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Use new or subdomain?

by DavidO
13 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I have a 4 year old domain I use to sell my blood pressure reducing program. It has good search positions and solid traffic. The domain name is keyword-based:

control-your-blood-pressure .com

Now I want to target the same product at the stress and anxiety market. The crucial question is whether to start a new domain or to use my existing domain with a sort of subdomain:

control-your-blood-pressure .com/stress-relief/

All the pages of the new site would come off of ../stress-relief/

The two topics are closely enough related to do this. But are the urls going to get too long and too awkward? Are there any other disadvantages to doing it all under one main domain?

A new domain for the stress relief site would be more specific and keyword-rich but it's starting from scratch.

Thanks for any suggestions!
#subdomain
  • Profile picture of the author Kay King
    In this particular case, if the domain is ranking well I'd go wtih stress relief as a FOLDER (not a subdomain). You can create subpages in the folder and will be able to link to that folder from your home page which will pass "juice" from your domain to the new pages.

    I wouldn't do that if it weren't so closely related but there are several topic you could move into that would provide additional folders within that domain and be building the good site bigger and better at the same time.

    But that's just my approach.

    kay
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    • Profile picture of the author DavidO
      Thanks, Kay. Are you callling my example a folder?

      control-your-blood-pressure .com/stress-relief/...

      As opposed to a subdomain:

      stress-relief.control-your-blood-pressure .com?
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  • Profile picture of the author stfu
    I would personally prefer having a new domain for this. The second URL or the sub-domain would be way longer and hard to remember. If your website is wordpress based, it shouldn't take much time to have all the styles and pages imported to your new domain and just take it forward from there with little edits.
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    • Profile picture of the author Kay King
      Yes. A subdomain is listed either way

      subdomain.www.domain.com

      www.domain.com/subdomain


      The subdomain is like creating a new site - as far we we can tell google treats it like a new, standalone site. If you create the pages and subpages and upload them to your site without creating a subdomain in your cpanel, you'll have a folder that is part of the main site.

      With a folder you have only the one address

      www.domain.com/stress-relief

      You max those pages for the stress keywords and long tails so that the folder begins showing up when those keywords are searched.

      It adds more pages to the main domain and the main domain also helps the folder get attention.

      It's a personal choice and I've done it both ways. Some of the largest sites online use folders. You could also do both - create a totally new domain and add a folder to the current site - and see which does better for you.

      I would think with that domain you are going for SE traffic from searches rather than having people "remember" the url.

      kay

      Edit: Try a google search for your keywords - and look at the url's. You'll see what I mean.
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      • Profile picture of the author DavidO
        Kay, you're absolutely right about my traffic originating from searches, not the url name itself.

        It seems to me that my existing domain and a new "site" in the subdirectory would cross-feed, new pages and content beefing up the main domain and the main domain giving juice to the new pages.

        One more concern/difficulty:

        I was planning on a new look for the new site section (or subdirectory). This wouldn't be difficult except that I was going to use Wordpress. I don't think they're compatible in this way. I was going to migrate my existing site to Wordpress too, so maybe this is the time to do the whole thing at once?
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        • Profile picture of the author Kay King
          If I had a site that was well positioned and getting traffic - I would NOT move it to another platform. If you want a blog you can add one to the existing site. I may be wrong here - perhaps it wouldn't matter but personally I wouldn't take the chance of potentially damaging the rank of the original site.

          My philosophy is "if it's working, just keep it going".

          It's fine, too, to add a new url for the stress subject and make that a blog - and link from the current site to that new blog. They could "feed" each other.

          It's always just a choice of the direction you want to take. There is no "wrong".
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          So sit down, be quiet, and don't touch anything.
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      • Profile picture of the author Bob Montgomery
        Good explanation - I think that answers my questions.

        Thanks - Much!
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  • Profile picture of the author echealth
    I would say that if you are buying a new domain and url then I would definitely say subdomain. On my health insurance site I have wordpress installed 20 times and plan on having about 40 installs. My site is self hosted and I can tell you that there is no way I will ever deal with the sandbox again if I can help it. I say self hosted because the more wordpress installs you have the slower the site which is why I recommend self hosting for this site if it gets to be too large.
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  • Profile picture of the author IntegratedS
    Don't try to change a new one, as most search engines look for the age of the website as a ranking factor....
    IntegratedS
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  • Profile picture of the author duncanb
    New project - new domain, thats what i always say in these instances, less baggage this way
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