Root or subfolder campaign for e-commerce

[WillBlackburn]

Hi there,

New to Moz and have just signed up to the pro package.

I run a menswear website in the UK, and I want to start a campaign looking at 1 or 2 brands (Money Clothing and Cruyff Trainers).

What I would like to know is, when starting a campaign for say Money Clothing, should I use my root domain www.designerboutique-online.com/ or should I use my Money Clothing domain (www.designerboutique-online.com/all-clothing/money-clothing/ ?

Then once I do this, do I use my competitors subfolder pages or do I use their root domain? I tried to use 1 competitor as a subfolder and I think it gave an error saying I cannot use / after the domain?

Any help on what would be the best approach for me to begin targeting my specific brands and how to compare them against my competitors.

Cheers
Will

[WillBlackburn]

Cheers.

I have started a campaign for a subfolder www.designerboutique-online.com/all-clothing/money-clothing/

and

a subdomain www.designerboutique-online.com, should I have chosen root here for designerboutique-online.com?

Cheers

Will

[STPseo]

I would campaign on both I guess. You want to build your main brand while also increasing awareness on the brands you carry.

In SEOmoz you can enter the root, but you whole site will be tracked. Once you decide what keywords you are trying to rank on, keep your eye on what page is being ranked an go from there. So... if you track the keyword "cruffy" - and you rank in the top 50... see what page that is ranking. Maybe it is your homepage, or a category page, or even a specific product page.

I would concentrate the categories to promote those specific brands. However, don't ignore you homepage and remember to build your site name up as well.

So... get your site set up... in a good logical simple structure. Then have SEOmoz crawl it and fix any errors and consider their suggestions. Enter the words you are trying to rank on and see how you do. Make adjustment to try and improve ranking.

Anyway... SEOmoz will crawl your entire site including all folders. You will have to track sub-domains separately but not sub folders.

[WillBlackburn]

I agree about the /all-clothing/ part, and is something I am working on getting changed. I never set it up like this, a web design company did.

All my subfolders come off the root domain (i.e designerboutique-online.com/all-clothing/cruyff-trainers/ which is a brand of trainers we sell.

Do you therefore think it is the wrong type of campaign to look at subfolders? I only chose a subfolder because it is a brand we will be targeting.

Would it be more beneficial to campaign on my root domain first? Does this include sub folders when doing the analysis?

Basically what I want to know is how to I use SEOmoz Pro for my e-commerce site, what tips, guides etc... do you have?

My SEO campaigns will be targeting 2 brands, money clothing and cruyff trainers, within each category I want to be optimising models of each brand, eg. money jeans, money t-shirts, cruyff vanenburg trainers, cruyff boxtoe trainers.

How best is it to go about it?

Cheers

Will

[STPseo]

If you also care about the branding of your root domain (store name) you would want to use your root domain and sub folders off that. If you add more brands and make separate domains for each you'll find yourself managing multiple websites.

As for using the competitor analysis tool in SEOmoz, you can only use the root domain - www.competitor.com.

Also if you can take the "all clothing" layer out... that would be beneficial to your SEO.

Hope this helps.