Thinking of launching some affiliate sites off of one I have already. They will be specialized into catagories. My question is.. it it better to have them as sub-domains with the sub-domain the category name or to register a new domain? thanks
Making them sub-domains is likely not going to provide you any noticable SEO benefits IMO. The search engines are going to see the sub-domains as different sites anyway... So if you can get new domain names w/ your "money" keyword phrase for each affiliate site, you're probably better off... Unless of course your hosting agreement lets you add sub-domains free of charge and new domains will cost you. Then there might be a financial reason to go w/ sub-domains.
I've often wondered about this myself. I personally get new domains whenever I think I have a good idea, and use subdomains for specific sections of the site if I think they're necessary... like blog.example.com or store.example.com or services.example.com but to this: What about adding a sub-domain with that "money" keyword phrase as the subdomain... does that help at all?
And we all know how very important age is in a ranking algo that has 200+ factors and age simply affects one of them... Age has about as much influence as does PR or keyword rich URLs... Not a lot at all. Rumor has it that sub-domains actually do not inherit other domain level ranking factors like authority, trust, age... but who knows. I do know age makes almost no difference in how a page ranks. It might be a tie breaker for two pages that are otherwise equivalent, but other than that... I could care less about the age of a domain.
Subdomains are also treated as different sites to search engines. So I guess it would really not matter.
thanks for the feedback... theredsheep has a point...what if your subdomain has the money keyword as the name?
Yup, I've always wondered about this. I'm a big fan of separation by sub-domain and I'd be curious to know if anyone has some facts on using keywords as a subdomain. I think it is clear to me that the age thing is a non-factor because the SE would treat the subdomain as a new domain. After all... DNS and the WWW did not know about mynewsubdom.example.com until I published it right? so wouldn't this make that the "birth date" for that domain as opposed to the subdomain inheriting the TLD... But if keywords in URL really make such a big difference, then widgetname.example.com seems to be better than just store.example.com if you're selling widgets at example.com. Do I have it all wrong?
ehh, it depends. if your site has large traffic, go sub domain. if its a whole new website, obviously get a new domain
What I did is to purchase a really short (3 letter) domain name with country TLD, and all websites that I own are just subdomains (the index.htm) of the main domain itself is not used. Works well for me, much better than availing costly domain for each site. Moreover, I can readily use what ever website name I can think of instead of thinking of new names for my planned sites again and again just because those evil domainers already acquired them.
I think Search Engines have started to treat subdomains as your site folder. Thats what I read on Google Official Blog
Actually now I remember, I read it in one ebook from Jerry West. He tests, tests and then recommends. Here is what he said. Subdomains Should you stop using subdomains as a part of your site structure? Eleven percent of top ranking pages are from subdomains. Personally I am moving away from using subdomains. Just a few months ago, Google's SERPs would contain 4-6 subdomains on average in the Top Ten. If you have subdomains in use right now, continue to use and market them. An 11% presence is still solid. For new sites, I suggest you move away from this structure, as it is more difficult to manage. Google is taking aggressive measures to combat the high level of subdomain Spam and has begun to treat subdomains and sub-folders the same. If you are questioning which to choose for your site, go with the sub-folder structure. Question Does Google treat a subdomain (http://keyword.domain.com/) differently than a subfolder (http://www.domain.com/keyword)? Answer This has been asked for years and the answer is the same. Subdomains are treated the same as subfolders. They are a part of the same domain and are treated as such.