White Label Subdomain Competing with Top Level Domain?

[Rodrigo-DC]

Hi All,

We have a top level domain that is a comparison site for companies in our industry. We also manage a white label website for a specific company in the same industry, which was originally set up as a subdomain. In other words we have: "example.com" and "companyname.example.com." The sites are treated as separate websites--the subdomain site isn't filling a role like a subfolder would. It has it's own branding, navigation/url structure, etc.

Since these sites are in the same industry, there is obviously a huge overlap in the keywords we want each to rank for. In fact 100% of the keywords for the subdomain, are targets for the top level domain.

My question is, are we hurting ourselves in google rankings by having two sites under the same top level domain competing for the same keywords? We want both sites to be as successful as possible. Would we be better served by kicking the subdomain out into a new top level domain?

Thanks!

[Nozzle]

There has long been a debate about whether it's easier to rank subfolders or subdomains and you'll find people on both sides of that argument. Usually inherent in that argument is that the branding and navigation will be the same across the whole site including subdomains.

In your case though, you are basically building a separate site as a subdomain with its own branding, navigation, and URL structure.

Even though subdomains are said to be treated as a separate site, we still feel like it's not quite the same as being a totally separate site, so our suggestion is that you will probably be better off building out that site on a new domain rather than a subdomain.

We'd be curious to hear from others on this topic too.