Hi, I've some question about subdomains. My site is indexed by google and has a pagerank of 5. Now I've created a subdomain site and I want to give a link to it from my homepage. Which one should I choose to be indexed perfectly by google? I have several options to create a link: http://subdomain.mysite.com/ http://subdomain.mysite.com/index.php http://www.mysite.com/subdomain/ http://www.mysite.com/subdomain/index.php Code (markup): Should I submit new subdomain site to google? If yes, which option from the link above?
You would not need to submit the subdomain to Google. If you create it, they will come. Okay, that was lame, but seriously, if you link to it from your already established site, they will see the link and follow it and it will give PR pass-through to the new subdomain. For no specific reason, I would use: http://www.mysite.com/subdomain/
I would chamge something( .htaccess, etc..) to have only one way to link to your subdomain since google doesn´t like duplicate content...
I don't think he mentioned anything about duplicating content; maybe he's created a subdomain to diversify his site without launching a whole new domain only to have it take months to get indexed, ranked and a decent PR? I own freshdames.com and it has 11 subdomains thus far, each with unique content and many of those pages rank better than the main site because it's easier to rank for a very specific niche / term than the entire freshdames site that is more general; the subdomains pull in over 6000 visitors a day on their own and hence, send traffic to the main site through effective internal linking. Subdomains can be a very powerful tool if properly used.
Is there any difference between subdir and subdomains? Actually I have forum on my root folder but I'll not update it anymore. So I've created a new subdir and installed my new forum in it. Should I create a subdomain for it or only create a link from my domain's index page to the index page of the new forum?
Personally I think you'd be better served having it as a subdomain versus a directory, but don't create a subdomain that's empty and only points to a page in a subdirectory. The subdomain will be easier to rank IMO and it won't dilute the ranking of your main site ... just my opinion. BTW - you'll notice Shawn has the Digitial Point Forum in a subdomain and not a directory for an example.
Thanks for your help mate. I have one more question. Is it ok that both forums have the same titles? Can google see them as duplicate sites?. Actually both are software related forums. So, is it logical to create a new subdomain or show the new one as a part of the whole site? You can see a link to my site on my sig. Forums are named under 'Software Forums' and 'Old Forums'?
Hi wrmineo, you´re right! I thought that the same content of his new subdomain would be accessible thus four different ways and this is not good.
Read this article -- Everyhting you ever wanted to know about subdirectories vs. subdomains: Folders vs. Subdomains By Catherine Parker, Quirk Marketing From Highrankings.com
One of these days I'll bookmark that article Minstrel - thanks for bringing it up again; it should be the first thing offered up when someone asks a question along these lines.
Yes. That's why I have it bookmarked, because the question does come up often and it's an article that looks at the pros and cons of both options and basically tells you how to go about making the decision that's best for you.
Thank you Minstrel, it is a very useful article. I've decided to continue to with the subdirectory structure. I've noticed that yesterday googlebot has indexed lots of my old forum's (it's on the root folder) topic pages, but only indexed the index page of my new forum on the subdir. Does google have a priority on indexing? When will google start indexing my new pages on the subdir?
Make sure you have a link from your main landing page to the new forum and in due course Googlebot will find it. Added: when you say "old forum", do you mean you don't want Google indexing those pages anymore? If so, you could do a 301 redirect to the new forum.
I would like Google to continue indexing my old forum pages. That's why I created my new forum on a new subdir. I already have a html landing page on the root. What do you mean by "in due course"? Can it be possible that Googlebot starts indexing the pages in the subdir after it completes indexing (including the dynamically created) pages in the root, even if there exist links to both forums on the landing page?
No, I don't think Googlebot works that way, but it won't crawl your entire site on every visit. For the sites I watch, Googlebot visits every day and usually more than once a day. Sometimes it just hits a couple of pages or a few pages. Sometimes it digs in and crawls a lot of pages. I don't know what the pattern is or how it decides what to do when. I suspect that sometimes it follows a link from another site it's spidering and then just checks a page or two and goes back to thje site it was on, returning later to more thoroughly spider your site.