Better rankings by splitting up content into a subdomain?

[roodle]

Hi,

I have a site consisting of 4 main sections, all with the same theme but distinct in their geographic (country) aspect. I'm planning on moving all the content of one section (www.example.com/everything-in-this-directory) into a subdomain of the current site. There are various reasons why I want to do this, but one of the main ones is to make the current site more concentrated in its content in relation to the countries that remain, such that its rankings can potentially improve for searches related to those remaining countries.

Is this reasoning sound? Will Google (eventually) see things as I'm hoping?

Thanks in advance

[edited by: tedster at 6:43 pm (utc) on Apr 28, 2010]
[edit reason] switch to example.com - it cannot be owned [/edit]

[tedster]

You don't even need to set up subdomains (hostnames) if you don't want to - but that will be OK. Even a basic directory structure will work if you want to target specific content to specific geographic areas, because you can geo-target directories in Webmaster Tools by verifying each one as a "site".

If you have a lot of geographically localized content, it might make sense to use a double directory - the first for language and several under that language for those that are common in more than one country - /fr/be/ and /fr/ch/ for example.

[roodle]

Hi tedster and thanks for your reply.

Let me be clear about this. The content in different sections isn't AIMED at specific countries. It's ABOUT specific countries but equally useful (I'd say) to anyone. So, there aren't any languages involved or localization required.

I didn't realise I could verify sub-directories in WMT as separate sites. I'll have to look into this now, but what are the consequences of doing this for the current site?

[edited by: tedster at 11:52 pm (utc) on Apr 28, 2010]

[tedster]

Then either approach (subdomain or subdirectory) will make sense and you would not use any geotargeting.

It's a relatively common situation and all you can do is work toward getting a global audience as best you can - localized backlinks especially. I'd say group your content into the appropriate themes and make sure the internal linking is clear-cut. But then focus more on making the content uniquely valuable. In other words, don't look to the URL structure itself to be a magic bullet of some kind.

[suratmedia]

Subdomain has its lot of advantages:-

(1) If some how (through any adnetwork) malware found on your subdomain, your other subdomains /root-domain won't be listed as attacked site.
(2) Same case with adsense.
(3) Some how subdomain got penalty [internal duplication/reciprocal linking/bad neighborhood]; other subdomains/root won't get affected.

[roodle]

Ok so Google says

Webmaster Tools data and reporting work best on a site level. For example, if your site www.example.com has separate sections for different countries, we recommend adding each of those subsites or subfolders as a separate site.

Great, but WHY do they recommend adding each of those subsites or subfolders as a separate site? What is the definition of a "site" now if it's nothing to do with the domain name? How does verifying www.example.com/foo affect the rankings of other content within www.example.com? Should my sitemap for www.example.com still include www.example.com/foo ? Do I need to change the site structure? There's no real explanation about any of this, or have I missed something?

[tedster]

A separate "site" in Webmaster Tools - with its own separate verification file.