Domain and subdomain comparison - a deeper look into the subdomain metrics

[MPO]

Hi all,

As I'm doing an analysis on our site and our main competitor (both sites are quite big, with active forums), who is much larger than we are, I have found out that :

1. Our site has the strongest domain authority: 34, competitor: 33.

2. Competitor beats us on 6 out of 8 areas in the sub categories for the "domain authority" category

3. We beat our competitor in 8 out of 8 sub categories for the category "sub domain metrics"

Now, as the title for this question suggests, I would like to hear what your thoughts is on this. Remember that our competitor is way bigger than us - how can they do so bad on the sub domain metrics, compared to us (and everybody else, I guess)?

What are your thoughts on this?

Please be aware that the domain shown to the left in the screen shot is our competitor.

Thanks a lot - all comments are very much appreciated!

yUbrX.png

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Hi MPO,

The competitor has a lot of points pointing to his root domain, but for whatever reason they do not point to the subdomain that you are comparing.

For example, if I point a link to example.com (no www), then the root domain metrics for the url www.example.com would be strong, but for the specific subdomain www.example.com they would be weaker.

(boy, this is so confusing when you try to explain it on paper. Here's a post from Rand on subdomains - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites

Does it matter? Probably not much. It depends where exactly those links are pointing, and what's ranking in the search results. Keep doing what you're doing - getting good links from good sources, and you'll come out on top either way.

[James77]

I wouldn't worry about it to much to be honest, your better off spending your time building great content and getting people to link to it rather than watching what your competitions stats say. Focus on getting your own stuff right, and you'll soon be leaving the competition wondering what happened.

[MPO]

From what I have read, I don't disagree. We have always (until very recently) been focusing solely on "honest" links (links that real people actually make on their site or in a forum), in comparison to "links that you build" / pay for / do something to get - that philosophy (or lack of philosophy, one might say) has changed, and slowly we are starting to get (build) better and more links.

To be honest, I'm not sure if your reply answered my question: Why has our competitor such a weak score on the "sub domain metric" and does this matter (at all)?

Or put in another way, the question simply is: does it make any sense to spend time on wondering about this?

[James77]

To be honest a DA in the 30's is pretty low. If you concentrate on getting a 30-50 good quality links you should easily get into the 40's.

[MPO]

Hi, and thanks for your answer - you are right about that, yes. When you look at the example shown in my initial post, what do you think about those two site-profiles. Does it tell whether one of the sites is in "good" or "bad" shape, does it really not say anything, etc.? Also: Is it important to beat your competitor on the "sub domain metrics", or does this question really not make much sense to ask?

Any one who has an opinion about this?

[James77]

It all depends on where links are pointing to - remember a www. is also subdomain.