Subdomains - Will he crawl them and if so...

subdomains benefit or loss

[kastro]

I am planning on setting up a few subdomains on my site. The subdomains will be titled with keywords relevant to the field which I am trying to raise my PR for. Will google crawl them and if so will it benefit my site in anyway?

Another small problem... I know that Google dosen't like redirects but my hosting company will not allow me to set up subdomains that point to inner pages so I will have to use Javascript to redirect based on what URL the user (or bot) used to get to the top page of the site.

Any advice would be appreciated.

[ciml]

If you have some good content to put on the subdomains, and can get them good links that would not be given if you added those pages to your main domain, then it will help. Otherwise, I don't see the benefit.

If the addresses give Javascript redirects then I wouldn't expect them to help in Google.

[paynt]

I use sub-domains, (canonicals) with nearly every site I create and in my experience over these past nearly three years I have to say I see excellent results with them. Ciml offered some good advice about creating canonicals that are content rich. That’s good advice, whether it’s a canonical or a sub-directory make it rich with content. I think the ‘best’ canonicals are those that can stand-alone but I haven’t noticed that really makes a difference with Google.

I’d really love to talk about what I’ve found in my experience with canonicals but I’m starting to think this is a subject I want to hold close because I’d hate to jinx it suddenly. There are members here who are fearful of them, warn folks away from them and such and over this past year I guess I’ve sat back and applauded that. I know that sounds selfish considering those warnings are exactly opposite of my experience.

[lavapies]

Hi guys,

On the subject of subdomains, i was thinking of setting up a subdomain to showcase a product that is currently a part of my main domain, but i want to expand a lot on it.

Is it seen as acceptable to duplicate some content in the subdomain? My plan is to initially cut and paste content for starters (but in a different design entirely) and then expand on the content as the site grows and I write more stuff.

Just wondered if you all thought this was ok. I'm paranoid about doing anything that could be considered spammy as I've made a firm decision to play by the rules :-)

[paynt]

Hi lavapies,

Is it seen as acceptable to duplicate some content in the subdomain

Well now there’s a good question and relates more to mirrored content which we have talked about around here. I can’t be sure how much content specifically that it’s ok to copy over. I just mentioned in another post that Press Releases often show up on different sites with mirrored content and the PageRank can be really great if the Press Release is connected to a good site. I’ve also ran checks for strange words and found pages of mirrored content on different sites. A good tip to checking how Google handles mirrored content is to search for a bit of a larger quote or definition.

Be that as it is, I always caution restraint in duplicating content from one page or canonical to the next. I believe it’s better to offer unique and fresh content so as I moved the information I would at least freshen it up. Polish it up in other words and it would most likely add benefit so that I walked in anticipation and not fear. That’s me though.

You know lavapies I think it’s more about building quality content then spam issues although google may see it different. I’m just not sure what the threshold is for mirrored content. If anyone knows I hope they weigh in.

[lavapies]

Thanks for the reply paynt.

Certainly seems like it would be a better idea for me to at least edit the content before I go ahead and duplicate stuff across domains.

Maybe I could make the versions of content on my main domain more 'limited' - i.e. edit them to include just the bare essentials and then port the whole thing across. Hmm, not sure!

Anyway, I guess from what u say it would seem important to make the percentage of ported content low compared to fresh new stuff that I put on the subdomain.

Thanks again for the reply. If anyone does know what the threshold is I'd appreciate the info.

[paynt]

edit them to include just the bare essentials and then port the whole thing across

Nice idea. I’ve used this technique with great success in promoting articles. Give the other site a third of the content with a keyword rich text link linking to the full story. I’ve never had a problem with that approach.