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My site widgets.com currently has pages for widgets.com/blue.htm so on and son on. What I was considering doing with this redesign is setting up subdomains for blue, red, green etc. They will have independent content and I will start building seperate links for them.
However there will also be quite a few links back to the main domain for enquiries and other pages that are common to all areas. There will however only probably be between two and five links from the main domain to subdomains.
Is this going to have a negative effect on SERPS which I'm quite happy with at the moment? All and any advice on current and potential future G thinking on subdomains would be appreciated.
Or should I just buy domains for blue widgets?
If you're happy with what you've got right now, I wouldn't worry as much either way. If the blue widgets are truly separate with different editorial control, it might make more sense to do a different domain. My rule of thumb(s) would be
- would a user like running across what you're doing in the SERPs? Would it serve their needs and make the results more relevant, for example.
- what would a competitor think? Would anyone have reason to complain about what you're doing. If you're thinking about setting up 50 or 100 different domains, all for "different" content that really kinda looks the same, you can see where someone would complaint about that, for example.
Hope that helps,
GoogleGuy
If your Blue, Red, Green widgets are all part of the same widgets then keep it in the same domain. This would make your site bigger with more content etc to offer your users and Google.
I only use subdomains to split something that is not dependent on the main domain.
All sub-domains should work on their own, with its own content etc. If you create a 4 page subdomain with all links pointing to the main site you will be burnt however my subdomain has 2300 pages of pure content and only a couple of links to the main domain.
As I say treat them as a different web site.
Nice to hear your still with us GoogleGuy and that no one has scared you away. :)
It would only be 5 different areas which will have different content and are for completely different searches so I will probably go with seperate domains and I'm sure there would be no reason for anyone to complain!
I must admit the two main reasons for doing this are to keep it logicaly split and also for seperate link areas for that particulatr theme
Thanks for the response!
No problem just dont cross your links over too much and no duplicate content, none whatsoever!
:)
"Nice to hear you're still with us GoogleGuy and that no one has scared you away."
Well, I'm traveling, so I'm checking on things from a 56k line. It's harder to reply when I'm not at home, but I've kept up with the update thread as far as reading. Given that I post to WebmasterWorld in my free time, I just don't get really excited about posting in threads where folks are throwing verbal jabs and not really being civil toward each other. If the update thread cools down and there's fewer comments like "Oh no google, better come penalize webmaster world for keyword christ for more then a 0.00000001 keyword relevancy!" then I might rejoin it, but for the time being I'll stick to threads that are more polite. :)
Anyway, I'm answering with greater latency because of traveling and the slow connection, but nope, I haven't been scared away at all. :)
