[thelist] subdomains, redirects, and SEO

[Steven Streight]

On Mon, Feb 25, 2013 at 6:45 PM, Garth Hagerman <hagerman at mcn.org> wrote:

> Hello all-
> I'm in the early stages of developing a local guide-to-our-community site.
> One feature which this site will include is special pages for local stores
> which have no other web presence. The pages are very simple and
> owner-maintainable. They will run from one script. But, I'd like to assign
> subdomains to individual store pages and redirect the subdomain to the
> store script, so they can have addresses like
> genericstore.realmendocino.com instead of realmendocino.com/stores.php/1 (Luddites swoon at addresses with slashes and file extensions)
>
> The test page has been up for a couple of weeks. As part of the test, I
> pointed a blog post at the subdomain. Additionally,  the proto-site, with
> its directory,  is indexed. Google has listed Generic Store of Mendocino,
> but they don't list the subdomain, they list the script address. Bing and
> Yahoo! don't list Generic Store of Mendocino at all (yet?).
> Is there a better way to handle this situation where I get maximum SEO
> punch and a luddite-friendly web address?
>
>    thanks in advance
>    Garth
>


ANSWER:

Subfolders are far better for SEO than subdomains.

QUOTE

A sub-domain is a website that sit's outside of the root directory. This
means that subdomain.rootdomain.com is treated separately by search engines
to www.rootdomain.com or just rootdomain.com. This separation is one of the
reasons why some companies would use this option as it distinctly shows
sections of a website such as a blog or forum.

However, that advantage is balanced by the subdomain having it's own link
profile and not being seen as part of the root domain... this means for
both subdomain.rootdomain.com and rootdomain.com to get a high ranking you
have to work twice as hard (in theory).

Advanced notes: In reality a part of the link profile and ranking from the
subdomain will pass to the root domain and vice versa, but not all of it.
Indeed it is suggested that the proportion passed is less than 10% in some
cases. Also in reality a subdomain is a folder within the root directory
and is only aliased to the outside world. But shush, it's complicated.

END QUOTE

http://seoandy.com/optimisation/subdomain-vs-folder-vs-external-url/

>
>
>

Steven E. Streight

Internet Marketing Specialist

http://pluperfecter.blogspot.com
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