Worth Splitting Up Main Site into Several Microsites?
-
The company I work for offers a variety of very different products, that are sold to different audiences.
Right now (and for the past 4 years) all the products have been listed on one main website.
Over the years, we have accumulated over 200,000 links and rank relatively well in most of the product-specific keywords.
Still, for business purposes we really feel that having a unique site specific to each product would be more beneficial than having them all on one site.
What are the pros and cons of making a move to different subdomains from a main site.
(i.e. instead of www.cleanedison.com/solar we would set up a solar.cleanedison.com)
-
If they break up that domain they need to have their heads examined.
-
Thank you for your feedback Irving and Takeshi! It's much appreciated.
To answer Irving's question, there's two main reasons we are thinking about using "productA.domain.com" rather than "domain.com/productA". 1) if it would help us rank better in SERPS, and 2) to improve the user experience. Our hunch is that if users think they are dealing with a company that specializes in Product A, they will be more inclined to buy than if they realize that our company sells Products A, B, C, and D.
So far, we have been linkbuilding for each product separately rather than for the top-level domain as a whole. For example, we will create content about Product A and get other sites that specialize in content about Product A to link back to "domain.com/productA". We then repeat the process for Products B, C, etc.
So changing over to subdomains would not create more work for us from a linkbuilding perspective. The main thing we are concerned about is, will this improve or hurt our rankings? We only have 4 main product types, but they are all quite different from each other and targeted to different audiences. From everything that I've read, domain authority and trust does pass from the main domain to subdomains if you only have a small number of them.
-
I agree with Irving. By creating 4 different sites, you quadruple the amount of link building you need to do and lose out on your established domain authority.
It would be better from an SEO perspective to run with subdirectories (domain.com/product) rather than subdomains (product.domain.com). You can still create a unique looking site for each subdirectory, you can even have them look completely different from each other with different navigation, and the homepage would just have links to the 4 different sections of your site.
With subdirectories, you can still create 4 distinct sites with their own branding & navigation, but you still benefit from the site's overall domain authority.
-
Keep it all under one domain.
a) subdomains won't help you rank better
b) they will be considered as new sites
c) navigation and user experience is worse
d) harder to maintain separate sites
e) the bigger the one site the more powerful and you already have a lot of links
f) excessive interlinking can be an SEO issue
g) bounce rate will increase and time spent on site will decrease on the main site
there is no need to do it from an SEO perspective, what are your "business purposes" that make you feel that this would be more beneficial
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
-
Ecommerce site in Europe
A client is looking to expand their ecommerce business into Europe. They have already purchased a number of European brand domain names and want to start their expansion in Ireland. Is it better to have a single website with pages translated for each language or a seperate site for each domain/country? With Ireland the only obvious difference is the currency, language shouldn't be an issue. But if we choose seperate sites for each domain/country will having the same product content/descriptions especially in the case of Ireland be an issue? Thanks in advance
Web Design | | MartinJC0 -
How do you influence the default site title?
Hi, We have noticed that on brand searches, a site's page title is replaced with the name of the site or the business, we can understand that this is due to the fact that a CTR enticing title is not as important when the customer is looking for a certain brand. What tells Google what company name to display in this instance? We're having trouble with our French site displaying the page title, we are moving the position of the title code earlier in the page, but can't see why a) Telefleurs is not displaying the title chosen and b) why it is displaying EuroFlorist when our French brand is Telefleurs. Any advice on this would be much appreciated! Thanks, Sam JgLwnGV.png
Web Design | | seoeuroflorist0 -
Sitemap Question - Very Old Ecommerce Site, Never Used A Map
I help manage a family website, that has about 10,000 products... It was top ranked since 1996, then got smacked by Penguin and recovered but its still receiving only a fraction of the natural traffic it used to get. Something we have never used... Is a sitemap. I'm curious if anyone knows reliable software that will generate a sitemap? My cart is custom built, website uses html pages across the board. Dynamic content and parameters are set up properly, onsite seo is in the excellent range. The only thing that I haven't been utilizing is a sitemap. Because the cart was hand built, it would a huge convenience to use a lightweight program thats compatible with any website, has parameter settings, exclusions and anything else useful to negate any duplicate content. I have a few highly dynamic pages as well... If anyone knows a product or a possible solution, it would be much appreciated. Working it up myself would be very time consuming. Thx
Web Design | | Southbay_Carnivorous_Plants0 -
Need to hire a tech for find out why google spider can't access my site
Google spider can't access my site and all my pages are gone out of serps. I've called network solutions tech support and they say all is fine with the site which is wrong. does anyone know of a web tech who i can hire to fix this issue? Thanks, Ron
Web Design | | Ron100 -
From Google Sites to Wordpress - Anyone Ventured this SEO terrain?
