Domains vs Subdomains for similar brands.
-
Hi all!
I work for a company who have 6 different brands in the same industry targeted at different demographics. Some of them have a lot of history and are well known and respected, others are newer targeted at different price points/ types of people. I've been asked to input on there ongoing web strategy; should they use sub domains or individual branded domains.
Previously that had separate brand domains but a new MD wanted to bring everything together into one website. The branded domains were redirected to the new site and it has been going along fine, albeit having lost 1/3rd or so organic traffic. Now a new management team has been brought in and they want to re-structure the website again to put more focus on the brands. Any new website will be on a brand new domain anyway as they are also re branding their main website.
What will work better, separate branded domains or sub domains of one website?
From what I understand, SEO won't be much different between the two options, but it feels like the bigger historical brands should have individual websites purely from a branding perspective.
Thanks for any input!
-
RA, my opinion--from a visitor perspective, I'm not a fan of the subdomain route.
-
If the idea is to put more focus on the brands, I would roll them out onto their own separate branded domains.
Especially since they have different price points and demographics, it doesn't seem like you want a visitor of one demographic/price point being able to click to the other subdomains to see info for another demographic/price point.
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 name change
Here's the scenario... Client has two domain names: domain.com - targeting one country (Australia) otherdomain.com - targeting all other countries Both have identical products, but different currencies (AU$ and US$). The problem (as most of you will know) is that without using a sub-domain or country-code top-level domains, Google has no idea which domain should be served for which domain. Furthermore, because the root domain is different, Google doesn't see any connection between the two - other than the fact they have identical products! My recommendation to the client is to change to: domain.com to domain.com.au otherdomain.com to domain.com Arguably, we could leave the second one alone. But I think it's better for the brand to use the same root domain for each. Obviously this means both will need to be redirected. Since NONE of the pages within the sites will change, do we need to redirect every page, or just the root domain? Any other risks or concerns we should know about?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | muzzmoz0 -
Consolidating Multiple Domains into A Single Domain
I have a client who's website is an amalgamation of multiple domains. jacksonhole.net is the main domain but the site passes traffic back and forth from the following domains/sites. My questions is, would it it be better for SEO to consolidate all of these domains under the single high authority domain and 301 redirect the rest or is that a really bad idea? Thanks for your help. jacksonhole.net (Domain Authority 31) jackson-hole-rental-condos.com (Domain Authority 22) jackson-hole-rental-homes.com (Domain Authority 21) j acksonholehotelguide.com (Domain Authority 19)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dbaxa-2613381 -
Cookieless subdomains Vs SEO
We have one .com that has all our unique content and then 25 other ccltd sites that are translated versions of the .com for each country we operate in. They are not linked together but we have href lang'd it all together. We now want to serve up all static content of our global website (26 local country sites, .com, .co.uk, .se, etc) from one cookie-less subdomain. Benefit is speed improvement. The question is whether from an SEO perspective, can all static content come from static.domain.com or should we do one for each ccltd where it would come form static.domain.xx (where xx is localised to the domain in question)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aires-fb770 -
Domain changed 5 months ago still see search results on old domain
Hi, We changed our domain from coedmagazine.com to coed.com in April'13. Applied 301 redirects on all pages, submitted 'change of address' to google but we still see site:coedmagazine.com fetching 130K results on google as opposed to site:coed.com fetches 40K results. Can anybody here throw some light on what might be going wrong? [ Site runs on wordpress, hosted with wordpress as well ] thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | COEDMediaGroup0 -
Is it worth buying a Dropped domain?
I've got a domain which was registered in July 2010 and had a website on it. I believe the domain expired and it was dropped for a couple of months. I snapped it up after discovering it in November 2012. Subsequently, the whois records show the domain was created in Nov 2012. What exactly is the "real" age of this domain from Google's perspective? Or at least, as far as SEO is concerned? Cheers,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | syed002
Syed P.S - domain age does indeed warrant some merit in ranking factors!0 -
Does using a sub-domain lessen the effectiveness of your main domain?
For example a website without a blog and is a simple html site with no blogging capabilities. We go out to Blogger or Wordpress and set up the blog portion of the website using something like blog.yourdomain.com. Does this make a difference SEO wise? Is is more effective to be sure that you are using the main domain and not a sub-domain? I have heard both sides before but can't seem to find the concrete answer. Thanks for any advise out there.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | d25kart0 -
How risky is temporarily moving high value SEO pages to a brand new domain?
Hi, I won't bore you with all the details but we may have to temporarily move part of an existing domain onto a separate domain for a couple of months. The content being moved includes most of our key branded and organic SERP pages. We've owned the new domain for years but it's never been live or indexed. After a couple of months, all the content will move back to the original domain but will move to a slightly different structure and different page names. Most of the page content will remain largely the same. I"m concerned, but don't really have any experience with this kind of thing. Can anyone shed some light. Perhaps on a scale of 1 to 5 you could give me your thoughts: 1. Should be fine, as long as you set up all the redirects properly 5. Do everything in your power not to do it! Using the new domain and other factors will be problematic. Thanks for any help you may be able to provide!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rfjc0 -
Subdomains vs. Subfolders for unique categories & topics
Hello, We are in the process of redesigning and migrating 5 previously separate websites (all different niche topics, including dining, entertainment, retail, real estate, etc.) under one umbrella site for the property in which they exist. From the property homepage, you will now be able to access all of the individual category sites within. As each niche microsite will be focused on a different topic, I am wondering whether it is best for SEO that we use subdomains such as category.mainsite.com or subfolders mainsite.com/category. I have seen it done both ways on large corporate sites (ie: Ikea uses subdomains for different country sites, and Apple uses subfolders), so I am wondering what makes the most sense for this particular umbrella site. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks, Melissa
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | grapevinemktg0