Subdomains vs. Subfolders vs. New Site

[RachelEm]

Hello geniuses!!!

Here's my Friday puzzle:

We have a plastic surgery client who already has a website that's performing fairly well and is driving in leads. She is going to be offering a highly specialized skincare program for cancer patients, and wants a new logo, new website and new promo materials all for this new skincare program.

So here's the thing - my gut reaction says NO NEW WEBSITE! NO SUBDOMAIN! because of everything I've read about moving things on and off subdomains, etc (I just studied this: http://moz.com/blog/subdomains-vs-subfolders-rel-canonical-vs-301-how-to-structure-links-optimally-for-seo-whiteboard-friday). And, why wouldn't we want to use the authority of her current site, right?

While she doesn't necessarily have a high authority domain - we're not talking WebMD, here - she does have some authority that we've built over time.

But, because this is a pretty separate product from her general plastic surgery practice, what would you guys do? Since we'll be creating a logo and skincare "look and feel" for this product, and there will likely be a lot of information involved with it, I don't think we'll be able to just create one page.

Is it smart to:

a) build a separate site in a subfolder of her current site? (plasticsurgerypractice.com/skincare)

b) build a subdomain? (skincare.plasticsurgerypractice.com)

c) build her a new site (plasticsurgeryskincare.com)

[max.favilli]

i don't see any reason, in your exposition, to choose any different route than first option

check the domain authority of the second level domain your client is currently using and evaluate how much time and money you need to replicate the same DA to a new domain, then ask yourself and your client if it's worth it. Don't forget to mention all that work to rank for the new domain is not going to help the old one, and when same DA is reached you will still have to face duplicate effort to improve DA of both.

of course there are other factors which could still weight in favor of the separate domain, like banaly if she want to take distance from her main practice, if the existing domain suffered from penalization, etc...

but without knowing much I don't see a reason to go that way