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sparkyboy45
Joined: Dec 30, 2003
# Posts: 23
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Posted: 09/23/2005 05:36 am
I am administering a website for a 1000+ page, PR6 sleep disorder website.
We currently have separate sections of the website for each respective disorder in subdirectories (domain.com/disorder) All disorder sections are accessible from *all* sections of the website.
We rank high for the term “sleep disorder”, but low for individual, competitive sleep disorder keywords. We have made it a top priority to rank high for the individual disorders, while retaining our high “sleep disorder” ranking if at all possible.
We are currently considering moving the sections to subdomains, with our domain.com website providing general information and links to each respective disorder subdomain. The majority of sections can hold their own as stand-alone websites.
Here are my questions:
• Will Google treat each subdomain as a fully separate domain?
• I have read that Google may penalize the use of subdomains due to spammers using these techniques, but it does not penalize if the site is “legitimate”. This information could be dated. Is it currently the case? If so, would Google determine not penalize via an algo, or by a human?
• As stated above, all 10 sections of the website are linked to each other for the sake of usability. If I use subdomains, this type of navigation would be counter-productive to good placement due all the (now) outbound links to subdomains (if what I understand is correct). In my mind, the only navigation option would be to have a single outbound link in each subdomain that takes users to the main domain, with the main domain linking out to all subdomains. I know this is subjective, but would this trade-off between usability vs. “Googleability” be an acceptable sacrifice in your opinion?
• If subdomains are used, can we expect the well-placed main domain to drop like a brick in the SERPS?
Thanks in advance for your response...
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bhartzer
Administrator
Joined: Jun 08, 2000
# Posts: 7035
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Posted: 09/23/2005 07:49 am
Will Google treat each subdomain as a fully separate domain?
Yes. That's probably one of the worst things you could do. I wouldn't move that content to subdomains if the content is already on the site.
If subdomains are used, can we expect the well-placed main domain to drop like a brick in the SERPS?
Most likely.
What I suggest is that you not use subdomains and use folders instead (e.g., domain.com/category-or-topic/
To get the other sections of your site to rank well you need links from other on-topic sites to those sections.
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excell
Moderator
Joined: Mar 19, 2001
# Posts: 14502
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Posted: 09/23/2005 10:10 am
I agree... you need to build on your existing strength and not scatter it. Both on site and off site optimisation should be looked well into.
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g1smd
Moderator
Joined: Jul 28, 2002
# Posts: 10183
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Posted: 09/23/2005 12:31 pm
Multiple sub-domains is a bad idea all round.
Spammers often do that sort of thing. Don't make your site have the same sort fo footprint... it will come back to kick, you hard.
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webg
Joined: Oct 24, 2005
# Posts: 6
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Posted: 10/24/2005 10:43 am
I've been fighting this with others myself. The argument has been going along the lines of "we want to make as many avenues of navigation open to users as possible".
Using destination webpage www.domainname.com/levelone/leveltwo/ as an example:
I've been told to do both leveltwo.domainname.com as well as www.domainname.com/leveltwo and have both these redirect to the actual destination. We're already using keywords for advertising/publicity purposes - "visit us on the web at domainname.com keyword blahblah" - so now I have to come up with pros and cons of ...
a) subdirectory redirects
b) subdomain redirects
I'm not in favor of doing either (although the subdir redirs I could deal with more than the subdomain ones). What battle do I fight, and is it worth fighting in the first place? For what the site's about, the PR is decent, but could be better.
[to clarify -- the subdomains/subdirs would not be used internally for site navigation, but would be for advertising purposes]
Your thoughts?
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excell
Moderator
Joined: Mar 19, 2001
# Posts: 14502
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Posted: 10/24/2005 05:48 pm
Sure - you could do that and create whatever avenues you like. But as they are purely backdoors designed for advertising then I would exclude the search engines from them with robots.txt
(To me it sounds crazy what your company is doing, far better to create solid branding with just the domain, or to build real pages if they have something special they need to say).
