Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Yes, what you're describing is what I am doing. Thanks and sorry for the confusion around the terminology.

Doy ou think there would be a benefit to repeating the region name in the folder structure www.REGION.com/REGION-topic?

Using your example, I currently do rank #1 for "Chocolate", but I want to rank for a number of words related to chocolate now. So the content silo on my site related to "Chocolate Fudge" (as an example) is a micro-site built out specifically around the topic of Fudge. (my example is Region Golf, Region Dining, Region Events).

Really, the 'micro-sites' as I call them are all built in their own CMS as they have different stakeholder groups. It's all mapped off of the primary domain through as it relates specifically to the region with the theme modifier.

My question is - does the primary domain site map get submitted to Google with al of the site URLs (Primary and themed micro-sites) included since they are all off of the same domain?

I have TLD that has authority and a number of micro-sites built off of the primary domain. All sites relate to the same topic, as I am promoting a destination. The primary site and each micro-site have their own CMS installation, but the domains are mapped accordingly.

www.regionalsite.com/ <- primary
www.regioanlsite.com/theme1/ <- theme 1
www.regioanlsite.com/theme2/ <- theme 2
www.regionalsite.com/theme3/ <- theme 3

Question: Should my XML site map for Webmaster Tools feed all sites off of the primary domain site map or are there penalties for this?

Thanks.

I have encountered something odd with Google indexing. According to the Google cache my site was last updated on April 6. I had been making a series of changes on April 7th and none of them show up in the cached version of the site (naturally). Then, on the 8th, my rankings seem to have dropped about 6 places and the main SERP is showing a text that isn't even on the Web site. The cached version has the correct page title from the page that was indexed on the 6th.

How do I learn where Google is picking this up from? There is a clean page title tag on my Web site. I've checked the server, etc to see what's going on. The text isn't completely unrelated, but it definitely impacted my ranking.

Does Google ever have these hiccups when indexing?

I sometimes find that a subdomain (e.g. theme.regionalsite.com) doesn't index as well well either. I haven't tried that approach for quite some time though.

I am working on a project that is promoting dining in a particular region of the southwest for a destination marketing company. The parent Web site is an authority in the region and ranks well for almost all terms related to the leisure experience in the region. A completely separate Web site was built to promote this culinary program as it involves a committee of different stakeholders, but it’s solely focused on the region.

My question is this. The site is on a different CMS, etc., but the overall experience on the site is similar to the parent DMO site in terms of creative. The client has a brand new domain that they purchased for this initiative, but we are also considering mapping the parent site URL to the new culinary site.

Parent: www.regionalsite.com

New Themed Site: www.regionalsite.com/theme/

Or

www.themeurl.com

My fear is that if I take the approach of the new URL that it will take forever for the site to build any link clout at all, as the client doesn’t really get the fact that working a link strategy is so critical. However, I know that having links from the regional site over to the theme URL will have an impact.

Also, if I do take the approach of mapping the URL to a new folder off of the parent domain, do I risk that 2^nd tier links on the micro-site will have a challenge indexing as they will essentially be on tier 3?

Any advice would be appreciated.