Deleting Subdomain - 301 to Homepage Best Option?

[Jantaro]

We have a subdomain with lots of content that we think Google may consider thin, so we're thinking of removing it to improve our SEO. Is the best way to do this to simply remove the directory and then 301 everything to our homepage?

Basically the subdomain consists of product images with links to retailers where they can be purchased. We've basically used it to refer our Facebook fans to when they like a product they've seen on our Facebook page, so the subdomain was not meant to rank for SEO purposes. However, it is integrated with our main webpage, and it is possible that it is hurting our SEO efforts.

The subdomain is photos.yournextshoes.com and the main domain www.yournextshoes.com

[FedeEinhorn]

What don't you just block Google and other search engines from crawling/indexing the subdomain?

That will keep the content there while not affect your SEO at all (and prevent from having bad backlinks from subdomain now pointing to domain (if any) by using a 301).

[Jantaro]

Basically it takes a lot of time to update the subdomain, so we'd rather just remove it and instead post more content on Facebook.

[FedeEinhorn]

Well, just took a look at your subdomain links and there's nothing bad there. You can go ahead and remove the subdomain placing a 301 to your homepage.