Subdomains? Please Help

[Maureen C]

Hello to all,
I was wondering if using subdomains to help people find my site and help with linking was a good way to go. Is that what subdomains are for? Just relized that I had such a thing, and am not sure exactly what a subdomain is. I sell lingerie & leather for men & women. So if I used a subdomain for lets say my men's leather home page, I could use the already existing page, copy and paste to a subdomain and rename that with the orginal domain name and add to it mensleatherhome or something, and keep the orginal page in its same place also? Is that correct? or am I way off. And would this help my customers? and linking or would this be some type of back door? which I'm not sure even what that is. Someone Please let me know. Thanks in advance.

Maureen C

[minstrel]

Hello to all,
I was wondering if using subdomains to help people find my site and help with linking was a good way to go. Is that what subdomains are for?

There's a good article here at HighRankings.com about subdomains.

My general sense is that subdomains make sense where the content / theme of pages in the subdomain is significantly different from the pages in the main domain or other subdomains.

The referenced article by Catherine Parker talks about when it is better to place such pages in a subdomain or merely a subfolder of the primary domain.

I sell lingerie & leather for men & women. So if I used a subdomain for lets say my men's leather home page, I could use the already existing page, copy and paste to a subdomain and rename that with the orginal domain name and add to it mensleatherhome or something, and keep the orginal page in its same place also? Is that correct? or am I way off. And would this help my customers? and linking

Would it help your customers? Possibly, depending on how large your website is currently and other factors, including whether your customers tend to be looking only for men's products or only for leather products, or whether they are more likely to be browsing and buying men's and women's products and/or lingerie as well as leather (a subdomain is basically like creating a new separate domain, although you can of course link back and forth to the main sites and to different subdomains).

But if the intent is to leave the original pages where they are and simply duplicate them in a subdomain, no -- this probably won't help your customers and it almost certainly won't help your rankings. Search engines will recognize these as duplicate pages and ignore one of them, usually the newer one.

[Maureen C]

Thank you for your answer,and yes my site is VERY LARGE. I have over 1000 products, and people do look for just mens or just leather ect. I just want to make sure that I wont get banned or in trouble with search engines. I am finally up in the 3 page of yahoo for leather lingerie, and don't want to do something wrong. Please let me know if doing the duplicate pages because my site is so large would get my site band or would they just not index it it twice. But then how would that help my customers??? I was thinking if I had my normal site and then the subdomain they would be able to find the individual pages easier. Please let me know. Thanks again!

Maureen C
I just read that article, should I use the folders I guess?

[minstrel]

Duplicate pages won't get you "banned" but they will be ignored and you're correct in stating that if that happens it won't be helpful to your customers.

You probably can successfully subdivide your site if it is over 100 pages or products. Do it along rational grounds and be careful in creating your new navigation strategy to provide links back to the main site and to other subdomains -- for example, you don't want to have people venture into a "male leather goods" subdomain without a very clear way to get back to find information on "women's lingerie" items if they have more than one interest.

It might be worth asking for advice in the Site Design forums here on the best strategy for doing this for your specific site.

[Maureen C]

If I were to use subfolders could I then copy and paste in all ready excisting pages into subfolders and that way pages have two ways to show up for indexing for my customers. Like people put in men lingerie in a search engine it would to them to that seperate category rather than my sites home page. Or if they put in lingerie, in search it would give my whole site. or is the only way to do that by subdomains or having other sites link directly to those pages. I see that my compition is having a bunch of different pages come up under different keyword. how could I tell if they are using a subdomain or subfold. would it be let say the site is www.mysite.com if subdomain was use would it be www.mysiteleather.com and a subfolder www.mysite.com/leather If you know please let me that way maybe I can figure out what the heck my compition is doing.

THANK

Maureen C

[steven1976]

Ive noticed from a site in the UK www.silver.uk.com that this site does very well using the subdomain from uk.com on google. If you look at teh website the home page is not optimised at all (only a flash animation) but if you do a search for silver uk or silver jewellery you will see that it ranks 1st out of over 5million and 11th out of 6 million respectively.

I take it that because its a subdomain it has so many incoming links (about 3 million if Im correct) it ranks well on google. Is this then classed as a link farm??

steve

[Maureen C]

If that site were a link farm I don't think it would rank #1 in google. I think it just has a lot of relevent links.

If anyone can please let me know the looks of subdomain and subfolder as in the above post I would love it. My competions is doing one of the two and I am trying to figure out which one. I want my customers to be able to find my indiviual pages not just home page. MUCH THANKS!!

Maureen C

[minstrel]

I want my customers to be able to find my indiviual pages not just home page.

If customers can find your home page, and you have a clear navigation structure on your site, they should be able to easily and quickly find any other page on the site. That's part of good web design, and one of the reasons that listing well in search engines is not enough -- getting people to your site is one thing but if the site is confusing and disorganized in its structure and navigation, you will have difficulty trabslating that good SE ranking into actual sales.

[minstrel]

how could I tell if they are using a subdomain or subfold. would it be let say the site is www.mysite.com if subdomain was use would it be www.mysiteleather.com and a subfolder www.mysite.com/leather If you know please let me that way maybe I can figure out what the heck my compition is doing.

Not quite.

If the main site is http://www.mysite.com, then a subfolder would indeed be http://www.mysite.com/leather -- but a subdomain would look like http://leather.mysite.com (or http://mens-leather.mysite.com or http://womens-leather.mysite.com, etc.).

If you were to use www.mysiteleather.com, that would be a different domain, not a subdomain.

[Maureen C]

Thank you very much hopfully I will be able to figure things out now. Have a wonderful day!

Maureen C