Community inside the domain or in a separate domain
-
Hi there,
I work for an ecommerce company as an online marketing consultant. They make kitchenware, microware and so on.
The are reviewing their overall strategy and as such they want to build up a community.
Ideally, they would want to have the community in a separate domain. This domain wouldn't have the logo of the brand. This community wouldn't promote the brand itself. The brand would post content occassionally and link the store domain. The reasoning of this approach is to not interfere in the way of the community users and also the fact that the branded traffic acquired doesn't end up buying at the store
I like this approach but I am concerned because the brand is not that big to have two domains separated and lose all the authority associated with one strong domain. I would definitely have everything under the same domain, store and community, otherwise we would have to acquire traffic for two domains.
1. What do you think of both scenarios, one domain versus two? Which one is better?
2. Do you know any examples of ecommerce companies with successful communities within the store domain?
Thanks and regards
-
EGOL and Samuel raise some very good points here. I feel like you're also somewhat at risk of looking like you're trying to deceive the audience if you're deliberately divorcing the community from the brand site and image, but using it to drive the community to commercial action. I am not sure how subtle they are planning on making that connection, but subtlety in that manner rarely works: it's a lot more "honest" and appreciated to cultivate a community and openly market a product, as Moz has done.
Using the Moz example, this site did not start out as a tool / analytics provider, so the community actually came first. When I was a full time employee, we were largely an SEO consultancy. The blog was a labour of love as far as Rand and the staff were concerned. In 2007 when we first introduced Premium (now Pro) accounts, we clearly used the community (which was pretty substantial, even back then) to market the service. To all but a very few negative folks, this went down fine.
If Rand had started a separate company and website hosting and selling SEO tools and subscriptions, and had dropped hints and posts every now and again here to promote it, it would not have been met with nearly as much favour.
The SEO points about two sites being twice as hard to maintain, market and rank than one also apply, but I would question whether a smaller brand can build a totally separate community that is a) big enough, and b) independent enough not to annoy users if they figure out the commercial intent behind it. If there's one thing that's slightly worse than no community, it's an empty one.
-
Forums take a LOT of work. If they want the forum to be successful and reflect well on the company then they should put it on the main domain where their name is on the line and all of their clients will see it and have an opportunity to check it out and use it regularly.
If they are not serious about this then just put the forum in an outhouse where nobody will see it. It's going to die because they are not dedicated to it.
-
Diego, thanks for the question. The issue is complicated, so I'll try to summarize point by point.
Ideally, they would want to have the community in a separate domain. This domain wouldn't have the logo of the brand. This community wouldn't promote the brand itself.
First off, I have to question the brand strategy. WHY does your company not want to the community to build the brand directly? A good, positive online community -- when run well -- can do wonders for a brand over the long term. Hey, just look at how much people love Moz just because of the community. I see no benefits to your company's idea -- and I see a lot of negatives.
The reasoning of this approach is to not interfere in the way of the community users and also the fact that the branded traffic acquired doesn't end up buying at the store
I don't buy this premise. There are times when direct sales are not the best Key Performance Indicator (KPI) of a certain marketing tactic. An online community builds a brand for the long term -- the KPIs may be metrics such as reach and more rather than direct sales resulting from community traffic and posts.
I'd read or watch this Whiteboard Friday -- it's on content marketing, but the idea is relevant. Few people see a piece of content and buy. But that's not the point. The more that people see the content time and time and time again, then the more likely it is that they will remember you when they do want to buy. It's the same idea in advertising: no one buys Coke because of an ad that they saw yesterday -- they buy Coke because of the ads they have seen for their entire lives. Likewise, no one is going to buy after reading a single community post. But the more that people engage and engage and engage with the branded community, the more likely it is that they will buy in the future. It's a long-term play.
Ideally, they would want to have the community in a separate domain.
Do you mean an entirely-separate root domain or a subdomain of the main root domain?
Either way, the same argument below applies.
I am concerned because the brand is not that big to have two domains separated and lose all the authority associated with one strong domain. I would definitely have everything under the same domain, store and community, otherwise we would have to acquire traffic for two domains.
You are correct. As much as Google likes to say that subdomains are treated the same as root domains, most of the data we've seen suggests otherwise. It's best to keep everything under the same root domain. If someone links to a community post or discussion and it's on a subdomain or another domain, then the main website will get little benefit.
Point: However, there are two times when a subdomain (or another root domain) may be better:
1. Creating a part of the website that will be less secure than the main website. Common example: A website has very confidential information, so they add a blog by putting Wordpress on a subdomain because Wordpress is less secure.
2. Very different design. It's a lot easier to have a completely-different design on a subdomain rather than in a subfolder on the main website.
Still, I'd suggest putting everything under the same root domain whenever possible. I hope this helps!
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 Change Before or After Site Revamp?
