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when to use "Sub-Domain"?

by bobalou
6 replies
Hi,

Is there any disadvantage to creating a sub-domain,
for a site that is completely different from your main domain,
just to save some money?

With a sub-domain you can create a domain name
that might be already taken but not with your main domain next to it,
is that any advantage (if one's main domain name is a gerneric sounding name)

thanks,
bob
#subdomain
  • Profile picture of the author ryanstreet
    Blogger.com and Wordpress.com use it everyday. Also, most search engines treat them as separate sites because a new DNS lookup has to be used when using a subdomain.

    I wouldn't see it as a disadvantage, except you may not be able to put custom keywords in your root domain focused on your site theme.

    I'm sure some SEO guru will disagree with me out there, but I am basing my knowledge on DNS lookups, so BACK OFF!!!

    I hope this helps.
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    Ryan Street
    PHP Developer Specializing in WordPress and Magento
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    • Profile picture of the author textbox
      Subdomains are used alot of the time as a way to organize content. If you look at the CNet website, the main areas of their site are reviews, news, and downloads. Each of these has been created as a separate subdomain.
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      • Profile picture of the author Convergence
        Just from my personal experience, and I've had thousands of websites over the years., I have never had near as good of luck getting a sub-domain ranked in the search engines as I have the root domain. That's just me, maybe others have had better luck...

        Convergence
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  • Profile picture of the author SummitBloggers
    We have used both primary and sub-domains over the years. In our experience, the primary domains tend to bring more organic traffic that sub-domains. Not sure why, but possibly because spammers made heavy use of subs several years ago and that might have put a dent in their use.
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  • Profile picture of the author HomeBizNizz
    OK, so WWW.domain.com ranks always higher than BLOG.domain.com...?
    Anyway, I'm thinking about setting up a Joomla site with all integrated
    rather than running standalone blog/forum/webshop/etc on a domain.
    It's that a good choice...?
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  • Profile picture of the author Dan Grossman
    There's nothing special about the "www" subdomain, and it won't get any special treatment in search engines.

    The fact is that you're likely to attract more links to that (www) subdomain, which is why it's likely to rank higher.

    With all the search engines doing nifty clustering things in search results where only one or two pages for a domain are shown with an "additional/more" link, you can end up with less search traffic than you'd get with separate domains.
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