Should we use one domain with product-specific sub-domains or separate domains per product?
-
We are resellers of 4 separate products. Currently we have numerous different websites promoting each product, not all of them use a URL which has any real link to our business - it's only when you land on the page that it contains brand images, etc.
We are in the process of redesigning and rebranding, and want to know what would be the best course of action to take in terms of domain registration.
This is what we have currently, for example: -
www.accounts-solutions.co.uk - This site deals with the resale and support of a branded accounts package.
www.software-accounts-systems.co.uk - This site deals with the resale and support of a second branded accounts product.
In terms of moving forward with new domains, which are going to contain our business name, our options are as follows: -
OPTION 1 - www.our-business-name.co.uk/product1/etc, www.our-business-name.co.uk/product2/etc, www.our-business-name/product3/etc where all products are given separate sub-domains within our main business page.
OPTION 2 - www.our-business-name-product1.co.uk/etc, www.our-business-name-product2.co.uk/etc, www.our-business-name-product3.co.uk/etc where each product we resell is given it's own separate domain entirely.
Does anyone think one direction over another would give any benefits in terms of SEO, or would it not matter as long as each site was well optimised with a solid content and social strategy? My initial preference is for the first option, if only because of the continuity in terms of having one main company website with each product listed in sub-domains. Each landing page would obviously be optimised for each specific product/keyword, etc. so, from a user point of view, there shouldn't be any confusion between separate products.
Also, would it be recommended to install 301 redirects from our existing www.accounts-solutions.co.uk, etc pages to the relevant new sites?
Thanks, John
-
Is one domain with four directories an option? If so, that's what I'd probably go for (as long as the four products don't compete with each other directly). The reason for this is that I imagine you have a finite resource pool: using those resources on one website rather than four websites or subdomains (remember that search engines treat different subdomains in much the same way as different root domains - as separate entities) will be the most efficient way to use them, giving you the best chance of success.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Domain Transition: Moving over paid traffic campaigns first
We're planning a domain name (rebrand) transition, and considering our options. We rely heavily on paid traffic. To reduce risk, we’re considering moving AdWords and Bing Ads over campaign-by-campaign to the new domain first, while organic traffic continues to direct to the old domain. Each of our ad groups has a custom, noindex’d landing page. In order to serve paid traffic, we’d at minimum need a front page, and likely a privacy policy page in addition. Here’s a rough outline of what I think a transition like this might look like: Launch new domain with a simple front page, and privacy policy. Move over ppc landing pages on the new domain (noindex'd, robots.txt) Create new ads in existing ad groups directing to the new domain. Monitor ad groups for some time period to verify sustainability. Once we're satisfied with ppc performance, and planned the rest of the organic page migrations, 301 redirect everything to the new domain. Is there any problems or things we should be concerned about with this approach? I'd think it should be fine, but I've been bitten enough from large-scale redirects in the past, that I know I should be nervous.
Branding | | dsbud0 -
Switch to naked domain that has higher page authority
Brilliant Moz community! I just started here and find it so helpful and am confident that I can get an answer to this. Our domain is currently https://www.example.com. I have been wanting to move to https://example.com just for a cleaner URL. To my surprise, https://example.com has the same DA but a significantly higher page authority than our current https://www.example.com. Of course my immediate reaction is to 301 to the https://example.com but I wanted to get some advice and anything we should consider before doing this. My other question would be - how is this possible? I don't remember that we ever used that domain but we also had some rather bad developers a couple of years back. Thank you so much in advance!
Branding | | kris-fannin0 -
Help me decide between 2 domains! Please!
I want to build an authoritive site on the keyword: "baby hazel games" since I want it to be authoritive and easy to brand and to remember. I dont plan to use EMD-s. I like these 2 domains: 1. PlayHazel.com 2. HazelBox.com Help me decide between them. what sounds better, and have greater chance in ur opinion. Feel free to ad domain names ideas, if u have them. Thank you!
Branding | | Catinas970 -
No Domain Link In Press Release, What About Yelp?
Hi Moz, I understand that using a PR for SEO benefit is old-school, black hat, and largely outlawed by Google. We are simply trying to get our name pushed further into the local market, i.e., using a press release for it's natural intention. Our company offers free quotes through our site and the scheduling of jobs with new clients is largely done online. I think it seems silly NOT to have a link to our URL in the press release, but rather than poke Google, we're fine omitting it. However, would linking our Yelp near the end be a big deal? Yelp no-follows their URLs back to the company site so there isn't a risk with pumping up a support link through PR and we can provide SOME clickable link to our information. Thoughts?
Branding | | kirmeliux0 -
One physical location but we serve 7 counties
I am a new business and I have one physical location but we serve 7 counties in CA how should I plan to list it?
Branding | | avimoz0 -
Anyone using Followerwonk? Email said SEOMOZ just aquired it.
Hi, So looks like SEMOZ just aquired followerwonk.com and that I have free access to this system. I had a quick look at it and it seems like it's an analytics program for twitter. Anyone used it? And can you use it to help grow your list? Cheers
Branding | | activitysuper0 -
Can creating a subfolder and seperate domain blog build external links?
So I am currently going through the creation of a blog with a client that has a company that sells tennis equipment. I have talked to their development team, who is a third-party ecommerce platform, and come up with an idea to create an sub-folder (domain.com/blog) with an article page using their existing framework that would feature full articles in a blog format. Then I would create multiple blogs for them using tumblr and wordpress with their company name and a few with unique names targeted to their niche. These would feature snippets of the content taken from their article page (domain.com/blog) with some responses or reviews on the full articles to further their outreach and then link to the main articles on their article page. These snippets would be divided up amongst the blogs and posted on different days of the week to divide the traffic. Each blog will feature fresh content and focus on a rotating schedule of the latest videos, re-blogs, memes, photos, highlights, scores, upcoming tournament reviews, etc. I will set each one up to rotate through these different topics on different days and times to create a steady stream of traffic. I want to make sure that I stress the fact that I wont be stuffing the unique blogs with links only to the clients company store, I will be making sure to keep it to an amount that isn't spam worthy. Now if these blogs feature rich content including the snippets of the articles from my sub-folder page (domain.com/blog) will these blogs pass link juice to the blog set up on my sub-folder? Also is this a good way to ensure brand awareness and create external links without damaging their reputation? Are there other risks that people have encountered by doing something similar? Please share your experiences so I can make an educated decision.
Branding | | cscoville0 -
.us domain extension for US locales
I have a large US travel site and am looking to make targeted pages for specific locations, attractions etc around the United States. With many of the TLD's already purchased for these niches, I thought about using the .us extension as it seemed relevant to the topics. Does this hurt seo possibilities or does the .us extension come across as spammy?
Branding | | Millibit2