Using Subdomains For Better Organization Of Content And Better Rankings
Of all the effective, yet often overlooked, is the smart use of website subdomains in strategies involving search engine marketing. Google uses them, so why not you. A large collection of Fortune 500 companies uses them too. This alone should tell you that this smart strategy is here for a long time.
So the question you are probably asking yourself right now is…
Are search engine rankings really be boosted using subdomains?
Simply put, Yes. Subdomain strategy will never harm, unless you abuse it, your rankings and can actually lead to more click-through traffic by customers, plus can assist you to get your best keywords firmly anchored into links pointing at your website. They can even guard your company’s fine name, and all of these search engine marketing techniques can be used to increase your business’ bottom line.
What is a Subdomain?
Basically, subdomains are just another way to organize your website, and is no different than a sub directory when it comes right down to it. They both operate the same, but look different to the search engines, as well as site visitors.
For example:
http://yoursubdomain.yourdomain.com
http://www.yourdomain.com/subdirectory
As a rule, although it is easier to create a subdirectory for your website, you generally need to contact your web host to map a subdomain to a specific subdirectory in your website account.
By this, I mean:
If your site is about men’s suits, you might have an area used for men’s ties in the subdirectory.
http://www.domain.com/mens-ties
But, alternatively, you could place it in a subdomain and it would look like this
As far as managing your website, both methods are identical except for the web host assistance in mapping your subdirectory so it points to your sub domain.
Now as far as search engines, they often consider the sub domain to just be a section of the domain; therefore, it considers the keywords to have more relevance that are found with in the sub domain, more than ones found in a subdirectory under a url.
By putting keywords in the sub domain, it helps visitors who visit your site to spot your page listing in the search engine results and provides a significant clue as to what your site is really about. This can increase your link click-through traffic and rate.
So if the domain name you want is taken, this is a great method to use for placing your keywords into your domain, and it is a great tool for placing a broader range of keywords within your domain itself.
Although word of warning, if it is done incorrectly, it can be risky. In order for this technique to work you must not look like you are geared at improving search engine rankings, so you must gear it at your visitors and place quality content in your sub domain so it can become a free standing, independent unit of your website.
Sites find themselves in trouble when adding keyword rich subdomains that have one or two pages of content, but many links back to the main domain. Also, it is wise to remember that subdomains can be separated by periods ie: shoes.shoes.domain.ca, although it is recommended that you just use a single sub domain ie: shoes.domain.ca. Multi-level sub domains are more difficult when it comes to generic searches.
Delimiting your subdomain using the dash is another possibility ie: shoes-shoes.domain.ca, although we suggest you do not use more than one dash per sub domain, so it doesn’t look like you are stuffing keywords to increase your rankings.
It is wise to make not that search engines hold a dim view of wildcard usage, (anything.domain.ca or anythingelse.domain.ca) so we suggest avoiding this practice altogether.
Also, before moving an area of your website to a sub domain you should remember that will require changing the url’s for the pages you have moved. This means unless you provide a re-direct to the location where you placed them they will be dropped by the search engines and all links and bookmarks pointing to the page will be broken.
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