Say that I want to promote a product through a web site and I have these two options: -Make a new site on an old domain that I own which already contains a web site with a PR of 4 and ~3000 unique hits per day. For example, the site with ~3000 uniques per day is located at the default index (contristo.com), while the potential new site would be located at contristo.com/whatever. I could easily redirect a .com domain name to the new site. Will Google distinguish the two or regard it similarly since it is hosted on the exact same domain and, in theory, is actually just another page of the original site (which has high search results and page ranking)? or -Buy a new domain with new hosting, new everything. In all honesty, would it be wise to just build the new web site in the same domain if the ranking is already high? Will Google penalize me for this? Will it actually make a difference? Google really likes the original web site (90% of the 3000 visitors from search) from the domain in its rankings, so if a new site were to echo that reputability then I think it would be a good method. Thanks.
In my experience, new domains take a long time to rank without high-quality, relevant links. I'd try and use the old domain to feed visitors to a new subdomain.
yeah, I'm not trying to be insincere by making two different sites on the same domain, but it would make sense for Google to value a trusted domain more. if they are more accustomed to my original site delivering original and quality content then I imagine they would be more receptive to a subdomain with obvious affiliation to the initial domain. I'll give it a shot though... maybe I'll try both methods to see which works better but I'll work with the old domain for now under a new subdomain. I imagine it would be good practice to link the new page from the sitemap and index page too, no?
The only way I'd even consider using the old domain for your new product's site is if the inbound links to your existing site have link text that are relevant to your new product you are trying to promote. Having a PR4 site that is about cars promoting something like bad credit loans will do you absolutely no good. If the theme of the old site is highly relevant to the new product you're promoting then I would consider promoting the product on that site. If not, I would go with a new keyword rich domain name that is an exact match for a medium to high traffic keyword phrase people would use when looking for the product.
thanks for the post. so what negative implications are there if, say, I want to promote an entirely irrelevant product on the domain? what if i wanted to promote a new plasma TV? if contristo.com is about music, would contristo.com/plasmatv make google angry at contristo.com? this is all very interesting to me and I appreciate the responses so far.
Long story short you would be effectively starting over. Canonical, as usual, is spot on with his comment. Nigel