Ecommerce specialized portals subdomains or different domains

[tcruces]

Hi,

I am trying to decide between two different options that can affect branding and seo, I would like to hear opinions about the different options I have.

Suppose that I want to open an ecommerce site for sports goods, but I want to have an specialized store for running goods.

My example company name is MAZ and the country I am targetting is UK, for my general sports store I will use mazsports.co.uk, the question I have is what should I do for my "running" specialized store, every store will have a diffferent design, its own blog, its own items and its own link build campaigns.

These are really different sites, but the ecommerce platform will be the same, the shopping cart could be shared and the same people working on the same warehouse will send the shipments.

With this example data I see two options:

1. Use different domains, for example for the running one, mazrunning.co.uk, using maz like the shared brand part on the domain and use a site like maz.co.uk listing the different specializations.

2. Use subdomains for the different specializations, running.mazsports.co.uk.

We will work hard to position every site, we will manage every store in its own google webmaster and analytics site, after the two initial sites (one general and one specialization) we will create a few more, maybe 5 or 6 specialized sites.

In my sector people search for the specific specializations more than in general so I would not like that Google sees the running.mazsports.co.uk of the example like part of the ecommerce store mazsports.co.uk, I would like that if someone is searching for running material the site that will be shown to them is the specialized one.

What should i do in this case? Thanks!

[anthonydnelson]

If these are the two options you are considering, I would definitely go with #2. Keep it under one domain, with multiple subdomains.

Since it sounds like a new site, I would strongly consider keeping it all under one domain and just using subfolders for each "specialty store" - mazsports.co.uk/running/

[tcruces]

Hello Anthony,

The general site will have categories as subfolders in the url, like mazsports.co.uk/soccer or mazsports.co.uk/tennis but this category folders are only selections on the ecommerce platform product grid, not specialized subsites.

For example the blog at running.mazsports.co.uk would be running.mazsports.co.uk/blog not the general one at mazsports.co.uk/blog, and the running site will have its own categories like running.mazsports.co.uk/trail-shoes.

I think this specialization is important on my sector.