We have a few sites in Google Sites - and they are ugly! We have a majority (40+) of websites in Wordpress. But we have a few websites just stuck on Google Sites, and since Google won't let you fully edit the HTML, add scripts, or implement any technology since 2000, we want to move. The sad problem - the Google sites are ranking well. We rank well in Manhattan, Atlanta, Dallas, and Philadelphia. The problem is - the sites do not give much room for growth - and the bounce rate is high because they are so ugly. Has Anyone moved from Google sites to Wordpress? Should we just stay with Google and bite the ugly bullet? My fear is that these sites will not allow for growth. It is hard to update them and even harder to make them look nice. To get a sample - beware: www.counselingphiladelphia.com Even another reason to leave: The slider is non-semantic and terrible SEO. Google won't allow a slider script with tags and a hrefs, so the only way to implement a slider is through a Google Docs Presentation that keeps sliding. I know - terrible SEO (#donthate) but we needed something. Any advice and thoughts would help! Thanks Mozzers!
Web Design | | _Thriveworks0 -
Unable to set preferred domain, can I verify a site that's already redirected?
I'm in the process of trying to set a preferred domain in webmaster tools -- to set our www version as preferred vs. the non www. version. IT is already redirecting non-www to www, but I get this message when trying to change settings "Part of the process of setting a preferred domain is to verify that you own http://mnn.com/. Please verify http://mnn.com/." While we own the domain, I am not sure how we can have Google access a file at [http://mnn.com/some_file when we are forwarding all requests for non-www to our www site.
Web Design | | Aggie
Note: The apache rewrite predates me and I'm not sure how / why we have two domains set up, but I'm trying to fix the preferred domain now.Am I able to verify the non version once the redirect is in place.Any ideas??? Help???Thanks!Lisa0 -
Html 5 main and secondary navigation for SEO best performances
I am building a website which will have a main navigation related to the site and each link of the main navigation will have a secondary navigation. We do not want to use a megamenu style navigation. I will try to explain it with a example: Let's start with an example for a computer store "My PC Store", the Main Navigation would be: Desktop PC's Notebook & Tablets
Web Design | | netbuilder
Multimedia When clicking on the "Notebook & Tablets" the user is directed to the page domain.com/notebook-tablet.html and on this page the secondary navigation appears: Laptop Netbook Tablets / iPad I am confused on how I should organize the semantic navigation for best SEO performances and I need advice / suggestions. I thought about 2 different ways to do it but which one is more appropriate in terms of SEO? PROPOSITION A Home Page: <header> My PC Store <nav> Desktop PC's Notebook & Tablets Multimedia </nav> </header> Sub-Page (Notebook & Tablets): <nav>(or <aside>?) Desktop PC's Notebook & Tablets Multimedia </aside> </nav> <header> Notebook & Tablets <nav> Laptop Netbook Tablets / iPad </nav> </header> As you notice on the home page the Main Site Navigation is included in the <header>while it is not in the sub-pages. PROPOSITION B Home Page: <header> My PC Store <nav> Desktop PC's Notebook & Tablets Multimedia </nav> </header> Sub-Page (Notebook & Tablets): <header> Notebook & Tablets <nav> Desktop PC's Notebook & Tablets Multimedia </nav> # Notebook & Tablets * Laptop Netbook Tablets / iPad </header> The main navgation remains always in the <header>(home page / sub-pages) of all page. I need suggestions... How would you guys organize the nav ? </header> </header>0 -
How can the Web site designer and the SEO strategist work together peacefully?
The organization I work for has decided to re-design or re-develop the existing company Web site. My part in this project is to come up with new features to add to the site, as well as making the site SEO-friendly (copywriting, link-building, keyword research, etc.). I don’t know a thing about Web site design, coding, format, etc., and I guess I will have to work with a designer on this project. How would I go about finding a Web site designer? Should they have some SEO knowledge? How much designer, coding and site structure knowledge should I have? And how do we not infringe on one another as we work together? (Sorry so many questions.)
Web Design | | Obie0