Question regarding subdomains and duplicate content

[imjonny]

Hey everyone,

I have another question regarding duplicate content. We are planning on launching a new sector in our industry to satisfy a niche. Our main site works as a directory with listings with NAP. The new sector that we are launching will be taking all of the content on the main site and duplicating it on a subdomain for the new sector.

We still want the subdomain to rank organically, but I'm having struggles between putting a rel=canonical back to main site, or doing a self-referencing canonical, but now I have duplicates.

The other idea is to rewrite the content on each listing so that the menu items are still the same, but the listing description is different. Do you think this would be enough differentiating content that it won't be seen as a duplicate?

Obviously make this to be part of the main site is the best option, but we can't do that unfortunately.

Last question, what are the advantages or disadvantages of doing a subdomain?

[R0bin_L0rd]

Hi there I just want to make sure I'm interpreting the question right so do let me know if any of the below is false;

• You're launching a website subdomain to target a different industry niche
• You cannot target this niche with your main site
• Your subdomain will be duplicating the content on your main site and you are concerned about the drawbacks of that duplicate content.

One of my questions would be - if you can't target this niche on the main site, why is the strategy to copy main site content over? It seems as though if duplicate content will successfully target this niche on a subdomain, surely it can do the same on the main domain? If it is the case that there needs to be differentiation then it'd be a good idea to consider how to create content specifically targeting that niche. Search engines are doing everything they can to make it so that their definition of a good site aligns with users' definition of a good site, it's worth considering why it's so difficult to figure out how to get these pages ranking - is it because we're trying to create something that actually isn't targeted to users in a way that'll be successful even if it does rank?

You're right, if you canonicalise the new pages to the old pages they are duplicating, then by design the new ones are unlikely to rank. If you don't canonicalise them, you aren't giving either the old pages or the new pages a fair shot because they aren't offering anything new for the search terms they do target, and you're ignoring the opportunity to cover off new and more specific search terms you couldn't before.

Without knowing the exact details of the situation I would say; don't duplicate main site content onto this subdomain, start from scratch, find out what people in this niche want, what they are searching, what matters to them, design the subdomain to fit that need and only consider the main site in terms of avoiding competing with it.

Re: the issue of whether to go subdomain at all, there is evidence that subdomains don't share as much authority with the site overall as subdirectories do, it depends on how different this new niche is from your main offering. Does it make sense for a user to find this whole other niche in a subdirectory of your main site, or is the niche dissimilar enough that you should differentiate it with a subdomain?

I hope that helps, I think I've probably given more questions than answers but I think they are important questions for your business to consider. If I've misunderstood or if there's anything you'd like to discuss, do message back.