Are subdomains a good seo strategy for a multistore e-commerce?

[qgairsoft]

Hi there

I'm wondering what is the best strategy to work with multi-stores on magento: to use or not to use subdomains?

Suppose we have the www.website.com and we configure it to use multistore. The url base will not have the store id on it so it will not be like www.website.com/store1 and www.website.com/store2.

It will simply rely on the user session so if we have two categories for each store it will acces using:

www.website.com/category1 (for store 1)

www.website.com/category2 (for store 2)

The homepage will allways be set on www.website.com so we should have a single page for several "home pages" (depending on the user session / store he is accessing).

I guess this is not a good option if we want to rank for different keywords (for each store).

So I was wondering if it is a good solution to set:

store1.website.com

store2.website.com

This way we have 2 "home pages" each one able to rank.

Does it make sense? Is it good or bad for seo?

Another option I was considering was:

www.website.com (for store 1)

store2.website.com (for store 2)

store3.website.com (for store 3)

www.website.com/blog (for blog)

Can this work? Good or bad for seo?

best regards

[FredLebhart]

I'd go with

www.mybrand.com/store/category1/subcateory
www.mybrand.com/store/category2/subcateory
www.mybrand.com/store/category3/subcateory

...this keeps everything neatly organized for both SEO and the UX (not to mention your content management).

I've been building professional ecommerce websites for 12 years.

Fred

[BlueprintMarketing]

It seems to me that everything is going to be relevant to the sport of paintball correct?

here is a great example of how I would set up your site changing the subdomains name to the subfolder name.

if you want to target outside the United States you have more work. But this is where I would do for right now instead of creating a separate store your brand can become a hub for paintball knowledge and paintball guns, accessories etc. that is the way to build a brand. With people being such a fun sport you could probably attract clients by posting videos and use the sport to create a form. For people in your area.

"using the keywords that you are going to use for your sub domains for your subfolders

www.mybrand.com = remains with airsoft products (only airsoft content, categories, products)

www.mybrand.com/paintball = paintball related products (only paintball content, categories, products)

www.mybrand.com/airguns/ = if i decide to sell airguns"

Kinda off-topic but hopefully helpful.

Magento  Is kind of slow  when not set up properly but very configurable  I thought I would give a HHVM configuration you might want to try. https://gist.github.com/blueprintmrk/1e95e2946cabcbb8502d

Sincerely,

Thomas

[qgairsoft]

Thank you all for the replies. So it seems the best option is to go with:

www.mybrand.com as main website for Airsoft and

www.mybrand.com/paintball/

.../store3 .../store4

thanks

[ClaytonJ]

Patricks suggestions I think answer your query.

I googled airsoft and it seems strongly related to paintball & airguns. I would not recommend subdomains but keeping it on your main domain. Our experience in fashion is that the more products you have that volume exponentially increases sales. ie go with www.brandname.com/paintball

That said you appear to be leaning towards a sub-domain. As it has completely separate customer bases.

I would try and re-think that strategy and see if there is any way you can live with one URL. You will be dedicated to one purpose not focusing on 2 or 3.  Become the expert in airgun sports...

Let me know if have any queries.

[qgairsoft]

Hi guys

Thanks for the replys. Let's me put more details. My website so far is specialized in airsoft. My brand is airsoft related and we have hundreds of categories airsoft related and I have a good rank for airsoft related keywords.

So my website is something like www.mybrand.com.

Now I'm planning to work with paintball. Despite they are both "action/shooting sports", they are different, with different customers, different products, hundreds of different categories, and of course, different keywords

I'm using magento and so far the homepage for my website is allways www.mybrand.com ... The page content (categories, products, etc.) are shown depending the store the customer has chosen. (default is airsoft page, but he can change for paintball).

So the idea was:

www.mybrand.com = remains with airsoft products (only airsoft content, categories, products)

paintball.mybrand.com = paintball related products (only paintball content, categories, products)

airguns.mybrand.com = if i decide to sell airguns

tks again

[BlueprintMarketing]

Patrick you are fast my friend & just gave him some great resources!

[BlueprintMarketing]

I don't know why you would want to create two stores on one website?

If you have a store that is selling vacuum cleaners hypothetically and another that is selling weed wacker's and you do not have any relevance between the two stores e.g. they are for a separate audience.

are you trying to reach the same audience use one website.

To websites even to subdomains

e.g. subdomain1.example.com & subdomain2.example.com will be treated as separate domains by Google.

There are some things you can do to tell Google this is one site and my opinion is if you are going to simply create a headache for yourself by using subdomains un less you have a very good reason?

I would suggest either combining these stores into one business if you are trying to get everything on one domain. Without knowing much more about the project I can tell you that subfolders  "example.com/subfolder" tend to work much better then subdomains for passing on domain authority.

You want to create separate businesses create separate websites.

If you want to create one website that sells everything use subfolders unless you are doing geo-targeting and or other reasons that make sense for The end-user who if you are trying to target different stores on the same domain they will get confused.

I hope that helps,

Tom

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

Rand had a great Whiteboard Friday on this a few months back called Subdomains vs. Subfolders, Rel Canonical vs. 301, and How to Structure Links for SEO. You should also check out Should I Rebrand and Redirect My Site? Should I Consolidate Multiple Sites/Brands?

My first question would be if all the stores fall under the same brand? Or, are they all able to live on their own separate sites with their own branding? Reason being, if you have everything under one domain as subdirectories, everyone can benefit from the domain's authority.

I would review the resources above and see if those can help - there is a ton of great information. Let me know if it doesn't! Good luck!