subdomain vs domain.com/newtopic

Subdomain. A subdomain is looked at like a new website, yet for some reason it's sandbox safe. A subdomain for a very important reason, in that SE's take into account the theme of the entire site, even when ranking just 1 page.

 

subdomain has more advantages then subfolders

its ok ?

its true

 

Are you saying that the use of a subdomain can improve the focus of individual sections of a site and therefor improve SE rankings?

The main reason that I would prefer to use subdomains would be to keep seperate themes seperate.

Can a overall site's (assuming that a site is all the subdomains of a given domain) SE rankings be hurt if the various themes for each subdomain do not exactly match up?

Brandon

 

Exactly.

That's an excellent reason for using subdomains, IMO. My rule of thumb is use a subdomain if the theme is different but related. Use a separate domain if the theme is different and unrelated.

Not as far as I know and not in my experience.

 

Let me be the first to say "Um-Hum" to your "Huh," and the second to say "huh?"

 

This is something I'm thinking on. I know site "theme" has been discounted in various places (Dirk Johnson comes to mind), and supported in others (Jim Boykin comes to mind, if I've understood him correctly).

Is there empirical evidence to support the idea that the SEs look at site theme or neighborhood in its linking structure, or, rather, a site on real estate having a page devoted to travel, with links to travel - no problem?

 

Actually, to clarify, my comment about "subdomain if the theme is different but related -- separate domain if the theme is different and unrelated" was from a design - visitor - rational point of view and not intended to suggest that this was necessarily better for SEO.

That said, I do think (note: think= opinion not proof) that Google is already looking at relevance of links and that they are doing that via the same sort of content analysis that is used by AdSense to determine relevancy of ads.

 

I hadn't thought of the adsense analysis as a means for google to do "theme" analysis, if indeed they do, but interesting and your conjecture makes perfect sense. Would be interesting to see that if your second paragraph holds true, it extends from the page to the site level.

 

Good luck using logic to figure out the search engines. For nearly every piece of evidence, there is an opposite, but equally powerful piece of contradictory evidence. har har

Brandon

 

Not really... it would be more accurate to say: