I have a site with a very large quantity of backlinks - the site ranks very well in it's niche, but I would also like to take advantage of this sites power in another niche. Would it be better to use a subdomain or a path for this new "focus"? Example: myidea.mydomain.com mydomain.com/newidea Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
Can you elaborate? A subdomain is credited as different site almost, is that not true? Why would it be listed sooner and have a higher rank then a sub-folder?
Yes true. Subdomain is another identity. You should go for different folder which must be linked from your home page. Then that niche can get off page optimization factors of your site now have.
A sub domain is quick, but be careful with linking. I think one of my sites was penalized by Google for irrelevant linking. The sub domain was not related to the main site. I still placed links from both sites to each other and the sub domain got blocked by Google. I think they view this as a form of spam. I can see it if I had hundreds of sub domains all pointing to each other, but one? I removed the links and now I'm waiting to see if the sub domain gets re-listed. Oh well, I guess we all live and learn.