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webg
Joined: Oct 24, 2005
# Posts: 6
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Posted: 10/26/2005 10:15 am
I'm not so sure about having to restrict them from robots.txt. If www.domain.com/dir1 redirects to the appropriate webpage and doesn't have any content on it itself, that shouldn't lead to a PR drop for the site/destination page, should it? We wouldn't be submitting these redir pages to the search engines.
As to your "crazy" comment, you're just preaching to the choir. They feel that people don't go to "www." anymore, but go to "subdir." instinctively (at least, they think this is true with other sites in the industry).
But if anyone has suggestions/comments on why subdir redirs or subdomains are bad, that would be much appreciated. Thx
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excell
Moderator
Joined: Mar 19, 2001
# Posts: 14502
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Posted: 10/26/2005 10:41 am
Bigger companies may wing it with promotion/domain.com or domain.com/promotion but if there is no substance to what you offer there, then why do it.? I am not actually up to speed with intuitive typing on sub.domain.com as yet or even domain.com/subcat, does anyone have more relevant data on that for me?
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g1smd
Moderator
Joined: Jul 28, 2002
# Posts: 10183
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Posted: 10/26/2005 12:08 pm
>> I'm not so sure about having to restrict them from robots.txt. If www.domain.com/dir1 redirects to the appropriate webpage and doesn't have any content on it itself, that shouldn't lead to a PR drop for the site/destination page, should it? We wouldn't be submitting these redir pages to the search engines. <<
You wouldn't need to submit them. Google would find them. They would only need to appear in an online log or have someone mention them in a blog or news item and they would be indexed. This isn't about a PR drop, but about (possibly) serving duplicate content, or having pages that might be mistaken for "doorways".
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excell
Moderator
Joined: Mar 19, 2001
# Posts: 14502
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Posted: 10/26/2005 12:14 pm
good point g1 I wasn't thinking about the dilution factor so much as the apparent misbehaving factore
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webg
Joined: Oct 24, 2005
# Posts: 6
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Posted: 10/26/2005 12:29 pm
> but about (possibly) serving duplicate content,
> or having pages that might be mistaken for "doorways".
It wouldn't be duplicate content (as I once found out when I was told to have both www.domain1.com and www.domain2.com point to the same site elsewhere), but it certainly could be considered doorways as all they're doing is redirecting. What's the actual harm in this that I could use to dissuade The Powers That Be?
The whole philosophy is to eliminate advertising "deep links" and replace them with something more URL-friendly. Like I've said, we're already using keywords to easily drive people deep in the site from the home page. What I've been told to do is that we'll advertise/promote short URLs that would redirect to the actual deep page destination without the need to have people stop by the home page at all. I'm fighting the subdomain/subdir question, but if there's more to it than that (such as significanyly harming PR) then I can run with that argument as well.
I guess one solution would be to modify the 404-error routine to parse out the "missing" subdir and redirect to the actual page (if it exists), all based on the existing keyword table. My brain hurts thinking about whether that's a good idea or not.
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g1smd
Moderator
Joined: Jul 28, 2002
# Posts: 10183
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Posted: 10/26/2005 12:35 pm
There are two parts to this:
- the various URLs that you can access the content by, and
- what URLs you actually allow the search engines to include in their index.
Hope that clears your thinking.
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webg
Joined: Oct 24, 2005
# Posts: 6
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Posted: 10/27/2005 06:46 am
Well, going by your "two parts" suggestion:
a) the various URLs to access content.
content page www.domain.com/subdir1/subdir2/content.htm would be accessible via www.domain.com/suburl/ and by suburl.domain.com.
b) the URLs I block from the search engine would be... what?
suburl.domain.com would just be a redirect and not an actual website. Would I have to set up a full site (with robots.txt exclusion file) just to have the redirect work?
And I guess I'd have to add all the /suburl to the www's robots.txt file, which can be a huge pain to maintain based on the number of these that I'm being told to make. Urg.
----
So going back to the original question, should I assume that general consensus is that:
- there's no real info on /subdir vs subdomain as navigation tools, and no actual perceived benefits of doing such?
