Ecommerce specialized portals subdomains or different domains
-
Hi,
I am trying to decide between two different options that can affect branding and seo, I would like to hear opinions about the different options I have.
Suppose that I want to open an ecommerce site for sports goods, but I want to have an specialized store for running goods.
My example company name is MAZ and the country I am targetting is UK, for my general sports store I will use mazsports.co.uk, the question I have is what should I do for my "running" specialized store, every store will have a diffferent design, its own blog, its own items and its own link build campaigns.
These are really different sites, but the ecommerce platform will be the same, the shopping cart could be shared and the same people working on the same warehouse will send the shipments.
With this example data I see two options:
-
Use different domains, for example for the running one, mazrunning.co.uk, using maz like the shared brand part on the domain and use a site like maz.co.uk listing the different specializations.
-
Use subdomains for the different specializations, running.mazsports.co.uk.
We will work hard to position every site, we will manage every store in its own google webmaster and analytics site, after the two initial sites (one general and one specialization) we will create a few more, maybe 5 or 6 specialized sites.
In my sector people search for the specific specializations more than in general so I would not like that Google sees the running.mazsports.co.uk of the example like part of the ecommerce store mazsports.co.uk, I would like that if someone is searching for running material the site that will be shown to them is the specialized one.
What should i do in this case? Thanks!
-
-
Hello Anthony,
The general site will have categories as subfolders in the url, like mazsports.co.uk/soccer or mazsports.co.uk/tennis but this category folders are only selections on the ecommerce platform product grid, not specialized subsites.
For example the blog at running.mazsports.co.uk would be running.mazsports.co.uk/blog not the general one at mazsports.co.uk/blog, and the running site will have its own categories like running.mazsports.co.uk/trail-shoes.
I think this specialization is important on my sector.
-
If these are the two options you are considering, I would definitely go with #2. Keep it under one domain, with multiple subdomains.
Since it sounds like a new site, I would strongly consider keeping it all under one domain and just using subfolders for each "specialty store" - mazsports.co.uk/running/
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
-
Domain Transition: Leaving low quality content behind
We're in the initial stages of planning a domain transition / rebrand. We're considering 301'ing our low and high(er) quality content split to two different domains. One for the low quality, one for our high. Best practices normally tell you to not split your content between between multiple domains. However, what if the majority of pages on your site are thin/outdated, and attract low volume/long tail? Does it make sense to bring that low quality/volume content over the new domain, when you know you'll never have the resources (nor would it make sense to) mass improve the quality of these pages? I'm concerned the quality of these pages are affecting our overall domain authority. Some background on our site/business: Current site has 15,000+ pages. 98% of our site is a product directory of professional/enterprise business management software. While a small handful of our product pages have quality original long form content (maybe 50-100), most of the product pages are a combination of: thin, outdated, overly sales-y content provided directly from product developers, and/or catch only very low-volume/long tail organic traffic. 95% of our pages attract fewer than 20 visits/mo, 90% of our pages attract fewer than 10 visits/mo. We have a small business of about 10 employees. Most of which don't maintain our site. It's unrealistic for us to genuinely improve the quality of that many pages. Nor does it make sense to improve most of these pages, as they'll attract only very low volume keywords. Individually these low quality pages don't bring in many customers, but on aggregate they do. 70% of our organic conversions come from pages with less than 20 visits/mo. A few questions: Is this content negatively affecting our domain authority in any way? While I don't believe we've been hit with a penalty, Google knows that on average our pages aren't very helpful to many users, and I'm concerned that affects our ability to rank with pages that matter. None of the content was mass produced in any form of scraping efforts or anything nefarious like that. Would there be any negative/positive affect to offloading these low quality/volume pages to a different domain during the rebrand?
Branding | | dsbud0 -
Choosing a domain
Hello Mozzers! If given a list of 25 domains that are all owned by the client, and all relevant to their website, what criteria would you use to choose one? Long story short, the client sold the original domain and now needs a new one. Thanks!
