domain/subdomain/hosting question

[Randolph]

Because of the growing number of sites (mostly blogs) I've been creating, I was looking for some affordable hosting that actually had some good features.

Well, I think I found a great host, but I have a question as to how this setup is going to effect my search indexing/ranking. Essentially, I have one huge block of server space that has a primary domain I can chop up into infinite subdomains. then, I can add-on new domains (this is using Cpanel X) that point to the subdomains I've created.

example - www.site1.com is the primary domain.
then, I have www.site2.com pointing to site2.site1.com

Barring any shady linking practices, does anyone see a way this could mess up my indexing....in short, would www.site2.com be viewed as a seperate site by the SE's?

[Rob]

Depending on how you set it up will impact how the SE's see it.

IE if you merely use a temporary redirect site2 or set it up as an alias versus using a 301 redirect will impact the site

a 301 will mean that site2.com won't get indexed. site2.site1.com would.

However an alias could mean that both site2.com and site2.site1.com could get indexed which could lead to a duplicate content penalty.

A lot depends on what you want to do - for example if all the sites are similar content, why not use site1.com/content rather than aliases?

If each subdomain is somewhat unique then it's fine to use them - then if you want regular domain names simply 301 them. Use them for promotional purposes such as newsletters etc, but stick to promoting the subdomains in the engines.

[Randolph]

thanks for the input Rob.

The sites are pretty unique - so I'll keep them as is for the moment, and try to completely avoid indexing of the subdomain, by only providing links to the www.site2.com structure.

I suppose this will be a neat experiment :)

I treated a subdomain as a different site once before, but promoted it through the site2.site1.com...it worked pretty well, so maybe I should just change my primary domain for the hosting to something more generic, and have site1.brand.com, site2.brand.com, etc...

man, this seems like a lot of work to save a few bucks on hosting :)

[Rob]

yeah you have to be pretty careful nowadays with aliases, subdomains, redirects etc. if they are done wrong you can get yourself penalized or even banned for duplicate content.

Not to mention you risk broken links if they are not properly coded within a site (ie using relative links can sometimes cause problems if you don't code them correctly).

I've found it's best to have completely unique domains/subdomains that stand apart from everything else, and you have to make sure redirects etc work properly.

good luck!

[art4x]

I don't mean to hijack this thread, but I have a similar question.

When building themed websites for the same company, would it be wiser to use subdomains or seperate domains?

Example:
cottoncandy.carnivalsellers.com
balloons.carnivalsellers.com

Or:
cottoncandycarnivalsellers.com
balloonscarnivalsellers.com

The sites would be cross-linked to each other but there's no duplicate content, and there'd be about 20 different themes, but I'm not sure what the pro/cons are to sub domains vs seperate domains. Any advice or feedback is appreciated.

laura

[Randolph]

laura -

i'd think, in this situation, you could do either one effectively. personally, i'd use subdomain for brand purposes (if it was all one big brand)..but either method seems like it would be a good solution.

[Rob]

I would also say that if your subdomains are smaller then go the subdomain route - ie if they are less than a few hundred pages, then the main domain would get the benefit of all those subdomains and will perform better than a bunch of individual smaller sites.

[art4x]

Thanks for your quick feedback, I appreciate your help! ;)