Are Subdomains Beneficial?

[eldoradoseo]

Are subdomains beneficial? I have a client with 4 stores. As it stands, they use one domain, www.mainpage.com/store1, www.mainpage.com/store2, etc. Are there any big benefits to making these subdomains like store1.mainpage.com, store2.mainpage.com?

[augustos]

In this case,

I think it's better to have a subdomain with each store. If not better for the SEO, for sure is better to the user understand which one is what he is looking for, make sense?

Also, to keep the files organized and avoid a huge mess.

Hope i can help u.

[RyanKent]

Chris,

Your client's current set up is ideal. Why are you considering a change?

Currently each store has it's own directory. This enables you to run Google Analytic and other reporting on each store individually. You gain the advantage of having your domain authority for all stores contained in one site. You also can have significant cost savings for product licensing (SSL certificates, trust certificates such as Verisign, payment processing, software licenses, etc) which may each add additional charges for sub-domains.

Based on the information you shared, I am not aware of any SEO benefit to be gained from using sub-domains.

[eldoradoseo]

Thanks for the quick response. I agree completely. What are your thoughts as far as breaking up an 80 page site into 4 20 page sites?

[eldoradoseo]

Very good points. The domain authority was what was concerning me. Thank you for your input. I can live with the structure either way. I was wondering if I might be missing something or if there was a "big plus" that would make it worth doing.

[SteveOllington]

Yeah there is no longer any difference in the eyes of search engines between sub domains and sub directories, they're seen as the same thing now... so no SEO benefit in changing.

[EGOL]

Moving to subdomains is not a good idea in my opinion.  Each subdomain will be treated as a separate website and will need to develop its own link popularity.  If the stores remain in a subdomain their link popularity is combined rather than divided.

I recently redirected two subdomains of a site to folders in the root domain and the results have been kickass.

[eldoradoseo]

Thanks for the input. I think I will keep it as one site.