Seo Advice: When To Use Subdomains By Mike Bradbury As a professional Search Engine Optimizer, I am frequently fielding questions asked by those lucky few who are new to the SEO field, and among these so-called "newbies" a recurring question often pops up - "Which of the following ways is best to structure site URLs?"
www.site.com/subfolder OR
subdomain.site.com
And so, it is with this recurring quandary in mind that I will attempt to answer the question, "which URL structure is best in terms of SEO, subfolders or subdomains?" Short Answer: If the breadth of an issue or keyphrase will be covered in such detail that a new website should be constructed to best accommodate the content, or more simply, if the site’s graphical navigation will need to be altered, use subdomains. In all other cases, use subfolders. Long Answer: To answer this question in detail, we’ll need to go over a few key facts regarding subdomains, subfolders and site themes. Subdomains:
Represented in the URL by the characters after "http://" and the ones before ".site.com"
Are viewed by Search Engines as totally unique sites independent of the parent domain.
Site Authority (in other words, the ability for the site and its subsequent pages to rank in the search engines) is not passed down from the parent domain.
Can be listed on the first page of the SERPs along with main domain pages. Feasibly, all 10 of the results on the first page of a search engine could be subdomains of a single parent domain.
Subfolders:
Represented in the URL by the characters after ".site.com/" and before "filename.html".
Are viewed by Search Engines as a subdirectory within a site.
Google Ads Do Not 'Pop Up' Those who know me all to well are aware of my irritating resistance to the word "pop up" in connection with Google AdWords ads.That was one of my many suggested corrections to a recent story on Google ads over at The Register, for example.My take is that slipping the term "pop up" in journalistic pieces about Google (as in, "and for only a dollar or so, Mr. Neufeldt's ad would pop up on Google when searchers typed the words 'truck tires'...") is part of an ongoing, insidious campaign by sellers
<div class='nifad'><a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?x=f12728ffbc9f44cc94f52c398cf8cd7a&u=300956033"><img src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?x=f12728ffbc9f44cc94f52c398cf8cd7a&u=300956033" border="0"/></a></div> YouTube Copyright "Fair Deal" Methodology Stale news, but interesting:Jeremy Toeman received a notice from UMG regarding his posting of a video on YouTube that included copyrighted content (U2's Beautiful Day) in the background. The offer from the copyright owner, facilitated through YouTube, basically said, go ahead and leave the video up if you wish, but we'll be showing advertising on it.To some this might sound heavy-handed; to others, a nice compromise. I tend to think the latter. As Toeman writes, "I'm basically being encouraged b
<div class='nifad'><a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?x=f12728ffbc9f44cc94f52c398cf8cd7a&u=300956032"><img src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?x=f12728ffbc9f44cc94f52c398cf8cd7a&u=300956032" border="0"/></a></div> "Drat!" Say Big Online Media Players as Popular Opinion Mandates Run-of-Network Sameness... Yahoo, under pressure from Congress, Google, consumers, and their own shadow, decides to allow consumers to opt out of targeted advertising across the portal.Meanwhile the session titles for the next ad:tech conference are already being rewritten:"Opt-Out Means Yes: Depending on What They Meant By 'Opt,' 'Out,' and 'Hyphen'"Spyware Isn't So Bad... Depending on What You Mean by 'Spy,' 'Ware,' and 'Bad'364 Ways to Stick Ads in ContentEtc.
