Subdomains

What does G think of subdomains?
Can I use them to any seo advantage, and do they mature with age too?

 

Subdomains are treated as different sites in Google's eyes. So, techically you could host multiple websites on one domain name, through subdomain extentions. Google would treat them all as seperate sites. CNN.com is a great example of this, you can see that money.cnn.com and cnn.com are completely seperate sites and consider seperate in the Google SERPs with the expection of sitelinks.

 

So, if I wanted to have an area of my site for reciprocal linking, and linked back vai the sub, this would hit the validation key for their checker, but give me a one way?
Doesn't sound right but technically....

 

What about subfolders (site.com/blog) does anyone know if their treated as part of the one site? and not like subdomains.

 

U should always use folders where ver possible.
The folder is part of the same domain.
I can't really see a use for subs, apart from realy large sites.
e.g.
A site that I am designing now, I may allow an eccomerce company to rent the subdomain. They get loads of traffic, I get rent and a percentage.
A bit like renting out part of a shop?
But they can't **uk up the rest of the domain by bad practices... or can they?
I like that idea.

 

Thanks Valley, at first i thought a subfolder was the same as subdomains but someone tld me they are different, i generally dontlike how a subdomain looks.

Ive used a subfolder recently, it looks better and more tidy to me and if its part of the same domain thats all the better for me.

Ive never thought about that before, renting out a subdomain, interesting and handy way to generate revenue though, sounds good.

 

Thats the thing though. The idea is easy enough, but if they started to generate their own links etc, how would that affect the main domain?

 

True, i can appreciate your concern about that.

 

In my experince, a subdomain is taken as a new site by google. A subdirectory obviouslly no. I think now if the references from a subdomain is taken as a external reference by google...

 

Sub-folders are considered part of the site, use them only for seperate sections of your site. Do not go sub-folder crazy, they can actually hurt your ranking in certian aspects and situations.

 

Indeed.

The debate has raged for some time as to what is better for SEO purposes.

Subdomains or subfolders.

The answer depends on what your site is about and how much work you want to put in!!
Subdomains are treated as a new site, although may get some favouritism in the serps if your main domain is popular.

If your subtopics are related to your main site topic, sub folders are the way to go for certain; they are treated as all part of the same site, and as we know, Google loves content rich sites.
so having lots of content rich subfolders is great SEO

If your topic is totally unrelated, as in CNN with news and money, then it may be worth considering subdomains, however bear in mind that its much more work to create subdomains for new topics and get them indexed and well ranking, than it is to create a new subfolder on your main site.

Both have valid arguments, with subdomains spreading 'the risk' if you get say 20 subdomains all ranking well, then you have a margin for safety if Google bowls you for some mad reason (and it does happen to innocent people as we know)

Conversely, building a big, content rich site with lots of topics, can still rank very well (better in my experience) for the subtopics you have chosen

 

Matt Cutts spoke about this exact issue at PubCon, currently everything in this thread is correct but that is about to change:

http://searchengineland.com/071207-090257.php


PS: this is not my site... just found this very interesting..

 

OK a question.
Has anyone ever tried putting a links directory on a subdomain with the partners linking back to the main, and most of all is that ok with G?

 

Thanks ssandecki, so far ive only added one, its the first time ive ever done it too, at a push i may have reason to add one more to the same site in the future but that would be it.

Very helpful post regarding the two seo daddy, thanks.

linsys, thanks il check out that link too and have a read.

 

What evidence do you base this on please ssandecki?

I have got 2 sites with multiple subfolders seperating different topic areas and they both rank top in Yahoo and top 3 in Google for very competitive search terms (200 million results ++)

Subfolders has never done me any harm, I cant see why you would think it can do any harm provided the sites are legitimate and the sub folders are white hat.

 

Nice link. Thanks mate, I didnt know about this.

This changes the advice I would give above, however it only really relates to someone who is trying to muscle in on multiple slots for ONE search term.

if you are using subdomains for different niches or areas on you site, then you are fine as long as it targets different search terms from your main site

 

I think sub-folders actually benefit your website in many ways, for instance; if you was going to have a directory on your website which already contained other material. I would place this in a sub-folder to ensure Google didn't penalize my main website for either linking to bad websites or having too many outbound links, selling links, etc. This way, your main website wouldn't be affected even if you did get penalized.

Since Google treats sub-folders as being totally different websites too, you can rank your websites on multiple diverse keywords and not affect your traffic as bad.

 

Google doesnt treat subfolders as being different websites though....

it knows they are part of the same website, and for that reason, will not show more than 2 URLs in the search results for the same search term. (without valid reason)

Subdomains up until the conference in the link above, were trreated as seperate sites, and hence you could have

keyword.product.com

related keyword.product.com

etc and rank 5 URLs in the top 10 for a competitive search.
Now that has changed and it will be limited to 2 URLs

 

Sub-directories are great, use them... But not for the same topic.

 

Maybe you should do some research on internal linking and deep linking effects on SEO.