Folders versus Subdomains

[branica]

Here is the start of a great discussion over whether to use folders or subdomains when expanding a site:

So, i had disagreements with some people.

In all my experience of about 5 to 7 years of SEO, i always went with the folder in favour of the subdomain, eg :

Quote:
http://www.mydomain.com/my-great-product/
or ...
http://www.mydomain.com/forum/
instead of :

Quote:
http://my-great-product.mydomain.com/
or ...
http://forum.mydomain.com/
Now let me tell you why i went that way.

Since the SE's see any new subdomain as a whole new website, link popularity would have to be concentrated NOT on the main website, but on the subdomains too, if you REALLy want to have a rank like i had with this website :

Search 1
Search 2
Search 3

The above are purely 3 random positions i could think of, and search.

This website niche is VERY competitive, and altough, let's say, 80.000 results appear in Google for a search it's extremly hard to rank high.

So .. My 2 cents. On a heavily promoted website, new added content (page, news bit, forum post, anything) already assumes the earned weight of the main domain, and immediatly ranks VERY HIGH, after it has been indexed.

With a subdomain, you would have to reach the same ammount of weight, for each subdomain, for that to happen. And it rarely happens that way.

The added importance, made to the keyword in the domain, versus the keyword in the URL, is not EVEN CLOSE as important as to the weight that's been passed to any new content.

Another example, would be a website with a forum.domain, and a domain.com/forum.

I strongly suggest to use the /forum/ solution. Anyone can see the benefits in the above statements.

I want real arguments and constructive talks on this issue, because it's so important, and maybe members can learn something.

I want to clearly mention that in all my experience, i never achieved a more positive (per total) effect, by using the subdomain (and i used it several times), versus the folder.

Counter point:

First, when SEO's are complaining to Matt Cutts about subdomain spam dominating the SERPs, you gotta wonder if something is there.

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/bigdad...-almost-there/ <- Read the comments

http://www.threadwatch.org/node/6484 <- Not specifically addressing the subdomain issue, but a lot of good discussion relevant to the topic nonetheless.

Aaron's statement is particularly revealing.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Aaron Wall
I always thought that the amount of direct trust transfered to a subdomain should have to deal with weather or not the root linked to it, and in what ways.

This here is just bad algorithms at their worst.

The trust transfer happened without the root domain linking to the rogue subdomains.

Subdomains are golden, in my opinion. They seem to bypass all the filters, and get all the weight of a seperate domain, while retaining all the weight of the root domain. It's actually a bit unfair to the competition, IMO.

A few other advantages to subdomains:

1. Link weight

Internal links do not carry as much weight as they used to. For example, a link from www.v7n.com to www.v7n.com/scripts/ would be considered internal, and that link would not carry a ton of weight of do much for you in the SERPs.

However, Google does not seem to treat links to and from subdomains as "internal" links. They treat them as seperate domains. So a link from www.v7n.com to http://blog.v7n.com is almost fully weighted, as an offsite link would be.

2. Root Carries Weight

Historically speaking, search engines have thought that the closer to root a webpage is, the more important it is. This was especially true with Google two or three years ago.

To illustrate, remember when all pages of a website had "ghost pagerank" (aka "default PageRank")?

Back in those days, if www.v7n.com had PR8, www.v7n.com/folder/ would have default PR of PR7 as a brand new URL.

Google assigned PR based on how many folders it was away from root.

IF www.v7n.com was PR8, then:

www.v7n.com/folder/ - PR7
www.v7n.com/folder/folder2/ - PR6
www.v7n.com/folder/folder2/folder3/ - PR5
www.v7n.com/folder/folder2/folder3/folder4/ - Pr4

Google stopped assigning PR that way several years ago, but it demonstrates how they thought of folders that were several folders away from root.

(Lots of people moved everything to root back then, and it helped their Google rankings.)

Nowadays, Google treates web pages more independantly, and specific web pages of a site often outrank the home page, but there is still a more weight on root than on folders.

Subdomains are treated as root, carry all the weight of root, and therefore start out with more weight right out of the gate.


3. Great for Directory Submission

Another thing is, I can submit http://directory.v7n.com to web directories where www.v7n.com is listed, and most web directories will treat this as a URL deserving it's own listing.

But when I submit www.v7n.com/scripts/ editors refuse saying they do not want to "deeplink" when the home page URL is already listed.

4. Keywords Prominence

http://www.google.com/search?&q=www

Why do those pages rank for "www"? Because they have "www" in the URL.

Why would anybody want to rank for "www"? What a waste!

I'd rather rank for "directory" or something relevant. "www" is not relevant.

And it gets my keywords out up front. In information retrieval, historically keyword prominence carries weight.

This is to say, given these two URL's:

Quote:
v7n.com/green-blue/
Or

Quote:
v7n.com/blue-green/
The first would outrank the second for "green", and vice versa for "blue".

And if you really want keyword prominence in the URL, green.v7n.com would kick ass.


5. SERP Domination

Usually, a domain is allowed one or two listings (the second one indented) in the SERPs. For example:

http://www.google.com/search?&q=webmasterworld

WebmasterWorld only has one listing for that search. Ironically, SearchEngineWatch own more real estate on that page than WMW does, with two listings, one of which is indented.

So, on the default Google search, you got 10% to 20% of the page.

http://www.google.com/search?&q=search+engine+watch

Search Engine Watch owns 50% of that page now, because of subdomain use. (searchenginewatch.com, blog.searchenginewatch.com, forums.searchenginewatch.com, and feeds.searchenginewatch.com)

I'll often see SEW with 30% of the page (three listings), because of this.

If they had used folders instead of subdomains, they would only get 2 max per SERP.

Read the counter point and more here: http://www.v7n.com/forums/seo-forum/...ubdomains.html

[onlinedownlods]

I do have 4 sites with subfolders page and 4 sites with subdomain pages, SEO of the subdomain pages are easier for me when comapred to subfolder pages. But i'm unable to decide which is the best for SEO?

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[drewgrantt]

very interesting discussion I just read it from the beginning.

the main question with sub domains / folders theres days seems to be "how do you want your content to show in Google?"

ie either a separate entry alongside the main domain (sub domains) or as drop down sub content of the main domain, (folder)

agree that there doesn't seem to be much difference between link weighting from our testing lately

[jackyrog]

These all information is really very interesting in all these there are so many things which is great. Google treates web pages more independantly, and specific web pages of a site often outrank the home page, but there is still a more weight on root than on folders.

[noahglohan]

I have searched on net more subject about this problem with subdomains and this is one of the best documented.
I have some questions : The majority of post about this subject have the ideea that if a sub,domain becomes banned it will affect the main domain.
I want to make some autoblogs on subdomains on one of my high PR blog.Can this have problems?
At hosts with multiple hosting domains (like hostgator, where the domains are also subdomains of a main domain),can be a problem if one of this sites have a problem with Google?

Thanks,

[caliean]

By search engines section in a folder structure are seen as a part of search, therefore having more sub section means a good thing. We all know how the search engines love a site that is rich in content. Folders allow you to build your site’s bulk with each new section addition.

[thpalex]

Using folders would give you much advantage compared to using sub-domains.

As sub-domains treated as a new domain so you have to do fresh link building for that.

[webmaster007]

Sub-domain has its own advantages and disadvantages and folder has its own. The basic thing is what you want. I am launching a new website.

The website has blog and forum too... I have created forum as sub-domain and blog as a folder. I am doing all this just to create a good link building.

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