Setting up subdomain for wordpress blog for existing ecommerce site

[frostfire]

Hi,

We are looking to setup a wordpress blog called say www.exampleA.com for an existing www.exampleA.com ecommerce website.

Would be wise to redirect www.exampleA.com to www.blog.exampleB.com

I know <other sites> had great success with this tactic.

regards
Chris

[edited by: caveman at 5:07 pm (utc) on Dec. 18, 2008]
[edit reason] Removed specifics, per TOS [/edit]

[zerotype]

Subdomains and subfolders are no longer treated like separate sites. Too many seo's abused the tactic and Google responded.

So ultimately, the decision is yours. A lot of people will do domain.com/blog or blog.domain.com. There is no search advantage either way. But you are right, it's probably better to just add it to an established site than to try and split your time promoting 2 separate domains.

[frostfire]

oh ok interesting, having said that at least with two sites, you are not relying on one site and one sites SEO

[caveman]

I agree with the notion of not wanting to promote two different sites entirely. IF they are closely related better to keep 'em on one domain, regardless of which tactic you use.

Speaking of tactics, Google has made changes, but there are still significant differences between subdomains and subdirectories, and it varies by search engine also.

Especially for smaller to mid-sized sites not at the top of the SERP's already, there are good reasons to put the blog in a directory unless you believe the blog will get WAY more links than the main site, in which case you might want to consider placing it on a different host (i.e., a subdomain). Think about it. ;-)

[Shaddows]

My 0.02 (refers to Google treatment as I do not watch other SEs)

1) Two related sites should be associated by being on the same domain. Otherwise interlinking may look spammy or manipulative

2) If the blog is just an extension of the site (more a promotional aid) have it in a subfolder

3) If both sites could STAND ALONE, then put them in seperate subdomains

4) If you own www.example.com and www.exampleblog.com, 301 redirect to your prefered location (i.e blog.example.com or www.example.com/blog)

A couple of points to note about relative values of subfolders and subdomains

i) Links between areas on either solution appear to now have the same value (in the past subdomains were treated like their own site)

ii) Page 1 SERPs usually only has one entry (sometimes with one indented entry) from the same subdomain- but sometimes you can get two subdomains ranking on the same page.

iii) Matt Cutts (of Google) has publically stated that that directories and subdomains will be treated more equally in the future (emphasis mine)

Caveman, I am interested that you think a new site should have the blog in a directory. I've thought about it as you suggest, and if having content-heavy pages pointing back at the main site is the aim, then fine. But if its a 'legitimate'<-not quite the word I'm looking for... blog then I am interested in your reasoning.

[caveman]

FWIW:

Don't worry about two owned sites linking to each other if done in an above-board way and especially if done conservatively. It's sneakiness and excessive linking that gets people in trouble.

I advise caution when interpreting what the SE reps say. They have to walk a balance between trying to help, and giving away the store and it's not so easy. Personally I try to listen as much to what is said as what is not said.

Re subdomains, the engines have had to continually adjust over the years how they think about and treat this content. Though the engines have different approaches regarding subdomains, none of them are treating them as though they are pages inside of the main domain. And I'm not just referring to how things appear in the SERP's.

If, through your own testing and investigation, one can see how the engines are treating subdomains -- and you know where you expect links to come from during the first year or two of a site's launch -- it should be relatively easy to figure out where to put the blog.

One thing I'll say is that if the blog content is quite different from the content of the main domain, that tends to lead savvy site owners to locate the blog on a subdomain. But not simply because the content is different. ;-)

To better understand this issue it really helps to go look at a bunch of SERP's. There is no substitute for looking at what is really going on. Do it across all three SE's too. Even if you care mostly about G, seeing the differences across the major SE's IMO also helps understand the differences.

Plus personally I've never understood why people focus only on G, even now. Who doesn't want an extra 10%-40% traffic?