5 replies to this topic

[Melody]

Please help me with URL naming structure in regards to links to our site and keywords in URLs. Please read the following explanation, my questions are at the bottom. Sorry for the length.

We are creating website templates for our dealers which will link to our various brand sites. Our templates will be hosted by an outside source and they have chosen domain names per the following examples:
dealer.acmebrand/bubasbusiness-tx.com
dealer.acmebrand/abcsales-mo.com

All the urls start with the same “dealer.acmebrand” domain. I guess this is to purchase an unlimited amount of names (subdirectories??) under one domain name. Sorry, not quite sure how this works. Anyhow, I suggested that we name our dealers’ sites this way:
bubasbusiness-tx.dealer.acmebrand.com
abcsales-mo.dealer.acmebrand.com

My thinking is that we can still buy the domain name “dealer.acmebrand.com” with many subdomains under it and all will start out with the different names of our dealers which should help us with 1. creating links to our brand sites, 2. Google should be able to read the “acmebrand” as a keyword because it is separated by a period and 3. Our dealers actually have a url that starts with their company name.

I know, finally -- my questions are:

1. Will 500 different dealer templates named my way: “bubasbusiness-tx.dealer.acmebrand.com” count as 500 different links back to our site by Google? (Remember these sites are hosted from a different source than the brand site that they will link to).

FYI -- I am not trying to create a “link farm” with absolutely no relevance between sites. These are industry related and have various links from the Dealer templates to different pages on our site, which will make them pertinent to the page they link to -- I just want all of these links to count as legitimate links.

2. In my url naming “bubasbusiness-tx.dealer.acmebrand.com, will Google see “acmebrand” as a keyword?

Yeah, I know these urls are rather long, but I didn’t choose them.

Thanks
Melody

[Jill]

Welcome Melody!

First, it's important for you to know that the words in your urls, domains, and file names really aren't going to make any difference to how your pages rank, so don't even think about that when deciding what you want to do here.

1. Will 500 different dealer templates named my way: “bubasbusiness-tx.dealer.acmebrand.com” count as 500 different links back to our site by Google?

Do they actually have a link on each page back to your site? The only thing that counts as a link to your site is an actual, clickable link.

[Randy]

Welcome Melody !

I'll just throw out there that from the hosting side of things you're going to have to have an unusual setup to allow the dual subdomains. And potential DNS issues that someone is going to have to deal with.

Personally I wouldn't do it. Adding more work for little or no gain just isn't worth it. It's better to stick with the subdirectory approach IMO.

[Melody]

Randy,

So if I understand you correctly, I will not use "dual domains", but I can use subdomains such as "bubbasbusiness.dealacmebrand.com" where the domain is "dealacmebrand.com".

Okay, I can do that, but then my question is: will Google look at links from bubbasbusiness.dealacmebrand.com as all coming from the one domain of dealacmebrand.com?

I suspect they do and if so, that will show 500 links coming from one domain name into our site which does not carry the PR "weight" as if they were 500 links coming from different domains -- correct?

Thanks

Melody

[Melody]

Jill,

Yes, our dealers' templates will have various clickable links back to different pages in our brand site. We are doing this to help our dealers have a web presence, if they don't already have one. Our Dealers will be able to customize the content on their websites, but the look and feel of these templates are standard so they will match our brand site.

I am just concerned that Google will view all of the links coming from a single domain into our brand site as us trying to create our own external pages for the purpose of linking back to our site to help boost our PR and then they will kick us off of their se list. That truly is not the purpose, but I certainly would like to help our PR if possible and if these templates can count as legitimate links back to our site, then great for us.

Maybe I am over thinking this thing. See my reply to Randy.

Thanks

[Jill]

I am just concerned that Google will view all of the links coming from a single domain into our brand site as us trying to create our own external pages for the purpose of linking back to our site to help boost our PR and then they will kick us off of their se list.

They don't kick you off for that. It's fine and natural, don't worry about it. You're waaaaaay overthinking things!