It's my understanding that you treat each subdomain as a unique site. So each subdomain should have its own unique XML sitemap and robots.txt file, as well as submitted separately to Google Webmaster Tools. But to answer your inter-linking question, I would avoid including the other domain URLs in those files (XML and Robots). Only include the URLs for that particular domain and/or subdomain. With that being said however, I would inter-link them on the actual site somewhere. Maybe in the HTML sitemap, navigation, footer, or even naturally throughout your body content where appropriate as well.
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Posts made by Ryan-Bradley
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RE: How to handle a blog subdomain on the main sitemap and robots file?
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RE: Question on Breadcrumb and Canonical
Hi Tommy,
Not exactly. I think I misunderstood your original question. I thought you had two pages with the same content, and they were accessible via two different categories.
But I think you're saying you have one page, but you can access that one page via the two different categories, but the breadcrumbs are the same no matter which route they took, whether through A or B, they show category A breadcrumbs.
I wouldn't worry so much about the breadcrumbs, I would worry more about duplicate content and urls.
Let's say you're selling a flashlight, and you just have one flashlight product page. But, because of the content of your site, you listed it under two different categories. Let's just say the categories are tools and gadgets.
So if you had two urls:
http://www.site.com/tools/flashlight and http://www.site.com/gadgets/flashlight
but they were technically the same page (same content and everything just different url), this would be bad.
The fix for this would be to pick the url you want to rank, then put that url as the canonical for the other, so when google crawls it, they know you prefer the other url.
However if it were the same url, no matter which category they came from, there is no problem, because there is no duplication.
Now back to the beginning
If you really want the breadcrumbs to reflect which category they came from, instead of just redirecting to category A, then create another page for category B, make it identical to the page for category A. But on the new page, put the url of page A as the canonical on the new page for B.
So users get the same product page (content speaking) with the breadcrumb that reflects their path, but Google will only count one url no matter which one they crawl.
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RE: Question on Breadcrumb and Canonical
Breadcrumbs are more for UX like you say, however they do help search engines crawl your site's pages better as well, especially if they're not in main navigation.
I think the canonical issue is the more important one rather than what links appear in the breadcrumb. I would select which page you would prefer to rank, then put that url in the canonical tag of the other page.
So the canonical would be for Google, and the breadcrumb would be for user.
Also, who knows, maybe having the different breadcrumb is better for the user, because they came from a different path to that product in the first place. But Google would count both pages as the same.
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RE: How to Add canonical tags on .ASPX pages?
The Master Page is the main template page that all of the asp pages on the site are based on. If I put a standard canonical url tag in the Master Page, that canonical url will then be on all of the pages.
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RE: How to Add canonical tags on .ASPX pages?
Yes that is the correct code for apache sites, but asp sites don't have a section.
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How to Add canonical tags on .ASPX pages?
What is the proper way (or is it possible) to add canonical tags on website pages that end in .aspx?
If you add a canonical tag to the Master Page it will put that exact canonical tag on every page, which is bad.
Is there a different version of the tag to put on individual pages?
And one to put on the home page without the Master Page error?