Blogging on Sub-Domains

[mixeduptunes]

Hi,

Say I have a domain www.petblogs.com and I want to creat blogs of a similar theme for cats, dogs, hamsters, budgies.

If I set them up as subdomains

www.cats.petblogs.com
www.dogs.petblogs.com
www.hamsters.petblogs.com
www.budgies.petblogs.com

Would these still have the same success as if I had them all on their own individual domain name or would they lag behind in the search engines as they are only sub-domains?

This is with all things being equal and I did exactly the same for creation, promoting etc for both?

Thanks.

[ProfitBlogger]

All things being equal, subdomains are better.

The trick to using subdomains is in the main URL itself - the URL has to be on a wider niche to accomodate other smaller niches as sub domains - like the examle you gave here.

Today the talk is about creating "authority sites" and subomains are the key to authority sites..

[mixeduptunes]

Thanks for your input on that GK.

The reason I asked was that I have WP Mass Installer. Great for the foundations to a blogging empire but I wouldn't want to just use the RSS feeds but it's very handy for controlling many blogs on one main domain... ie not having to install the plug-ins into each WP, just installing them into one master section.

Thats something I am going to play around with in a few weeks. I just want to get my holiday vacation blog working just the way I want it to first.

[andreww]

Hi Simon,
i've done quite a bit of research in this area.

for SEO purposes, sub domains and sub directories have the same effect.
eg. dogs.pets.com and www.pets.com/dogs/ will have similar ratings in the SERPs.

the difference is that a subdomain is treated as a fresh website, while a subdirectory is treated as part of that website.

could be strategic value to expend your sub directory possibilities first, then migrate to a fresh subdomain, if your orig subdomain get banned by google.

[mixeduptunes]

Hi Andrew,

I've just read your post about 3 times. Still trying to get my head around what you've just put.

So if I have a domain called www.informationportal. com then I can create subdomains and focusing on a keyword for each subdomain, I can have different topics and each will be effectively treated as a new website... opening up more possibilites.

If I have the pet site.... then create sub directories - as such, simply a new folder and install the blog into the new sub directory (Is this possible???) then it would be like an extension of my current site and would help with indexing, linking etc?

Am I on the right lines here... so with my holiday site, instead of having many categories for each destination... I could set up a different destination as a sub directory?

I know how I could set up the subdomains. I'm just not sure how I would set up Wordpress in a sub directory and get it so that it is an extension of my main domain and how to get it indexed as easily?

Any suggestions are gratefully accepted.

Thank you.

[andreww]

Hi Simon,
i think you're on the right track.

here's something to think about.
the big money adsense bloggers (who churn about $100,000-$200,000 each month PURELY from adsense), might have a directory along the lines of:

travel.com.
then they have travel.com/asia
travel.com/usa
travel.com/europe

within each of these subdirectories you can set up a new blog.

eg travel.com is your redirector blog
travel.com/asia is your asia blog (just sucking up asia-specific adsense)
travel.com/usa is intended to go for USA travel-related adsense
ad nauseum.

hence, you are a 'travel blog' specialists, with specialist niche blogs capitalizing on each of these niche areas.

You could easily mop up $1,000-$2,000 per niche blog if you do it right.
and harness quite a bit of leverage.
there's a bit more to this though, but this is the essence of it.

----
going one step further, for your doggy-dogs-life.com site.
you could set up /terrier/, /poodle/, /dogfood/ , /dogclothes/ niches.

i think if you put your mind to it, you could easily generate at least $50,000 from that domain alone. but you'd need at least 20 mySQL databases, and ideally 100.

i'd also go get RSS2Blog to automate the content posting.

I use secretwebhostingweapon.com for my web hosting and can do some pretty interesting stuff with it.
if you'd like to join my DigitalKeiretsu.com community, you can drop me a PM.

cheers!

[mixeduptunes]

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for all that info... There's certainly a lot of 'food for thought' in all that you put.

It's given me plenty to think about.

[andreww]

one use i have for subdomains is that because they're consider a different website from your parent domain. eg. the search engines 'see' men.health.com as a different website from www.health.com. you have some room to play with if one of the domains is blacklisted from the search engines.

there's a whole raft of different strategies, really...

[ethanqbh]

Originally Posted by andreww

one use i have for subdomains is that because they're consider a different website from your parent domain. eg. the search engines 'see' men.health.com as a different website from www.health.com. you have some room to play with if one of the domains is blacklisted from the search engines.

there's a whole raft of different strategies, really...

Hi Andrew,

Although subdomains are considered a fresh website, if Google were to ban your domain, yourdomain.com say, wouldn't that affect all subdomains?

That is the reason why third-level domains (TLD) exists. The more famous ones are web.com, us.com, wis.com. If someone is experimenting with black-hat spamming strategies, Google or Yahoo cannot easily delete their domains if they are on a TLD domain, say spammystuff.web.com as this would have a big impact by banning web.com.

To my knowledge, TLD can be purchased at 2 places, web.com and registerfly.com.

[andreww]

if google were to ban your domain, the subdomains would not be affected.

i've not had the opportunity to have any of my domains banned to date, so i havent put it to test yet.

but logically since subdomains have their own PR, the ban on the mother domain should not affect it.