In the last year traffic to our site has dropped in half and ranking has dropped significantly. Very little no content has been added in that time. We would now like to improve ranking by adding new content. 2 domains effectively exist for the site. The existing domain is www.nyc-officespace-leader.com. But www.metro-manhattan.com redirects to www.nyc-officespace-leader.com. Our company is Metro Manhattan Office Space, Inc.. We registered www.metro-manhattan.com and created the redirect to www.nyc-officespace-leader.com in 2012. www.nyc-officespace-leader.com was registered in 2006. Many links to the site show www.metro-manhattan.com and I believe this may be a source of confusion for Google. Would it be best to make the domain consistent at this time by redirecting it once and for all and to do so before adding new content? If this is done correctly can we avoid taking a hit on ranking? Note: -www.nyc-officespace-leader.com is the old domain.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
-www.metro-manhattan is the new domain but has existed since 2012 and has been redirecting to the old domain since then
-The company name is Metro Manhattan Office Space (similar in branding to the new domain) Am I correct in assuming that having the 2 domains may be causing issues with Google involving domain authority? Change the domain before adding content or add content before?0 -
How to switch brand domain and address previous use of domain
We recently acquired a new domain to replace existing as it better fits our brand. We have little/no organic value on existing domain so switching is not an issue. However the newly acquired domain was previously used in a different industry and has inbound links with significant spam scores. How can we let Google know that these links are not valid for our business and start rebuilding reputation of the domain? Disavow tool?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Marlette0 -
Redirecting a Page from Domain A to Domain B
We have a page on Domain A, an established and well-ranking website, that would be more appropriate on Domain B, a site that we launched about two years ago. This page ranks well, pulls nice search traffic and has traffic from external links. We would like to move the page and its traffic from Domain A to Domain B using a 301 redirect. Have you ever done this or have you heard of how it has worked for someone else? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EGOL0 -
Brand Name in Domain name
I am thinking to make a site for amazon affiliate ,but hesitate to get a domain name related to brand name like samsungxxxxxxxxx.com .getting such domain name is good or bad ? advice me to proceed
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | innofidelity0 -
Does a dash in your domain name effect your ranking?
Does a dash in your domain name effect your ranking? or it dosen't really matter?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Radomski0 -
I run an (unusual) clothing company. And I'm about to set up a version of our existing site for kids. Should I use a different domain? Or keep the current root domain?
Hello. I have a burning question which I have been trying to answer for a while. I keep getting conflicting answers and I could really do with your help. I currently run an animal fancy dress (onesie) company in the UK called Kigu through the domain www.kigu.co.uk. We're the exclusive distributor for a supplier of Japanese animal costumes and we've been selling directly through this domain for about 3 years. We rank well across most of our key words and get about 2000 hits each day. We're about to start selling a Kids range - miniature versions of the same costumes. We're planning on doing this through a different domain which is currently live - www.kigu-kids.co.uk. It' been live for about 3-4 weeks. The idea behind keeping them on separate domains is that it is a different target market and we could promote the Kids site separately without having to bring people through the adult site. We want to keep the adult site (or at least the homepage) relatively free from anything kiddy as we promote fancy dress events in nightclubs and at festivals for over 18s (don't worry, nothing kinky) and we wouldn't want to confuse that message. I've since been advised by an expert in the field that that we should set up a redirect from www.kigu-kids.co.uk and house the kids website under www.kigu.co.uk/kids as this will be better from an SEO perspective and if we don't we'll only be competing with ourselves. Are we making a big mistake by not using the same root domain for both thus getting the most of the link juice for the kids site? And if we do decide to switch to have the domain as www.kigu.co.uk/kids, is it a mistake to still promote the www.kigu-kids.co.uk (redirecting) as our domain online? Would these be wasted links? Or would we still see the benefit? Is it better to combine or is two websites better than one? Any help and advice would be much appreciated. Tom.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KIGUCREW0 -
How long should a domain redirect take?
Hi, I know that this is a 'How long is a piece of string?' type question but at what point should the ranking value of site A pass over to site B following a domain 301 redirect? I have shifted a domain over to a new URL, same hosting server, same IP address. I haven't made any URL changes or any content changes other than to change the site logo to match the new domain name. Domain B is basically an exact clone of domain A. I have redirected Domain A to domain B using the following line at the top of the .htaccess file:- Redirect 301 / http://www.newdomain.com/ I have submitted a sitemap for the new domain via google webmaster tools. It looks like the original domain as been completely indexed by google following the redirect as all rankings have been dropped from the results and there are no results for a site:olddomain.com search. Surely the rankings should have switched over at this point? Any help would be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdeLewis
Ade.0 -
Improve Domain Trust
Hey there, I need to improve the Domain trust of my website. I've seen the blogitems of Rand but I still have questions. If I want to increase the Domain Trust..I "simpely" have to get links from websites with a high Domain Trust. This will eventually improve my Domain trust. But what are the effects if I do this by reciprocal linking. Does this eliminates the trust that comes from the other website.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PlusPort1