are sub domains spammy?

[virtualtraveller]

I've noticed that one of my competitors has begun raking well with subdomains for some of the important keywords in our field.

Google seems to have been foxed (for the time being), using a subdomain allows you to manipulate the keyword into the domain name and by point a few links to it from his and other sites these are ranking well with the least amount of effort. Certainly they are newer and have less links than my corresponding page, how does he do it?

My question is, if you follow the same trick, but retain the original page on your site (using new content on the subdomain) what have you got to lose. You can point links at it from your main site, register it in directories as an independent site to the parent and it if eventually gets blocked you've still got the main page to fall back on.

Any thoughts?

[greeneagle]

White hat as can be. It's a common way to segment a Site.
Ken

[brian.mark]

Originally Posted by greeneagle

White hat as can be. It's a common way to segment a Site.
Ken

Any white hat technique, when overused, becomes stained and eventually turns black. If you're making sub-domains for the user's benefit, that's good. If you're creating 1000's of subdomains just so you can rank for those keywords, that's no longer such a nice clean white - dingy gray at best.

In New York this past March, it was suggested that Google was starting to look at the reason this was being done (algorithmically) and finding a lot of spammy subdomains, so they were implying that this may not work much longer and it may be cause for the entire domain to drop, not just the subdomain. There were several warnings issued during that conference.

Brian.

[African-Safari]

It is certainly not necessary to rank well. It doesn't fool anybody. And when algorithms change, it might end up even getting demoted.

Waste of time and effort.

[sem-seo-pro]

Hi there

The legitimate use of sub-domains is very well known, and in actuality it is a recommended step to help visitors with navigation.

Of course with anything online, those who cannot build a business on the Internet, find they need to lean on Google to drive traffic, these people will abuse whatever it is that can be abused now and in the future in regards to obtaining search engine rankings.

Best thing to do is file a spam complaint with Google and watch them go bye bye.

Clint

[greeneagle]

Anything can be abused.. The nature of life on this planet is that every tool is both good and bad...

Don't drink too much water in too short a time, it can kill you with a radical change in electrolytes!

Damn that poison water!

Ken

[incrediblehelp]

The act of making a subdomain is not enabling them to rank. Other factors outside of the fact they are building sub-domains should be looked at as reasons for them increasing their positions.

If I want to get rankings, you saying I should just make 1000's of subdomains alone to higher rankings...I think not.

[wrmineo]

When I started out to build one of my very first websites April 2004, I used subdomains to help separate content. A few points on those successes and mistakes:

First - I can affirm that Google penalizes for duplicate content. I made this novice mistake and near-fatal error, with some pages and it's taken the better part of a year to get back into the graces of Google. Now that I've grown and gotten valuable knowledge from the mistake, I simply chalk it up as "lessons learned".

Second - It does help with name (keyword) recognition and being able to have completely separate content and keywords, which for many months related to many of my subdomains drawing more traffic than the main.

Finally, IMO, when the subdomains have good, solid (separate) content, the inter and intra linking becomes very symbiotic throughout the sites adding to its presence and power.

When the subdomains can "stand on their own" they become very powerful tools to add to the overall efficacy and likeability of the domain. If one of my subdomains (which happens) get a high PR, it helps obviously, the main site. Many of my subs in fact have higher PR than the main.

There comes IMO a fine line to having sub-domains and simply creating separate directories - I haven't come to a conclusion on this point yet ... but a fine line in usage, ranking, et al indeed; my jury is still out ... any thoughts for deliberation?

[solohelp]

I use descriptive folders to seperate content. Working so far... Sub domains are just one more thing to deal with. Folders all show up in the same directory structure so I can keep it organized.. Just my opinion.

[wrmineo]

Point well made and taken. That's why it's been somewhat of a struggle for me. I like the organization point that you bring up for sure, but I also like the traffic I pull in on some of the subdomains.

For example, I have a Female Celebrities Site (FreshDames) but until recently, my subdomain for Lindasy Lohan Pictures was actually drawing in more traffic that the main domain and all other subdomains combined; it is still ranks #2, drawing about 1300 visitors a day.

However, as I've begun building more pages, I've put them in separate directories under the main domain. They rank better as far as PR, but they don't have the same traffic draw.

It's still a learning process for me ... time will tell.

[jestep]

IMO sub-domains are only as spammy as you make them. I frequently use them for forums, admin and members areas and other things like that. I believe that if your sub-domain is related but not the exact topic as your main site then it is absolutely fine to use for promoting. Just use good judgment when promoting, as with any website. If you have a bicycle parts website and you have a debt consolidation sub-domain, something is definitely amiss.

[MichelH]

As long as the subdomain can be entered through the main site it will get a ranking in Google and it will not be considered as spammy. So, when using a subdomain, be sure that it is backed up by good links from the main site and that it can be crawled by the search engine spiders.

If you are just using it as a stand alone landing page full of keyword rich content, this will be considered spammy. (i.e. using it as a landing page for links on other sites.)
This is only allowed if you are using it as a landing page for Adsense and those pages will normally not be shown in normal SERP.

In short, subdomains are not considered to be black hat if they can be spidered from the main site by the SE spider as it will be regarded as regular site content.

[brian.mark]

Originally Posted by MichelH

This is only allowed if you are using it as a landing page for Adsense and those pages will normally not be shown in normal SERP.

I think you meant AdWords there instead of AdSense.

Originally Posted by MechelH

In short, subdomains are not considered to be black hat if they can be spidered from the main site by the SE spider as it will be regarded as regular site content.

That means they don't have much value, as they are regular site content. It's just like making directories in my opinion, but with a slightly elevated risk of looking spammy.

Brian.

[MichelH]

I think you meant AdWords there instead of AdSense.

Correct.

That means they don't have much value, as they are regular site content. It's just like making directories in my opinion, but with a slightly elevated risk of looking spammy.

Brian.[/quote]

Well, sometimes, because these pages have the keyword in their subdomain, they tend to rank higher, therefore even attracting more visitors than the main page does. If you analyze the results in Google, you will see that there is a certain relevance if you mention your keyword in the website URL. Especially if the page itself is also optimized.

[toyourhealth]

I agree with Clint that there are legitimate uses of sub-domains. For instance, I use them for navigation and/or to focus on the merits of individual products.

And like others who have responded to this thread, some of my sub-domains rank higher than my main domain -- a fact which I find particularly interesting.

[toyourhealth]

I agree with Clint that there are legitimate uses of sub-domains. For instance, I use them for navigation and/or to focus on the merits of individual products.

And like others who have responded to this thread, some of my sub-domains rank higher than my main domain -- a fact which I find particularly interesting.

[brian.mark]

I can see that they have some merit. We have a site with many sub-domains as well (which shall remain nameless at this time.) It has one sub-domain that is popular, but that's because the terms that sub-domain is optimized for is much more popular than the terms on the other sub-domains.

I took 4 of the sub-domains a while back and moved them to directories under the main domain. Guess what - they rank almost exactly where the sub-domain did, one of them much higher. 301's made the transition pretty smooth.

I was going to test it out with about 6 others here shortly since it's just a "for fun" site right now and doesn't really need any traffic. There is no reason why I can't experiment with it.

I'll let you know the results.

Brian.