Subsites

What's the best way to split-up a site?

[pdivi]

I've just linked-up my store with a great supplier who has really increased my access to products. I'm trying to figure out the best way to leverage this new asset. If I just load all of the new products into my current site, it will really dilute my traditional focus (and probably confuse most of my traditional customer base).

To give you an example, if you were selling road racing racing bicycles, and suddenly you had access to mountainbikes, you probably wouldn't want to load the mountainbikes onto your current site because the imagery, culture, target customer, etc. is so different.

My better options are to either divide my site into subdomains consisting of loosely associated sites (lots of cross-linking, cross-advertising, etc.), or to create totally independent sites with unique domains. I'm leaning towards the former.

Any insights before I get to work? Anyone who has tried a similar endeavor have any words of caution?

[hfwd]

be careful, cross-linkings have been attributed to a big drop in google ranking.

[pdivi]

Thanks, hfwd! That's why I posted...I was afraid I might miss something like you mentioned.

If I run two sites off of the same domain (under different subdomains), will I incur a cross linking penalty, or will Google simply look at the sites as one?

<EDIT>
I should have searched before asking...WebmasterWorld has it covered: [webmasterworld.com...] I guess subdomains are a bad idea. I'm now leaning towards an alternate store under a subdirectory.
</EDIT>