Planet13 - 5:02 pm on Feb 19, 2012 (gmt 0)

@ Rosalind:

I would only cut the stuff that nobody's reading or linking to.

That's the thing. People ARE reading and linking to the information stuff. They just AREN'T making a purchase from the links that are on there.

So if I were to remove that information, I would lose lots of links to my site.

I guess the theory I have is if I combine it on the ecommerce pages, I MIGHT get more people to link directly to the ecommerce pages, and hopefully that will help them rank better.

@ enigma1:

What do you mean by "information sections"? Are these pages part of the ecommerce code or there is some other application handling those pages?

The ecommerce pages are served up by my shopping cart software, while the information pages are done in html (php really, but they end in a .htm extension - the shopping cart pages end in a .html extension, if that matters).

You should have everything at the root of the domain and use one application to handle the products and general content.

Well, I DON'T do this for a reason - it may not be a GOOD reason, but here is my thinking;

The information pages are quite extensive and I need to keep the navigation SOMEWHAT segregated for the user. While their are links in the category tree BETWEEN the ecommerce and general info sections, I only include a few. If I were to use the ecommerce shopping cart for serving the information pages, the linking structure would not be user friendly at all - either for the ecommerce users or for the general information users. There would be far to many categories displayed for the user.

If the information is on a separate application, don't mix them with your high value asset in the same physical space.

Can I ask why not? I have my ideas, but would REALLY like to hear your reasons for not doing this.

Now if the information pages are extensive use a a sub-domain.

That is something I have been thinking about. However, I am concerned about losing page rank since more people link to the information pages than to the ecommerce pages, and I THOUGHT that by moving them to a subdomain, the page rank won't flow to the root domain (or that the root domain would lose authority / trust).

I know I am TRYING to get the best of both worlds; building trust / authority by having people link to my information pages and then leveraging it for my ecommerce pages.