<div class='nifad'><a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?x=f12728ffbc9f44cc94f52c398cf8cd7a&u=300836332"><img src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?x=f12728ffbc9f44cc94f52c398cf8cd7a&u=300836332" border="0"/></a></div> Revenge of the Straw Man Argument: Jarvis Unhinged Jeff Jarvis, apparently writing a book called What Would Google Do?, must have Michel Foucault spinning delightedly in his grave, as he has just discovered post-modernity! Jarvis asserts that "the Internet" is what "... opens up creativity past one-size-fits-all mass measurements and priestly definitions."I understand that as a journalism professor whose job apparently hinges on the lucrative current trade in old-media-bashing, Jarvis sort of has to say this stuff. "Curmudgeons" don't get invite
<div class='nifad'><a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?x=f12728ffbc9f44cc94f52c398cf8cd7a&u=300836331"><img src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?x=f12728ffbc9f44cc94f52c398cf8cd7a&u=300836331" border="0"/></a></div> Google Street View: showing us what we may or may not want to see I?m typing this post from my basement. Yep, I?m holed up here with bottles of water, canned tuna and powdered milk ? everything I?ll need to survive the Apocalypse. I can only assume Judgment Day is upon us, given the new low human contact recently hit when Google employee Michael Weiss-Malik proposed to his girlfriend using Google Street View. We?re all probably familiar with Google?s kitschy new gadget now ? you know, the one that essentially combines Google Maps wit
<div class='nifad'><a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?x=f12728ffbc9f44cc94f52c398cf8cd7a&u=300307737"><img src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?x=f12728ffbc9f44cc94f52c398cf8cd7a&u=300307737" border="0"/></a></div> Example SearchMonkey Deployment So basically, what SearchMonkey does is allow publishers to push their customized content look and feel right into the Yahoo Search results. Well, not push, actually, but make available, based on open formats. So for users who opt into the widget for any given company's rich content, if the listing for that content comes up in search results, custom look-and-feel info included. So if it's a Yelp review, you get a bit of the Yelp "richness, look, and feel" right on Yahoo.When I search for "g h jo
<div class='nifad'><a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?x=f12728ffbc9f44cc94f52c398cf8cd7a&u=299322737"><img src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?x=f12728ffbc9f44cc94f52c398cf8cd7a&u=299322737" border="0"/></a></div> Linkworthy: Yahoo and Searchmonkey Progress Linkworthy for a Friday:Yahoo is now automatically enabling formatted Yelp, LinkedIn, and Yahoo Local results via its SearchMonkey rich data / open formats platform. I'm a big fan of SearchMonkey and happy to see Yahoo forging ahead with it. P.S. Yahoo should acquire Yelp and LinkedIn.This dude is dumping Outlook for web-based email. Welcome to the club, finally! It's interesting to note from his article that major web host Dreamhost encourages all of its customers to stop using their email serv
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from the main domain.
At most, one subfolder can appear on the first SERP from the same domain or subdomain.
Site Theme:
As a general rule, the more focused the theme of a site the easier it is for that site to rank for keywords directly related to its theme.
Is defined using all of the site’s pages, not just the homepage or top subpages.
So here’s the long answer: Search engine optimization is all about driving the most traffic. Where the goal is to build an authority site with lots of great content that will be found by search engine driven visitors using laser-target search terms, as well as unique, "long-tail" search terms that most would never think to optimize for, but appear on pages in the subfolders of your site and drive traffic just the same. Using subdomains may appear sexy because they can lead to a potentially larger number of back-links (though not if each subdomain is hosted on the same IP), or they can sway the SERPs in your favor by crowding out the top positions with your pages. But without proper promotion, a subdomain only stops potential laser-targeted as well as "long-tail" search visitors from finding your site. My advice is only to use subdomains when the amount of content on a given topic is so burgeoning that it requires a separate navigation and design (i.e. its own website), or is of great enough quality that it will acquire links and stand on its own. For example:
If you have a 15 page site about your lawn-care service, and 10 of those pages revolve around a special fertilizer you’ve developed, you may consider creating "specialfertilizer.site.com" so that you can market your fertilizer separately.
Take my company’s domain "objectwareinc.com". Recently, we built a subdomain "palm.objectwareinc.com", because we had so much information regarding our wireless application development solutions that it only made sense to create a separate site for it.
In this example, the focus is narrow but there is still an extensive amount of content. So we’re sending visitors to the subdomain using targeted keywords while visitors are also finding us using "long-tail" searches and landing on the pages of palm.objectwareinc.com subfolders. The overall lesson here is to create subdomains ONLY when you have the quality and/or quantity of content to support them. Remember that subdomains are independent sites in the eyes of the search engines, meaning that in order for them to rank, they will require promotion and link building efforts.
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JavaScript Tip: Keep Your Windows Focused
One common complaint among users is that many sites contain broken links, so of course you test yours regularly (don't you?).
But you probably never considered that some visitors might think your links are broken when they aren't!
That can happen when you use JavaScript to open new windows and control their placement. Fortunately, one single line of JavaScript code solves that problem!
HTML Tip: 5 Rules for Debugging Your Web Page
We get lots of letters from readers who need help debugging their Web pages. When you've helped enough people, you start to
see the same problems over and over again. We've documented five rules to help you learn web page debugging tips.
Beginner Tip : Publishing Your Web Page, Part 1
One of the most common questions we receive from beginning webmasters is "How do I get my Web site on the Internet?" It's one of those short questions that has such a long and involved answer that we're going to devote two newsletter stories to it. In this article, we'll discuss the basics of finding a Web host and deciding what method to use to post your page to the server.
