I have a travel related site which gets the contents from the Contents supplier. I set up a CNAME with my ISP and then we can access the pages from the subdomain, e.g. subdomain[dot]travelsite[dot]com/cruiseline1.htm Now, I need suggestion on SEO for this site: 1. Do I need to treat it like two separate sites to do SEO? e.g. directory/SE submission 2. What is the best link structures between two sites? 3. Anything that I have to watch out?
Hope i can help you with this. 1- It's much better to submit to directories both the domain and subdomains if it's possible as you will be getting more links to the main domain witch will increase your site ranking. 2- link from all sub domains to your main domain and as much as you can try to keep the links from the main domain to the minimum amount if it's possible, target the general subdomains and main categories then link from each main category to the sub categories. 3- you have to make sure the content supplied by the suppliers is not stolen and you get dropping or even banning from the search engines, try to use copyscape.com to verify the data each time it's submitted.
Submission to directories might not work 100% as many directories does not accept sub domains. I would advise you to submit your main site to directories. As far as SEO is concerned you need to do SEO for every page. Crosslink your site in such a manner that all your sub domains are linked from main page, and your sub domain to main domain (cross link domain and sub domains). As your main site PR goes up, your sub domain will automatically promoted.
I've considered SubDirectory option before. There are some Pros and Cons. Since I subscribe contents from the Contents supplier, I have to host with them if I choose to use SubDirectory. If I host with them, I don't have much control on Home page as I have to use their simple HTML tool to edit the Home page. It places restriction while creating pages. One of the reasons I chose to use Subdomain is allowed to use Keywords as my Subdomain name in URL. It is hard to get a new domain name with a more competitive keyword. That's one of the way to combat it. I also heard Keywords in Subdomain has more weight than keywords in Subdirectory. The lower the directory level, the lower weight you get. Am I right?
I agree, I've been researching this for a whle now and from everything I have read Keywords in Subdomain carry much more weight than keywords in Subdirectory.