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
-
Onpage optimising for multiple sites
I’ve been given the task of optimizing a company’s websites (15 in total) that has multiple websites selling the same product. In terms of optimizing them, can I use the same set of meta descriptions, page title tags and key words for them all or do I need to produce a different set for each? The sites are for independently branded companies that are set up in a franchise-like arrangement. They all exclusively sell the parent companies joinery products
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aplnzoctober180 -
International Site Migration
Hi guys, In the process of launching internationally ecommerce site (Magento CMS) for two different countries (Australia and US). Then later on expand to other countries like the UK, Canada, etc. The plan is for each country will have its own sub-folder e.g. www.domain.com/us, www.domain.com.au/au, www.domain.com.au/uk A lot of the content between these English based countries are the same. E.g. same product descriptions.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright
So in order to prevent duplication, from what I’ve read we will need to add Hreflang tags to every single page on the site? So for: Australian pages: United States pages: Just wanted to make sure this is the correct strategy (will hreflang prevent duplicate content issues?) and anything else i should be considering? Thankyou, Chris0 -
Possible problem with new site (GWT no queries/very low index vs. submitted)
Hi everyone, I recently launched a new website for a small business loan company in the Dallas area. The site has been live for roughly a month and a half. I submitted everything to GWT as usual, including my sitemap. I am not sure what's going on with the site, as there is no activity from GWT in the impressions or queries. The submit vs. index is 24/3 (and hasn't moved). Also the queries graph on the overview stops at 3/18/2015... On another note, when I go to Crawl > Sitemaps, it shows that there were pages indexed during the month of march and then on April 3 it drops from 17 to 2 and never increases. Google says there are no errors or issues found, but I feel like there's something wrong. When I do site:, my URLs do pop up which makes me believe there's just a problem with my GWT. With that being said, I'm not happy THINKING there's something wrong. I need to actually know what the problem is. The only thing I can think of that I have done is purchase SSL for the site, but when I search what pages are indexed using www. it shows all the HTTPS URLS, so that would tell me that the site is getting indexed without a problem? Does anyone have a clue as to what might be happening? I will attach some screen shots so that you can get a better idea... KQ2366i D5xBNZf mF7kkgW
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jameswesleyhunt0 -
Pros & Cons of Switching Your Main Domain to Mask Links & Combat EMDs
Hello Mozzers, I'd love to receive some advice for a client of mine and insights you may have regarding pros and cons on changing your main domain to mask links. Within a competitive niche there are about 4 different sites that routinely rank 1-4. Our site crushes all three on just about all metrics except we have a high volume of nofollow links and our site remains at #4. Our site is much older so we have significantly more links than these smaller sites, including pre-penguin penalty spammy links (like blog comments that make up 50+ nofollow links from 1 comment per domain). Obviously we are attempting to remove any toxic links and disavow, however the blog comment nofollow links skew our anchor text ratio pretty intensely and we are worried that we aren't going to make a dent in removing this type of links. Just disavowing them hasn't worked alone, so if we are unable to remove the bulk of these poor quality links (nofollow, off-topic anchor text, etc..) we are considering 301 redirecting the current domain to a new one. We've seen success with this in a couple of scenarios, but wanted to see other insights as to if masking links with a 301 could send fresh signals and positively effect rankings. Also wanted to mention, 2 of the 3 competitors that outrank us have EMD's for the primary keywords. Appreciate your time, insights, and advice on this matter.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Leadhub0 -
Subdomain for every us state?
Hi, one of our clients has an idea of making subdomains from his main website to sell his online advertisements in all states in USA. f.e: texas.web.com atlanta.web.com He wants to have a subdomain for every state and there to be information related only or mainly to this state? I am not sure about is this a good idea? What is your opinion about it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vladokan0 -
Splitting a Site into Two Sites for SEO Purposes
I have a client that owns a business that really could be easily divided into two separate business in terms of SEO. Right now his web site covers both divisions of his business. He gets about 5500 visitors a month. The majority go to one part of his business and around 600 each month go to the other. So about 11% I'm considering breaking off this 11% and putting it on an entirely different domain name. I think I could rank better for this 11%. The site would only be SEO'd for this particular division of the company. The keywords would not be in competition with each other. I would of course link the two web sites and watch that I don't run into any duplicate content issues. I worry about placing the redirects from the pages that I remove to the new pages. I know Google is not a fan of redirects. Then I also worry about the eventual drop in traffic to the main site now. How big of a factor is traffic in rankings? Other challenges include that the business services 4 major metropolitan areas. Would you do this? Have you done this? How did it work? Any suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MSWD0 -
How to see which site Google views as a scraper site?
If we have content on our site that is found on another site, what is the best way to know which site Google views as the original source? If you search for a line of the content such as "xyz abc etc" and the other site shows before yours in search results, does that mean that Google views that site as the original source?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
On-Site Optimization Tips for Job site?
I am working on a job site that only ranks well for the homepage with very low ranking internal pages. My job pages do not rank what so ever and are database driven and often times turn to 404 pages after the job has been filled. The job pages have to no content either. Anybody have any technical on-site recommendations for a job site I am working on especially regarding my internal pages? (Cross Country Allied.com)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Melia0