Branding | | FrankSweeney
Frank0 -
Different meta tags appearing in SERP for same landing page
Hi all, hoping someone can help. We have a landing page that ranks quite well for a number of keywords that send us a nice amount of organic traffic. We understand the importance of Meta tags, as Google will be the users first interaction with our site we want to stand out and be noticed and also show we provide information on their search query. The problem is this, while we have optimised the title and description tags for the landing page, this is only appearing on specific search results. If you were to search a different keyword, you would still get the same landing page, but the title tag and description would not pull through, it decides to pull through the page name and first few lines of text instead. Is there anything we can do to sort this issue?
Branding | | Ben_Malkin_Develo0 -
Branding-Advantages of New Domain
Our current domain (www.nyc-officespace-leader.com) is spammy, using 2 hyphens and several keywords. So we are planning on migrating to a new domain. Our company is Metro Manhattan Office Space, Inc.. We are Manhattan commercial real estate brokers specializing in office and commercial leasing. For 5 years we have owned an alternative domain but never migrated the site to it. The alternative domain is www.metro-manhattan.com. But I am not sure it is a good choice since it contains one hyphen. Any suggestions for creating a strong URL for rebranding? It appears the really good names are already taken. Thanks, Alan
Branding | | Kingalan10 -
Two domains for different countries? or one big domain with folders?
I know this might sound as a newbie question or maybe not, here it goes. I've had a client for the past 2 years, and we have accomplish many good things for his local website .com.ve (venezuela). It's been so good that he is opening a branch in Dominican republic .com.do. The content, strategy and even the services are exactly the same, but the owner wants to have different site for each country. Of course he only wants to pay for one domain. I do want to share our success ont the .com.ve with the other domains and he actually owns the "global" domain .com with his brand name. So, what should I reccomend... Develop a second site and start from scratch? Migrate my blog from the .com.ve site to the .com site and give each country a separate folder? /ve /do?. What it's the best scenario for me to have all the traffic we have earned transfer to the global brand and to have separate info for each country... Thank you so much for your answer that I kno would be great. Dan
Branding | | daniel.alvarez0 -
What is the impact of changing a primary .edu to a subdomain .edu?
Hello I'm looking for feedback on the impact of search rankings, overall SEO efforts and how Google will view changing example.edu to subdomain.example.edu All URLs/content under www.example.edu and example.edu would be 301 redirected to subdomain.example.edu, essentially making subdomain.example.edu the primary domain. Thank you!!
Branding | | msmcsearch0 -
Do .CO domains rank up just as easy as a .com domain?
I have ran across a very good .CO domain and am thinking about making it into one of our main websites. I have no experience with them. I have used/bought just about every other domain type out there, but I have never used a .CO yet. The domain I was able to purchase was seobusiness.co for $5.00 - regardless if I am able to use it for our main brand if they don't rank up the same, I will use it for something else. The site isn't up yet btw, so no need visiting it... The keyword gets 1600 exact hits a month give or take a few of course - thats just the Google tool estimate. Matt Cutts says that they can rank up the same, but I am looking for more than this. Does anyone have some proof that .co's can rank up? I hate to put 2-3 months of solid work into this to rank it up for SEO business and it doesn't want to rank due to the .co. Thanks in advance for your time.
Branding | | MarketingOfAmerica0 -
About domain names
Hello all. I am a new member of SEOmoz and liking it so far. This is my first post to you all (my new family). I have a client who is starting a new company. We know for sure that he needs a new domain name. The question is two part: Part One Should he buy (is it worth the money) a parked domain that has some age to it. For example, a 9 or 10 year old domain that is getting "0" traffic and has no PR? Or Should he just put that same say $1000 price tag back in his wallet and spend the money on a link building campaign to his new $9.95 domain name? Part Two We found a domain he really likes but only the ".co" ".net" and ".biz" are available. The .com belongs to a big company that has made a simple landing page from the .com domain name (that we really want) and will probably never let it go to us. So we will always be stuck without the .com portion of the domain registrations for this domain name if we go for it. Question: a. Will we have difficulty competing for our own name recognition since the "big company" owns the landing page (even though it is a "0" PR page? b. Can we live on only the .co extension or would we live to regret not getting all the extensions related to our domain name? thanks everyone! I look forward to contributing here as well.
Branding | | webindustry0