3 replies to this topic

[Johncpu]

Does anyone have any thoughts on the pros and cons, from and SE point of view, in using subdomains or addon domains ?

If I have domains rocks.com and boulders.com, I could have the subdomain boulders.rocks.com. Or as an addon, point boulders.com to a subdirectory within rocks.com.

Do either of these approaches have any advantages or risks ?

For example, I've seen subdomains used to avoid the age delay in Google, and it also appears to have helped ranking those new pages by piggybacking on the established domain. This appears to work even if the sub is not totally relevant to the main domain.

Thanks for your comments !


j

[Shane]

We had an interesting discussion about that last week. I think the general consensus was that SEO was a very secondary factor when determining how to set up sites like these.

[Johncpu]

Thanks for that link, Shane. I missed it.

Although it may be secondary to SEO, using either approach would appear to avoid the the age delay/sandbox problem- a good thing as long as branding is not an an issue.

[Shane]

Exactly. Since it does appear that both are unaffected by the aging delay, either are preferable to starting a brand new domain if all other factors are equal.