are subdomains bad?

[slickwillyslim]

i'm looking at a new hosting plan that offers domain pointers. i was originally under the impression that you could have several index pages under one account. but the sales guy said no. you can only have one index page per account and he said that you can have redirect code on the index page that points to the sub-domains. the plan offers 2Gb of space with a dedicated SSL. i plan on having several small to medium size, content focused commercial websites, instead of a huge, unfocused website that confuses the ranking system and customers. my question is this, would subdomain redirects hurt my ranking? is it possible to have several sites under one account without being negatively affected on the search engines (esp. the big engines and directories)? or, is it absolutely essential to create a seperate account for each website? any suggestions would be most appreciated.

 

[xtendscott]

I have to say, they are good and bad(if abused).

Google has:

http://www.google.com

and subdomains(adsense.google.com, adwords.google.com, toolbar.google.com). They are used as "logical" dividers of information/purpose/functionality.

If abused such as: cars.example.com, redcars.example.com, bluecars.example.com, greencars.eample.com. And this is reported to google by a competitor or through thier algo, either automatic or manual penalties "can" happen.

In the world of Domains: cars.example.com is seen as a completely different domain from redcars.example.com. So the theory being that multiple subdomains could appear in the SE's listing multiple times on the page.

My understanding the "preferred" method is to use subfolders. Say you had a classifieds site. You could have

http://www.domain.com/house/,

http://www.domain.com/cars/,

http://www.domain.com/trucks/.

If the site was worldwide then you could have us.domain.com/cars/ and uk.domain.com, canada.domain.com breaking it into "logical" divisions.

Word of Caution: SubDomains have had recent abuse and SE's have been cleaning many of the abusive ones out of the listings.



xtendscott
Web Site Design and CF Programming

 

[ChrisHirst]

well quite honestly the "sales guy" is talking crap!

Think about it logically for a minute;

the actual hostname is the second level domain (domainname.tld) therefore "www" is actually a subdomain and that has it's own index page, so any alias and associated site you set up has it's own index page.

That said, you appear to be wanting to use subdomains for entirely the wrong reasons, to "game" the SEs and get more listings or link popularity.
There is one important concept needed to understand to see why this is a risky and pointless exercise.
SE's rank [red]pages[/red] not sites.
So domain.tld/widgets/redwidgets.ext has precisely the same chance of rankings as redwidgets.domain.tld without all the risks and drawbacks of subdomains. Also there is far less work involved in one site rather than several sub "mini-sites" while avoiding duplicate content. BTW there is no penalty for dup content. simply that the SEs choose only to show one page (usually the wrong one from your POV)

drawbacks of subs, mainly people often forget the "

http://"

is needed by most mainstream browsers otherwise the "www" is assumed and they often do confuse visitors. I use subdomains when I set up testing and demo sites and trying to explain to clients is often impossible, so now I set up

http://www.sub.domain.tld

just to make it easier for them.


Chris.

Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?

http://www.candsdesign.co.uk

A website that proves the cobblers kids adage.

http://www.cram-system.com

Nightclub counting systems

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

 

[slickwillyslim]

hey guys thanks for the tips!!!

so what you all are suggesting is that i simply have one primary domain (

http://www.example.com)

and just put different categories into different subfolders like (

http://www.example.com/garden_tools.htm)

and (

http://www.example.com/vitamins.htm),

right? let's say i setup my meta tags and page content to match well and i start getting some good ranking on an individual page basis. that's good for surfers, of course. but here's my fear, what if i'm selling sports nutrition supplements in one subfolder and seiko wrist watches in another subfolder (completely unrelated products); how do you choose a suitable domain? or do you just pick something general like (

http://www.bills-store.com)?

and how will this stand out in the customers mind to reference a particular product line that you carry? as with nutrition supplements; when i search for a particular product, most of the results i see are under a site specific domain like (

http://www.1supplements.com).

that particular product may in a subfolder, but the index page is dedicated to the category of supplements and nothing else. this seems effective from a marketing standpoint. if you have an index page that links to several unrelated categories (which would be necessary if everything is under one site), then wouldn't that be confusing to the customer? also, you wouldn't be able to design any particular aesthetic slants based on product category on the home page. in other words, the homepage design would have to be completely generalized. so how can i keep the content separated in such a way that it doesn't confuse the customer, in the case where they wind up on my home page and see categories ranging from walking sticks to coloring books? more importantly, am i making any sense at all? LOL.... seriously guys, i value your opinions, because i believe that you know more about the SE's than i do. i just want to do things right, and would like to save a little money by purchasing one account instead of 10. tnx fellas...

 

[xtendscott]

http://www.searchengineworld.com/engine/theme_pyramids.htm

Here is a good link on how to build a good structured site based on themed topics.

If you are planning on having thousands of products I would break it into multiple sites with different domain names.

Health Related, Jewlry and watches, fitness products. Picking the domain name is important but not a crucial element. It is somewhat benificial to try to get a keyword in the name though. Once you get one site made, duplicate the "structure" and create the next. Sounds like you will want a database driven dynamic site too.

If you are only having a few hundred products then one site should be fine.

xtendscott
Web Site Design and CF Programming