Hi!
Here I'm to know the SEO hack regarding sub domains.
Lets say there is a site
www.website.com,
a folder at the root named www.website.com/sub-folder,
a subdomain sub.website.com which points to the same folder /sub-folder.
Will the search engine do index the files inside the /sub-folder?
Will there be separate index for the files of the sub.website.com files?
What happens when we optimize the files inside the sub-folder? I mean, what will be the PR effect for the website.com?

Hope, you guys could help me out??

Search engine robots crwal the website pages inside only through a depth of maximum three levels from homepage thereforewhen a subfolder is created it shoulnt become very far from homepage other it will never be found by search engines

As for PR it differs from one web page to another it all depends on the number of links linking to such page taking inot consideration the average PR of all linking pages

Monia Hassan
SEO Consultant


[ Message was edited by: yellowwing 11/19/2005 01:41 pm ... Reason: URL Removed from Signature ]

a folder at the root named www.website.com/sub-folder,
a subdomain sub.website.com which points to the same folder /sub-folder.

The Search Bots will quickly figure out that there is duplication of content. Only one or the other will be listed in the search results.

Generally subdomains should be used with the End User in mind.

Sciences.Brittanica.org/Physics/Scientests/Biography/Albert-Einstein/index.html

>> robots crwal the website pages inside only through a depth of maximum three levels from homepage <<

I can find many examples where Google has crawled much more deeply than that.

Where did you hear that three is the magic number? Less is nearly always best, but there is no maximum.

Let's say the main site is:

www.widgets.com

And you build other related sites (but different content hence the need to build the other sites)

would you recommend:

www.live.widgets.com/segmenta

or

www.widgets.com/live/segmenta

The content relates globally together but the sites themselves can exist alone and have their own content - all sites combines have a bigger offering.

Does this make sense?

Folders, I think.

A new sub-domain might be treated as a whole new site.


Related topics: "sandbox" and "sub-domain spam".

So you want to fool around with the Cannonical Records on your virtual server so that you have:

domain.com
www.mydomain.com
tom.mydomain.com
d**k.mydomain.com
harry.mydomain.com

....pointing to the same IP address and identical pages?

I think not. Tom, d**k and Harry have to point somewhere else for you to avoid severe penalties in the SEs - and they'd all better have something different to say even if you did.

It has nothing to do with the depth that crawlers drill down and there isn't any "hack" to get around it. Who cares about PR anymore (or ever did).

If you are going to "optimize" anything, why not just use different domains on the same server and publish different content on them?

Believe me - I am asking because I want to make the recommendations to do this the correct way. I am not trying to fool engines or get around anything I am simply looking for the best way (both user friendly and SEO friendly) to connect 3 sites that feed off of each other.

Let's say you had a site (a) that had pictures of dogs that we created - perhaps we all brought in our dogs and put them in different scenarios (all laying together, all chasing the same ball, all posing with scarfs on...etc), and everyday we posted something new.

Then we had a site (b) that basically archived all of the previous pictures from site (a). (And actually this site is less important and can be a folder off of site (a)

But then you have site (c) that allows individual pet owners the ability to make their own dog sites where they can pull from our created images and also upload their own.

Site (a) and site (c) should technically have their own identity since they serve 2 different purposes, however, they also need to be linked so you can pull from each other.

Does this make sense? I did however take the advice from g1smd in that perhaps we just create folders from a main site. Perhaps this is a way to also brand to the users the main site so they understand that all 3 are connected and part of the same company. If anyone has any other opinions let me know - Thanks

One big website has the ability to become an "authority site".

Lots of small interlinked sites is nearly always going to look like spamming for pagerank.