Separate experience on the same domain?

[ba_seomoz]

So my company is interested in creating a scholarship for medical students as a way to create more brand awareness and earn some quality links from universities and colleges. The problem is, we are a little stuck on where to place the scholarship within the structure of our site.

First of all, our idea is to make the scholarship application process interactive and social. Candidates will create a short video where they answer one of the scholarship questions. Those videos will be displayed in a Reddit-style feed (sort of like Inbound.org) allowing people to vote for the ones they like. Videos with more links will rise to the top. The popularity of the videos will factor into the decision of whom to award the scholarship, but it will not be the sole determining factor.

To do this properly, the scholarship should be its own experience independent from our main site. There will be several pages (profile, application, about the scholarship, the Reddit-style feed, etc.) so it wouldn’t really fit within our existing site. BUT if we put the scholarship on a subdomain we miss out on the link juice.

Could we keep the scholarship pages under the main domain (mainsite.com/scholarship), but have it be its own experience with its own navigation? Will that look bad in the eyes of the search engines? We’d essentially have two sites on the same domain. Any help would be much appreciated.

[anthonydnelson]

I think you can create a "separate experience" on your domain, while still keeping some elements of your brand in tact. Look at a landing page like Moz's for Mozcon for example. The site header and the color scheme are the same, but the layout and design of the rest of the piece are nothing like the traditional Moz blog post, tools or guide.

It's totally OK to create a unique experience on your website for a dedicated landing page centered around an event, contest, etc.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

When you say you want to make this a unique experience, do you mean you want the look and feel of this to be completely different to the current site? If so, I would suggest that this is something to avoid. If it is brand you are wanting to build, you need to keep everything similar.

People like to know that when they are on a site they trust, that they aren't shifted around from pillar to post. If you make it so totally different (navigation, colours, theme, etc), then this might be a little counterintuitive.

I personally can't see any problems with building an 'experience' into the current site structure, but I would ensure that people feel comfortable knowing they haven't been shifted off the main site and retain aspects such as a menu bar, colours, etc.

Andy