to use subdomains or not?

Hi there!

I want to launch a site about a disease. Because I will be covering every symptom, treatment, medications etc. I was wondering from a seo perspective if it would be a good idea to have this structure:


diseasetreatments/disease.com
diseasesymptoms/disease.com
diseasemedicine/disease.com
etc.
etc.

And if so, how many subdomains would you say to be the max?

And if I put adsense on them, could I still use subdomains?

I hope you can help me. Thanks!

The subdomains are supposed to be treated as separate entities by Google......at least that is the theory.

I would not load up too many on one site.

You might want to try using "silos" either instead of the subdomains as you proposed or within each subdomain.......

Others may have different opinions on the subject.

no, it would not be a good idea to use that structure.
have you ever used a url like this:
sub/domain.com <-- hell no
you should do it like this:
sub.domain.com <-- the way it works

bruce6667 said:

no, it would not be a good idea to use that structure.
have you ever used a url like this:
sub/domain.com <-- hell no
you should do it like this:
sub.domain.com <-- the way it works

Click to expand...

lol
thats exactly what he meant
the "/" is also "."
his question is about using subdomains and not the "/" and "."

symptoms.disease.com would look better than the way ya got it out there.

I'm sorry, of course I mean symptoms.disease.com. Thanks for all the reply's by the way...

But what is this siloing? I have seen that option in XSite Pro also, but I really do not understand it.

Is siloing better than the use of these subdomains like symptoms.disease.com?

dude, it generally make no difference , i would say its your choice, as long as you build quality back links, it is going to work, from seo's perspective also.


Understand one thing you can do whatever that makes your site more user friendly.


& yes do remember that it will make google feel that


symptom1.disease.com & symptom2.disease.com

are two different sites.

yuppy said:

symptoms.disease.com would look better than the way ya got it out there.

Click to expand...

Here is a good visual example of what silos are.......

hxxp://w3.seo^2020.c0m/lsi/silo-structured-website.html

(Just remove the xx and it is www and also get rid of the ^ and 0)

It can help, but don't get too caught up in it.

It is all about the links!

Thanks!

I have read the course, but stup*d me, I still do not get it.

Let's say I have a domain disease. There I talk about the disease in general. Then I would have subdomains (or even subdirectories for that matter) like symptoms.disease.com (where I put a bunch of symptom-related articles), medicine.disease.com (where I write articles on all kinds of meds for the disease) etc. etc. Then, as I see it, it's the same as siloing right? Or am I getting it wrong (still)??

Just from my own experience, but search engines (meaning of course the big G) view subdomains as separate web sites from each other and the root domain, meaning if YourDomain.tld gets authority it won't instantly translate into sub.YourDomain.tld having any at all.

However, if YourDomain.tld gets authority then that will naturally pass along to YourDomain.tld/directory/ if you have a proper link structure for your site.

I used to use subdomains for everything in the past, but once it became clear to me that the search engines were viewing each subdomain as an individual web site rather than an related extension of the root domain that didn't make sense to do any more from an SEO point of view.

Think of it like this, if you have disease.com and create a subdomain for symptoms.disease.com the search engines will see those as 2 different and separate web sites on the same IP address (so your inter-linking is devalued). This means to rank your subdomain you've actually got to link-build for it as if it were a brand new site all together.

However, if you have disease.com and create disease.com/symptoms/ the search engines see that as a related extension off your root domain and any authority your root has naturally flows over.

Subdomains are great if you want each to be viewed as a different site, but otherwise I'd always go with directories off of the root domain instead.

Ok, thanks. I will go with subdirecotries instead of subdomains then. Thanks!

But what about this siloing? It still isn't clear to me. And not so much sense actually...

As I understand it after reading a bit about it, you should have a landingpage or home page.

In the body text you link to let's say 5 other articles about specific related themes. So let's say I have: disease.com and in the body I have a general story about it and I link to 5 different themed articles in there like:
-disease treatments
-disease symptopms
-disease medication
-disease books
-disease whatever...

On your home page you do not add navigation, but only at the bottom of the page three additional links to: homepage, sitemap and contact us. No more navigation what so ever...

Then, as I understand it, I should make various articles for each theme. so let's say, I make 5 for each theme. The example would be this:
Home (links only to
Disease Symptoms Disease Treatments Disease Medicaton Disease Books etc...
| | | |
article 1 article 1 article 1 article 1
| | | |
article 2 article 2 article 2 article 2
| | | |
article 3 article 3 article 3 article 3
| etc. etc. | etc. etc. | etc. etc. | etc. etc.

So within the theme you only link to the next article within that theme. That's right isn't it?

But what about the users? I think it is very user unfriendly, since the user only will see what all your articles are about, once they are in the themed article structure and they only have the option to go to the next article (you do not link to previous articles). They have no navigation what so ever from let's say articles about disease treatments to disease syptoms. The only option for the user is to go to the home page or the site map through the links at the bottom of the page.

Do I understand this correctly and does it work? If I were to come to a site like that, I would probably leave it since there was only one way to go. On the other hand, for adsense proposes it might be a good idea, since the user has no links to choose from, but the adsense links.

What do you guys think?

oeps, sorry, the structure of the site, didn't come out right when I posted it. I hope you will understand it. I will redo the structure here:

disease treatment--------article 1--------article2-------article3 etc.

disease medicine---------article 1--------article2-------article3 etc.

home disease symptoms--------article 1--------article2-------article3 etc.

disease books------------article1---------article2-------article3 etc.

disease whatever---------article1---------article2-------article3 etc.

didn't work that well either, hope you all understand what I mean

I think to the "meaning" of your original question, I have gone both ways, subdomains and new root domains. I have had success with both for different reasons. The risk as I see it with subdomains, is if the root domain is doing well and you add a subdomain that doesn't for some reason, the "whole" domain suffers. If you have fresh domains for each only the new domain suffers (deindexing, etc.)

Assuming Snowwhite's interpretation is correct which I think is what you wanted to know, that silo would be the right way to go for a tight themed website. Whether you call them subdomains or "folders", they will be seen basically the same way on your website.

This whole thread is probably now more confusing than ever not my intent though...

niche1 said:

The subdomains are supposed to be treated as separate entities by Google......at least that is the theory.

Click to expand...

Google was supposed to stop this because places like Amazon and eBay were killing the SERPS with ebay.com, ca.ebay.com, au.ebay.com all being in the serps.

I read about a year ago Google was cutting down on this and only counting about 2 or 3 subdomains.

i have used the subdomain method to set up a bans mall. And all the subdomains do well with G.

Ok, thanks all. I've decided not to go with subdomains. I do not want to take the risk that if one subdomain isn't doing so well, my main domain suffers for it. So I will go with a highly silo structured website.

Will do some more research on that now.

Has any of had good success or no success by siloing?

i would chose the subdomains for categories with a tag cloud on the main domain.