Miami. Any ideas/best practices for SEO for a site like this one? It's got about 500 pages. I've never deal with such a huge site before.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mrodriguez14400 -
Removing A Blog From Site...
Hi Everyone, One of my clients I am doing marketing consulting for is a big law firm. For the past 3 years they have been paying someone to write blog posts everyday in hopes of improving search traffic to site. The blog did indeed increase traffic to the site, but analyzing the stats, the firm generates no leads (via form or phone) from any of the search traffic that lands in the blog. Furthermore, I'm seeing Google send many search queries that people use to get to the site to blog pages, when it would be much more beneficial to have that traffic go to the main part of the website. In short, the law firm's blog provides little to no value to end users and was written entirely for SEO purposes. Now the law firm's website has 6,000 unique pages, and only 400 pages of the site are NON-blog pages (the good stuff, essentially). About 35% of the site's total site traffic lands on the blog pages from search, but again... this traffic does not convert, has very high bounce rate and I doubt there is any branding benefit either. With all that said, I didn't know if it would be best to delete the blog, redirect blog pages to some other page on the site, etc? The law firm has ceased writing new blog posts upon my recommendation, as well. I am afraid of doing something ill-advised with the blog since it accounts now for 95% of the pages of the website. But again, it's useless drivel in my eyes that adds no value and was simply a misguided SEO effort from another marketer that heard blogs are good for SEO. I would certainly appreciate any guidance or advice on how best to handle this situation. Thank you for your kind help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gbkevin0 -
What this site is doing? Does it look like cloaking to you?
Hi here, I was studying our competitors SEO strategies, and I have noticed that one of our major competitors has setup something pretty weird from a SEO stand point for which I would like to know your thoughts about because I can't find a clear explanation for it. Here is the deal: the site is musicnotes.com, and their product pages are located inside the /sheetmusic/ directory, so if you want to see all their product pages indexed on Google, you can just type in Google: site:musicnotes.com inurl:/sheetmusic/ Then you will get about 290,000 indexed pages. No, here is the tricky part: try to click on one of those links, then you will get a 302 redirect to a page that includes a meta "noindex, nofollow" directive. Isn't that pretty weird? Why would they want to "nonidex, nofollow" a page from a 302 redirect? And how in the heck the redirecting page is still in the index?!! And how Google can allow that?! All this sounds weird to me and remind me spammy techniques of the 90s called "cloaking"... what do you think?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
Multiple sites in the same niche
Hi All A question regarding multiple sites in the same niche... If I have say 10 sites all targetting the same niche yet all on different C-class IPs with different hosts, registrars, whois data and ages can I use the same template, or will Google discern a pattern? Basically I have developed a WordPress template which I want to use on the sites albeit with different logos / brand colours. NB/ All of the 10 sites will have unique, original content and they will NOT be interlinked
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | danielparry1