Greetings, In Our Website we have many sections such as Forum , News , Dic , Articles , Gallery , Games , All In "SubDomains." well we dont have any problem with this sections, but as i know when we use subdomain its mean each subdomain is a separate Site for Search Engines. what is your suggestion? Personally i like use SubDomains. not directories (folders) , its more memorizable for users , and some other reasons. if we use subdomains its dont have any beneficial/shared rank with homepage? do you think with below explain its okay to use subdomains ? in each section we put a menu bar / side menu that contains other site sectins , also our site Index is contain xml sitemap that conatins all other sections xml sitemaps. for example when spider see site.com/map.xml spider can access to other sections xml sitemap. Thanks.
Subdomains is fine as long as you make sure you are not duplicating content. Check out about.com, as they have a pretty good example of that. If everything is linked properly, the main domain should spread PR to all the subs. If you check out http://www.transparent-tech.com/, you'll see that his categories are spread out across other domains, and they all have the same PR.
Actually that is incorrect info...Subdomains are treated as different domains by search engines and the inbound linkjuice is NOT shared across subdomains. Yes, subdomains ARE a problem for SEO. Great for branding and "Cool" factor, but bad for SEO, UNLESS you are willing to spend as much time getting links to them as well.
It is when the sites are linked together properly. I never said it would be automatically shared. I know they are seperate domains. If you check the example I gave of www.about.com, it is very clear to see what I am talking about. Check the backlinks Google gives credit to for shoes.about.com. They all come from about.com or another about.com subdomain. That is absolute rubbish. Subdomains are not a problem. It hasn't hindered about.com... even Google has subdomains.
First off, relax a little. This isn't the end of the world. About.com uses subdomains for branding and rightly so. My point is that subdomains are treated like separate domains to search engines. If you're willing to optimize each one separately that's great. This conversation was about difficulty, and it WILL take more time and effort to do that. If you are going to be linking subdomains together and expecting ANY link juice to pass, they would need to be located on separate IP addresses on different C-Blocks. Let me give you some examples: www.about.com, webdesign.about.com, graphicdesign.about.com, php.about.com are all on the same IP: 207.126.123.20. They are passing no link juice to each other. Each one had to be search engine optimized and linked separately, just like a unique web domain. I'm not saying that it's bad to have subdomains. Again this conversation was about which one is easier to optimize. Subfolders are easier to optimize because of the "The Rising Tide Lifts All Ships" principle.
I agree with webgeek on this one.....Unless you are a large startup with the funds to market and build links to alll your subdomains.....using subfolders is best... using subdomains is ok in some instrances like for administrative purposes.
I have sub domains, but am now starting to think that sub folders would have been the best option. My site is a bit large to change it now and it will be gone in the long run to keep them the way they are when or if I become bigger.
LOL, I'm relaxed... I just type like I'm excited I pretty much agree with that. However, I feel that it would take less effort to build a strategy for x.com and sub.x.com then it would x.com and y.com. I disagree with this. Please take note that every McClatchy news site sits on the exact same IP, even McClatchy.com is on it. The IP is 152.52.20.247. All these sites interlink heavily, and the majority are PR7 or above. I know these aren't subdomains, but merely pointing out that all these "big" sites sit on the same IP. What makes you think that is the case? All the backlinks are coming from other about.com domains. http://www.google.com/search?q=link:http://php.about.com&hl=en&safe=off&start=280&sa=N&filter=0 That was a good article, and yes I see how it supports your statement... but is the gap between difficulty level really that big? I felt that the second illustration was a good example of what about.com is doing. A-F are the subdomains. And I acknowledge that the subs are viewed as seperate domains, but it I just can't believe that links to the main don't pass PR, to the subs if they are all linked together properly. I have seen many sites that have all their links going to www.x.com, yet x.com has just as a high PR. Is there an explanation for that which I am unaware of?
No worries. That's fine, but we weren't talking about strategies for two different domains...we were talking about subdomains vs subfolders. The real boost comes from other sites linking to your domain. These sites probably are getting most of their juice from other sites linking to them, so that argument doesn't seem relevant to me. Seriously, I didn't make this up. The value is coming from inbound links, not interlinks from subdomain to subdomain. You can Google this and find a lot of info, but I'll save you time with one link that explains the C-block issue concisely: http://ezinearticles.com/?Practice-...O-Techniques-for-Internet-Marketers&id=437174 The fact that Google's backlink checker is (purposely) inaccurate. Use Yahoo or MSN to find ALL the backlinks. You'll be shocked at how many more they show. Yes, I think the gap is significant...It's not so much difficulty as time involved, and time is money. I believe A-F are different domains/pages pointing to the site, not subdomains. Anyway, great discussion DavidK1.
I never said we weren't. You stated earlier that having a strategy going after "multiple domains" was more difficult. The reason for me bringing that up was to stress my point that it wasn't as difficult as you were saying. I know that is true, but the majority are coming from sites on that IP. Hey, I'm not saying you did. I just don't think it is as concrete as you or the writer of that article thinks. IP diversity isn't exactly current events. I've been hearing that preached since 2000. That is silly. I know it shows 0 if you are PR2 or lower. It's not purposely inaccurate, Google is just more picky about what it "officially" counts. Yahoo and MSN is a JOKE! Look at all the duplicate content links Yahoo gives timothyclinerealty.com for their 2 charlotte.com links. I'm not shocked at all, because I know Yahoo counts garbage like that. Google is the smart one. Well, all I can say is I still disagree. A-F are variables, they can be either. But yes, good discussion.
Wow, we've been discussing this for a while now. I'll address one point and then I'm retiring from this thread. Actually it's public knowledge that Google's backlink checker doesn't work. Do a little research and you'll find this out. For a complete list of links to your site go to: http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/
Guys, use the SEARCH ... when I write this post ther's another topic Subdomain or directory above this topic
again, a lot of garbage, duplicate links.. that number can be inflated VERY EASILY. Google's backlink checker works just fine. Yes I know it doesn't SHOW everything, but it does accurately represent the RELATIVE WORTH of the links a site has. The Google webmaster tool allows me to see the entire collection on my various sites. The gap between those numbers and the ones from yahoo are CONSIDERABLE.