Sub domain or separate domain?

[Horizon]

Hi Mozzers,

I'm redesigning a property database, and wondered whether it would be better to put this on a sub domain of my site or to set up a completely separate domain?

Back story: My core website is about lifestyle, holidays and property in France. It's very popular, and benefits massively from long tail search. It's a fairly strong, recognisable brand, so I assume any association the database has with the site would greatly benefit it... Maybe.

My current property database on the other hand is very poor in terms of SEO/visibility, etc, so we're having the whole thing redesigned from scratch.

For the database, is it better to set up a subdomain of my strong branded site, or set up a completely new domain targeting keywords in the URL?

Cheers!

Matt

[mediabase]

Hi Matt, First of all I want you to take a look at the below where I am describing the pros & cons of the sub domain & separate domain;

1. Subdomain

• Maybe technically easier for some setups

• Has some of the benefits of subfolder in inheriting parent domain authority and separate domain in providing backlinks to main site, but…

• Needs to establish its own reputation through backlinks from other sites so…

• Will not rank as highly or as quickly as a subfolder

2. Separate domain

• Helps you control and generate external backlinks for which you control the anchor text, i.e. editorial links within blog copy back to category and product pages

• Can create a more differentiated brand identity which can be seen as independent from the main site so generates more engagement with it’s audience potentially

• Can target a different country, i.e. I have seen UK companies launching a US hosted blog

• You may not rank competitively at all for weeks or months depending on the quality of the content you create. This may be hard to sell to your colleagues investing in it – it’s an act of faith…

• Will require a long-term commitment to content creation and backlink development

So, to summarize If you create exceptional content which creates a lot of backlinks then separate domain can be valuable in providing links back to the main site from a separate authority site you control.

For more details please refer to this link:

Understanding  root domains-Sub domians

I hope that you will found the solution.

[Horizon]

Thanks for the comprehensive response Harald! The blog was especially helpful.

I don't think I'm any closer to making a decision (because I don't think it will make much difference whichever way I go!) but the blog certainly helps.

Thanks again.

Matt

[OkanKortan]

Hi,

We have two sites mysite.com and aa.mysite.com. We want to track these sites separately. We created two different properties with IDs UA-XXX-1 for main domain UA-XXX-2 for subdomain.

gaq code for main domain is as following,

gaq code for subdomain is as following,

It works well for subdomain. But we want to see traffic from subdomain to main domain as referral.
What is wrong with the gaq code of main domain? 
Do i need to change code or is it enough to inactivate subdomain tracking option in profile settings of main domain?

Thanks in advance,