- you guys wouldn't do either if given a choice, or would do them with trepidation.
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excell
Moderator
Joined: Mar 19, 2001
# Posts: 14502
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Posted: 10/27/2005 07:10 am
I would most likely put the data in an easy url...
intead of having it buried folders deep. I am unsure why this is not possible for you?
I mean you intend to set up a folder to advertise so why not put the data you want found in it?
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webg
Joined: Oct 24, 2005
# Posts: 6
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Posted: 10/27/2005 07:22 am
why not put the expected info at the listed subdir? it's an organizational thing.
A made-up example:
www.everythingsupermarket.com/health/toothpaste/crest.htm is the content page destination.
www.everythingsupermarket.com/crest would be the desired url used for marketing purposes (or crest.everythingsupermarket.com) , but because the URL is used to build helpful things for internal search engine, page names, and other things, it's better for us to keep all the "toothpastes" in the same directory instead of spreading them all across the top level.
Make sense?
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excell
Moderator
Joined: Mar 19, 2001
# Posts: 14502
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Posted: 10/27/2005 08:29 am
ok so market the short urls and set up 301 redirects or disallow search engines from indexing them...
That shouldn't be a problem, it's when you mess with javascript redirects etc that could cause a problem with search engines thinking you are tricking them etc.
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jimdomains
Joined: Mar 16, 2002
# Posts: 211
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Posted: 10/27/2005 09:53 am
Why not just create one sub directory for each product? Then 301 redirect the deep links to the new sub directory.
www.domain.com/crest
www.domain.com/colgate
www.domain.com/razors
etc.
etc.
Make these new subdirectories the home for the content.
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webg
Joined: Oct 24, 2005
# Posts: 6
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Posted: 10/27/2005 01:42 pm
Can't use the subdirs primarily because we actually use the deeplink URL to automatically generate the breadcrumb trail and handle other triggers (headers, colors, etc)
If it matters, it's running under IIS.
And in response to the earlier comment, it wouldn't be Javascript redirects, but 301 or 302 redirects on the subdirs (and something entirely less useful for the subdomains), so at least that's a good thing.
Regardless, other than rolling eyes about this, what can I say to the Powers That Be that might make them change their mind about doing this?
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lizardz
Joined: Nov 12, 2004
# Posts: 1394
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Posted: 10/27/2005 02:03 pm
You know, it totally depends on the website, if you are hp, you can add all the subdomain's you want, you'll still be hp. If you are ibm, same story. However, if you aren't that big, you have to give it some thought. This question really is about how big you are.
However, if this is a sleep disorder site, you aren't that big I'd guess. No advantage comes from subdomains, I used to use them, then finally realized what I actually wanted was either unique websites, or very large websites with sub directories.
1000 pages is nothing, that's tiny in the world of large websites, I have a hobby site that big. Making simple things complicated is very rarely a good idea.
The reason, mainly,that big companies use subdomains is that it's more practical to send the server load to various subdomain servers than it is to run the whole site off one portal. A one thousand page website will not have this problem except in the most extreme circumstances.
I just dumped a client who simply could not give up this type of idea by the way, I tried to get them to stop for years, but they just insist on believing that having 20 subsites is better than having one main authority site that gets all the development work, all the page rank, all the trust rank, all the click throughs, and all the traffic.
it's a similar but different industry by the way, but the same mistaken thinking, which if you look at it long term means that your site is split, you are running 20 sites or whatever instead of 1 site, you have to always watch everything carefully, and when you make a mistake, down goes the network of sites. You split your development resources between 20 unique sites, which is how google sees them, rather than focusing your energies on a single site.
This is just a programming question it sounds to me, the bread crumb thing just needs to be rethought, if it's you who wrote it or maintain it, just try stepping outside the box for a day or two, the solution might come to you. If it's someone else, have them do the same thing.
If your group can't solve a problem like that internally, then find a guy who can and pay him to do it, it's better than destroying yourselves long term.
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