The pros and cons of subdomain or new domain for a new brand?

[EveryActionHQ]

Hi there Moz experts,

We're launching a new brand and product offering for a completely different audience than we've worked with before. We're expected a significant amount of business to come from inbound marketing, so we're wondering whether we should launch the new brand as a subdomain of the parent company or as a completely separate domain.

The parent company's website has thousands of inbound links and is over 10 years old, so I'm thinking in the short term it would be easier to get new content ranked there. However, in the long term I think it would be better for the new brand to have a separate TLD.

Thoughts or other things I should consider?

Thanks!

[Chris.Menke]

Devon,

If relevance between two subdomains is low, the value of links pointing from one of them to another will be low, as well--even though they share the same root domain. If they're as different as you say, it's probably best to tough it out on a new domain. Nonetheless, it shouldn't be inconceivable that you could come up with some overlapping concept between something on the two sites about which you could write. Such an article/page of content/blurb added to the old domain and linking to the new domain could give the new site a little boost in visibility/traffic/awareness.