Impact on domain when using a subdomain for majority opf site content

[Urbanfox]

Hello,

We're looking to use a subdomain for a bookings engine that will also host the majority of our site content as it wil house the details of the courses that we'll be selling online.

All content is currently available on

www.existingdomain.co.uk

A few pages will remain here but the majority will ultimately be hosted on a different IP address under a subdomain:

courses.existingdomain.co.uk

I am a little concerened about search engine reaction to this content separation. Would this approach dilute the rankings of www.existingdomain.co.uk?

Is there anything else we need to be mindful of?

We have alternative options if this is a real SEO faux pas.

Thanks

[krissy-cca]

You're essentially creating two seperate sites here so if you want your existing domain to be the primary domain in the search engines I would stick to a sub-folder. Is there a reason why it can't be created in domain.co.uk/courses/ ?

DD

[EGOL]

I am a little concerened about search engine reaction to this content separation. Would this approach dilute the rankings of www.existingdomain.co.uk?

In my opinion, yes.  If you move content to a subdomain the links into that content will have a lower benefit on the rankings of your main site and the links into your main site will have a lower benefit on the rankings of the subdomain.

I recently redirected two subdomains on an old site to folders in the root of the master domain.  Rankings went up for everything significantly.

[Urbanfox]

Thanks EGOL.

[Urbanfox]

Not strictly no, we may have to compromise by losing a degree of control over the content.

Thanks for the response Damien, very helpful.

Jan