Subdomains vs Folders - Which is Best for SEO?
Well our San Diego Chargers found a way to win in Tennessee this Sunday coming back in classic style that featured a 2:00 minute drill for the tie and an LT run in OT for the win. It doesn't get any better than that, but it sure does frazzle your nerves...lol. I hope we get another shot at the Patriots in the playoffs :)
Speaking of frazzled nerves, I was a little nervous Saturday night before singing for the first time ever at a bar with my band. Playing guitar and singing at the same time is hard enough by yourself, much less at a bar in front of people. But it went pretty well and no one ran out of the room, so from that standpoint, it was a success. For those that don't know, I play in a band called Dive Bomber ( http://www.heavymusic.com/ ).
I am in the process of writing a three part article series for http://www.searchenginewatch.com/ about how PPC and SEO can work together to produce greater results. I am almost done with the article and I have to say it has really been fun. I am getting an opportunity to share some of the SEO observations that we have had at BusinessOnLine that can really make a difference for some Web sites and I think that's exciting.
In SEO news, Matt Cutts today tried to add some logic behind the old subdomains versus subfolders debate. Google treats subdomains like separate sites in many ways. The bottom line with this debate is that you should do what's best for users. Any kind of SEO advantage that could or might be gained by manipulating sub domains is likely to be short lived and is obviously against the spirit of Google's best practices. If you're trying to build a solid search engine traffic foundation that is, or could become, a primary source of income for your Web site, it's best to build that foundation on solid ground. There are many legitimate reasons to use sub domains including technical considerations like load balancing and hosting issues. There are organization structures where sub domains make sense ( maps.google.com ). But I believe that a travel site that has a sub domain for each city where each city has one page of content is an unnecessary use of sub domains. The bottom line is, when making the decision to use sub domains versus sub folders, forget SEO and pick the one that works best for user experience. Then you know that you have also made the best decision for SEO best practices.
Speaking of frazzled nerves, I was a little nervous Saturday night before singing for the first time ever at a bar with my band. Playing guitar and singing at the same time is hard enough by yourself, much less at a bar in front of people. But it went pretty well and no one ran out of the room, so from that standpoint, it was a success. For those that don't know, I play in a band called Dive Bomber ( http://www.heavymusic.com/ ).
I am in the process of writing a three part article series for http://www.searchenginewatch.com/ about how PPC and SEO can work together to produce greater results. I am almost done with the article and I have to say it has really been fun. I am getting an opportunity to share some of the SEO observations that we have had at BusinessOnLine that can really make a difference for some Web sites and I think that's exciting.
In SEO news, Matt Cutts today tried to add some logic behind the old subdomains versus subfolders debate. Google treats subdomains like separate sites in many ways. The bottom line with this debate is that you should do what's best for users. Any kind of SEO advantage that could or might be gained by manipulating sub domains is likely to be short lived and is obviously against the spirit of Google's best practices. If you're trying to build a solid search engine traffic foundation that is, or could become, a primary source of income for your Web site, it's best to build that foundation on solid ground. There are many legitimate reasons to use sub domains including technical considerations like load balancing and hosting issues. There are organization structures where sub domains make sense ( maps.google.com ). But I believe that a travel site that has a sub domain for each city where each city has one page of content is an unnecessary use of sub domains. The bottom line is, when making the decision to use sub domains versus sub folders, forget SEO and pick the one that works best for user experience. Then you know that you have also made the best decision for SEO best practices.
posted by Catfish at
8:24 AM
1 Comments:
I love this. This debate is often asked, and the idea of "what makes sense to our visitor" is often left out of the equation while techies talk about page depth, DNS and other factors that should be far less important. I have seen many instances of subdomain abuse. In some cases the content on each subdomain is so thin it never even gives a chance to develop into something, they are just riding on the fact that the original domain is powerful enough to pass on some authority. In other cases, I have seen functions that are really stand-alone (or even stand-apart) functions that are nested in such a deep complicated URL with subfolders that a user would have remembered the sub-domain so much more easily. Being able to remember & share a URL easily is going to give you an edge in traffic.
Post a Comment
<< Blog Home Page