Subdomains have no trust or pagerank.
As a result of setting up this blog, I’ve noticed that my trust within the engines has been affected. Although my main domain has been ok, there is without doubt an instant “starting from zero trust” happening with subdomains. Incidently this subdomain also points to an alternative IP address.
I may have to start link more vigourously between my subdomain and main domain to gain the extra trust. However at present my subdomain carries no pagerank whatsoever. For those of you thinking about the pro’s and con’s of using a subdomain, my advice would be to try to avoid them if at all possible. Having content on another (Linux) server has meant that for me this was a sensible decision.
There are a number of advantages with using a subdomain – including an alternative domain to start to gain backlinks from. For example – lets say you have started to drop links around the web. www.domain.com will be counted differently than subdomain.domain.com – giving you (sometimes) twice the scope for a link. My own use was to be able to mix Linux and Windows server technologies.
They also allow a site to start branching off with disconnected parts of the site, whilst still maintaining a relatively flat linking structure. People are also more likely to link to a subdomain home page, than to say a subdirectory. E.g. Imagine a blogger wants to link to this site. He will undoubtedly choose http://www.webdistortion.com rather than http://www.webdistortion.com – because he recognises it as a home page in its own right. However If we only had www.webdistortion.com/blog/ would he be as quick to link to it? Or would he use the original main domain? It depends on his mood, in my opinion a subdomain stands on its own two feet much more easily.
Enjoy this post? Have a look at some of my other SEO thinking.
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Paul is a regular 28 year old web bloke / programmer with a penchant for online marketing. This blog is a personal outlet, with an eclectic mix of articles.Subscribe
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Yours is the first time I’ve come across the notion of “making” your subdomain “earn” it’s page rank.
A novel idea… I’ve taken a different tack:
Since a sub domain is a totally separate url in Googlebot’s eyes I’ve been using a sub domain to mask ugly urls, like my Facebook Fan Page (I don’t rate a FB vanity url yet).
To an end user, a sub domain is clearly “part of” a domain, cause you can see the “target url”
(forgive me I think in terms of what pleases Googlebot first, and humans second, the premise being if you don’t please the former you wont get eyeballs on the latter)
How ever… seeing as social bookmarking boosts rank, web references and citations being more important to boosting rank then industrial strength link building, perhaps I should reconsider and experiment with your take.
If I want site X to rank… I make dozens of “extra sites” or “supporting blogs” that all funnel Googlejuice towards the main target.
Your idea of “going against the grain” of link scuplting so to speak *could* fall into that category.
interesting!
Will try it on one of my new local SEO clients.
Getting a sub domain to rank on it’s own merits shouldn’t be any harder than getting a blogspot or a wordpress.com supporting blog to rank, well the missing RSS feed to the sub domain notwithstanding
Hi David,
Thanks for the time taken to compose such a comprehensive comment. For what its worth, my blog pagerank actually now supersedes that of my original domain.4 for the blog – 3 for the main domain.
I’ve also experienced Google associating the subdomain and main domain now more closely. e.g. a search for “Webdistortion” now brings in one as the main domain – and two as the subdomain. Its my own thinking that a spam trust score is set for subdomains, or at least some sort of algo to associate the two safely. Bearing in mind that there are plenty of services on the web e.g. WordPress.com – that use a subdomain for other motives, and can’t guarantee the trust. Think it all depends on how you use them, and how long you are prepared to wait for that trust.
Paul.
no link love for the commenter?
Nope – took the decision to turn it off ages ago. Soo much spam + people commenting for the wrong reasons i.e. link drops all over the show. This way, folks either contribute to the conversation, or they don’t.
I’ve been hauled over the coals for my comment design (no dates either) – so plan on giving that a rethink soon. Perhaps I could hand enable links for decent comments (over a certain word count) would be the ideal scenario.
Stand by for a WordPress plugin :o)
Well my name being associated with the comment is a citation of sorts
I’ll take what I can get.
Doesn’t take away from the fact that this was a good post to comment on and participate in a discussion.
Participation is what makes a blog a blog (and is why a blog will beat the crap out of a static website, if all other considerations between the two are the same)
Just became your FB Fan btw
I’m in need of encouraging wall posts to my Facebook Fan Page.
that’s a different approach I’m delving into as well. It’s going to mean consuming my time moderating a** holes, much like if I was to run a forum
Very good point. Nothing like fresh content for the engines, and I suppose to a point encouraging users to contribute with a backlink (no-followed or not) is one way to do so.
Thanks for the fb fan connect BTW. I try to keep the content I find there a bit different from my Twitter account, but as you say – managing / moderating can be a difficult task!
Great to get some live interaction (couple of minutes apart- we are nearly in real time chat here :o) – as you say – just what blogs are all about.
The interaction would be less than minutes apart except I’m writing an apology post on my main blog:
Something to the effect of calling for an end to social media as link dumping.
To use aggregators (ping.fm, plaxo, friendfeed) to hook up all your social media properties also means posting to your facebook page in stereo
… effectively spamming the hell out of anyone who friends you there.
I just coined the phrase “Twitterceptionist” where I called for small businesses to “answer the twitter”, in other words don’t use it one way.
Now I’ve got to match my practices with my preaching and unhook stuff from my twitter so I can see the damn thing.
Link Dumping alone is not effective SEO
SEO copywriting is
Content worth reblogging is SEO
Our interaction got me thinking… I need more comments (and have the time to sort through the junk) so towards that end I added a dofollow plug in to encourage comments on my
http://www.frederickwebpromotions.com blog.
Just in case I also installed a “case by case” plug in in preparation for if this turns out to be more of a pain in the a** than I think it will be.
It looks like Google decided to roll back the September PR updates. We’re back to the July numbers.
I noticed it a couple of days ago, but I haven’t found anybody writing about it.
So what happens if your main site IS a subdomain? Is there still google hate?
Hi Jenny,
It’s not that Google *hates* subdomains per se, just that when you have a main http://www.domain.com, any subdomain you start off the back of that starts with a blank slate again.
For example,
Let’s say for sake of argument you have “www.so-very.me” and you build content on the www address for three years. After that, you decide to remarket the domain as “oh.so-very.me” – that domain in essence starts from scratch again in the eyes of Google. It is essentially day one.
This is exactly what my situation was. I had developed and owned http://www.webdistortion.com for some time. The right decision would have been to hosted the blog in a subfolder rather than a subdomain to get the benefit of that. e.g. http://www.webdistortion.com/blog/ – however I made the mistake, and the discovery, and its stuck ever since. This post was just a heads up to anyone else trying to make the decision.
hope that helps explain.
Paul.