Which one is better: subdomain.mydomain.com or mydomain.com/subdomain?
- Thread starter CygnusX
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Google treats subdomain as separate entity from the original domain hence it will suffer from sandbox effect. Personally I think if you have a health website Example Web Page and if you want to add a store to it, stick with www.example.com/store instead of store.example.com. This will help you in better indexing too. If you are adding something totally different than you can go the subdomain way.
And ladies and gentleman, this was my first post here
Hope to enjoy this great place
And ladies and gentleman, this was my first post here
Hope to enjoy this great place
The other is a subpage/subdirectory, yes.
I have a forum with very specific subforums. And to establish linktrades with other sites, I want to use one of these 2. I will make a .htaccess that redirects subdomain.domain.com or (domain.com/subdomain) to domain.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=x. I don't think there is a difference between the two regarding user experience. Maybe one of the two is better for my SE rankings?
I have a forum with very specific subforums. And to establish linktrades with other sites, I want to use one of these 2. I will make a .htaccess that redirects subdomain.domain.com or (domain.com/subdomain) to domain.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=x. I don't think there is a difference between the two regarding user experience. Maybe one of the two is better for my SE rankings?
From a branding perspective, it's better to have mydomain.com/subdomain
This coming from someone I work with who used to work for a big phone company in Canada that spent a very large amount of money researching it for their online branding.
This coming from someone I work with who used to work for a big phone company in Canada that spent a very large amount of money researching it for their online branding.
this might or might not be true so it will probably require some confirmation by others on here, but i read somewhere a while back that sub domains are treated independent of the main domain where as a subdirectory wil be categorized with the main domain.
This is true. Without links between them, a domain and its subdomains are treated as different websites.
As long as you're running a whitehat site, it's better to use subdirs for a forum.
Just to add to what Sleepy said, but if your running bhat autogen stuff, stick them on subdomains and don't link to them from the main domain. So iff they get caught and banned, the whole domain wont go with it. Eli mentioned he did a couple of experiments on this a while ago.
SEO for website structure
I was going to create a thread about this, but ill post it here instead. If it doesnt get any good answers ill make it a post on its own...
Lets say you have a site about widgets... the domain is called widgets.com
I can think of 2 methods with 2 sub-methods each.
I was going to create a thread about this, but ill post it here instead. If it doesnt get any good answers ill make it a post on its own...
Lets say you have a site about widgets... the domain is called widgets.com
Since there is alot of competition for the keyword widget, you need to rank well for "keyterms" which use the word widget. So for example, id want to rank really well for " free widgets ", " dark blue widgets " , " mac widgets " , " best widgets " so on...
From SE point of view, what is the best way to structure your website and optimize your chances to rank well ?
I can think of 2 methods with 2 sub-methods each.
Method A / no subdomain
1 :Files in root : Domain.com/keyterms.html
+ Pros : All your pages are in the root directory. I remember reading somewhere that SE spiders like files that are closer to the root more than those that are in deep folders ( widget.com/mac-widgets.html > widget.com/oswidgets/mac-widget.hmtl ). I dont know if this is true/false...
- Cons : If you use directory submission to deeplink your site, there are alot of site that will only accept the domain, not a page in the domain.
2 :Files in folders : Domain.com/kwcategory/keyterms.html
+ Pros : this allow you to include more keywords in the url OR repeat the keywords more often( widget.com/os-widgets/mac-widgets.html widget.com/os-widgets/windows-widgets.html).. Also from a user point of view, looking at the url makes it look more organized, but I dont think this is important to SE.
- Cons : I dont know if repeating the words widgets 3 time in a url is too much ... if so you might use other keywords instead of repeating them, but the more keyword you add, the less your targeted keywords become important. Also deeplinking using directories is a factor here too.
Method B / using subdomain
1 :keyterms.Domain.com/keyterms.html [or index.html ]
+ Pros : spiders will see your keyterms FIRST, keywords at the begining of url are given more importance ( right ? )
You can use directory submission in most cases subdomains are accepted.
- Cons : If your main domain gain authority/pagerank, this will not affect your subdomain and vice-versa. but you still get a little bit of benefit since your links to the domain will carry a bit of value...
4: Fake subdomain... keyterms.domain.com is the same as domain.com/keyterms/
+ Pros : spiders will see your keyterms FIRST, once a user lands on the page, he is automatically redirected with .htaccess to domain.com/keyterms/keyterms.html . As a subdomain you can use directory submission... When the SE gets on your site subdomain, he goes to the directory equivalent. All links are internal ... the subdomain acts only has a redirect and allow you to use directory submission
- Cons : mac-widgets.widgets.com/mac-widgets.html is the same as widgets.com/macwidgets/mac-widgets.html , maybe the keywords are repeated too much. Maybe google will not like the redirection, maybe google will be able to tell the difference between the subdomain and its directory equivalent and consider the pages to be duplicate content, since there is 2 ways to access the same file.
Anyways, What do you guys think...1 :Files in root : Domain.com/keyterms.html
+ Pros : All your pages are in the root directory. I remember reading somewhere that SE spiders like files that are closer to the root more than those that are in deep folders ( widget.com/mac-widgets.html > widget.com/oswidgets/mac-widget.hmtl ). I dont know if this is true/false...
- Cons : If you use directory submission to deeplink your site, there are alot of site that will only accept the domain, not a page in the domain.
2 :Files in folders : Domain.com/kwcategory/keyterms.html
+ Pros : this allow you to include more keywords in the url OR repeat the keywords more often( widget.com/os-widgets/mac-widgets.html widget.com/os-widgets/windows-widgets.html).. Also from a user point of view, looking at the url makes it look more organized, but I dont think this is important to SE.
- Cons : I dont know if repeating the words widgets 3 time in a url is too much ... if so you might use other keywords instead of repeating them, but the more keyword you add, the less your targeted keywords become important. Also deeplinking using directories is a factor here too.
Method B / using subdomain
1 :keyterms.Domain.com/keyterms.html [or index.html ]
+ Pros : spiders will see your keyterms FIRST, keywords at the begining of url are given more importance ( right ? )
You can use directory submission in most cases subdomains are accepted.
- Cons : If your main domain gain authority/pagerank, this will not affect your subdomain and vice-versa. but you still get a little bit of benefit since your links to the domain will carry a bit of value...
4: Fake subdomain... keyterms.domain.com is the same as domain.com/keyterms/
+ Pros : spiders will see your keyterms FIRST, once a user lands on the page, he is automatically redirected with .htaccess to domain.com/keyterms/keyterms.html . As a subdomain you can use directory submission... When the SE gets on your site subdomain, he goes to the directory equivalent. All links are internal ... the subdomain acts only has a redirect and allow you to use directory submission
- Cons : mac-widgets.widgets.com/mac-widgets.html is the same as widgets.com/macwidgets/mac-widgets.html , maybe the keywords are repeated too much. Maybe google will not like the redirection, maybe google will be able to tell the difference between the subdomain and its directory equivalent and consider the pages to be duplicate content, since there is 2 ways to access the same file.
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