Understanding Sub-domains

[AndySolo]

I have a questions about creating a website network for affiliate marketing purposes and how to achieve the best SEO rankings for each site.

An example would be MLB(dot)com. MLB(dot)com  is the hub site, with what appears to be official site sub-domains for each Major League Baseball team.

If I were to create a website for every baseball team, would it be best to create each site individually and link them together?

or should each site be a sub-domain of a hub site?

[JamesNorquay]

Ideally you want to have sub folders on the website rather than sub domains, due to the key point if people are externally linking to the website it benefits the whole websites rather than just one sub domain.

In September 2011 Google did make changes to count sub domains as one main site but I still have some concern in regards to the usability of a sub domains vs. a sub folder and also the external link value.

[AlanMosley]

I am one that believes that there is no difference between subfolders and subdomains.

there are quotes from matt cutts saying there are no differences, another indication is the google results, sitelinks show links for subdomains.

https://www.google.com.au/webhp?hl=en#hl=en&sa=X&ei=1PN4T8njObCZiAfhrtj2CA&ved=0CCMQBSgA&q=iboats&spell=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=46e26829d14b5458&biw=1280&bih=909

“What’s the difference between using subdomains and subdirectories? When it comes to Google, there aren’t major differences between the two, so when you’re making that decision, do what works for you and your visitors. Following PubCon, our very own Matt Cutts  … on his personal blog. In addition to those considerations, if you use Webmaster Tools (which we hope you do!), keep in mind that you’ll automatically be verified for deeper subdirectories of any sites you’ve verified, but subdomains need to be verified separately.”
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com.au/2008_01_01_archive.html

"Deb, it really is a pretty personal choice. For something small like a blog, it probably won’t matter terribly much. I used a subdirectory because it’s easier to manage everything in one file storage space for me. However, if you think that someday you might want to use a hosted blog service to power your blog, then you might want to go with blog.example.com just because you could set up a CNAME or DNS alias so that blog.example.com pointed to your hosted blog service."
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/another-two-videos/

[vinodchaudhary]

"If I were to create a website for every baseball team, would it be best to create each site individually and link them together?"

Before Panda.... one website for one team was something that can be considered.

After Panda.... only one website should be better, and teams can be arranged in sub-folders. I don't see any use of keeping several sub-domains. Sub-domains makes sense when it comes to functionality of website. Can keep customer support, forums or blog in sub-domains. But sections of website's one topic looks good with folder.

There are around 30 different teams which you'll need to consider. So sub-domain for each team is definitely, a NO-No.

Hope this helps!

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Hi Andrew,

First of all, lots of good answers here, but let me add my own 2 cents.

Google recently cracked down on link networks. Creating a series of multiple sites and linking them individually comes pretty close to a link network, even if you don't intend it to be one. The risk of getting penalized or deindexed completely is too high to consider this as an option.

So really your 2 best options are to create subdomains, or subdirectories - this means each team would be a different folder on the main site, so MLB.com/team.

If I had my druthers, I'd go the directory route, unless there are reasons that you thought this will kill conversions or ruin the user experience. The benefit is that each subfolder would benefit from the link metrics of the root domain, and the site would be much easier to maintain. My feeling is this would give you the greatest traffic/ratings advantages over the alternatives.

If you choose to go the subdomain route, I think you'll be fine. Last summer, Google started reporting subdomain links as "internal" in Webmaster Tools, which is an indication of how they now view subdomains, which agrees to an extent with what Alan has mentioned here.

Here's an older article from Rand on the subject, but much of it is still relevant today: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites

Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.