pros and cons of subdomains

A girl is confused whether domain or subdomain is best

What is a Subdomain

If you're thinking whether a new domain or subdomain is better for you, It's important to note that we all know what's really going on.

A subdomain is a directory on a primary domain that works independently of the main domain, whereas a new domain is a whole other website.

The www in www.blogstrends.com is technically a subdomain, as is the first part of blogstrends.com, but we're not getting into that here.

We'll refer to a subdomain as a directory on your parent website that works as a separate website with its own admin and content files from now on

For example, you can make a WordPress subdomain called factforever.com by creating a ‘hindi' folder in your Facforever.com website root directory and installing WordPress there with the name hindi. You'd have to pay for the hindi domain name if you only wanted to call it hindi.com.

Here are three examples of URLs for the various options:

  • www.factforever.com
  • biography.factforever.com
  • www.factforever.com/biography

The first is your main website, the second is a subdomain called ‘BIOGRAPHY,' and the third is a folder called ‘BIO' on your main domain.

Each of these three options has advantages and disadvantages depending on how you want to utilize them.

The following are the advantages and disadvantages of the top two: Is this a new domain or a subdomain?

Which is the better option: a New Domain or a Subdomain?

You'll normally be in one of two situations when choosing between a new domain and a subdomain. It's important to define these because they're all unique and may require alternative ideas. The following are the situations:

Case - A

You have a brand name or exact match domain name, such as babybear.com, and wish to promote each of your products or services on its own website.

In this situation, a primary domain babybear.com may have been a better choice (consider it) – which is why, when choosing a product-oriented domain name, you should always think accordingly.

Case - B

You have a successful domain name and want to start promoting things that aren't related to your original website.

Case - C

You have a general domain name like babybear.com that you'd like to use to promote a wide range of products or services.

OPTION A: You Want to Retain Your Existing Branding

Let's take a look at each of these options one by one, starting with option A:

You have a brand name and want to use it to promote or reach a larger range you're offering. Should you do it by creating multiple mini sites for each product or by using subdomains on your main domain?

You might have a Fashion and lifestyle website – fashion.com. It focuses on clothing or apparel.

You're performing well and want to grow your business to sell baby or children clothing or even offer children related products.

It would be foolish to lose brand recognition by choosing a separate domain name for the people of each age group,  because your website or brand name is doing well.

mensfashion, womenfashion, and teensfashion examples. Nobody will be able to guess the names of these domains.

Brand Recognition is increased through subdomains.

Make the most of your existing brand awareness. Subdomains are the best way to implement this.

Create a subdomain for each separate age and gender group, and then create folders to organise each component.

Let's use men as an example. http://men.fashion.com would be your subdomain URL, with similar subdomains for other age group. Folders, such as men.fashion.com/mall, could be used to arrange various age group of each fashion.

OPTION B: A Unique Domain Name

You still have the domain fashion.com in this case, but you've decided to expand out into baby care products.

You can make a babycare.fashion.com subdomain easily and effectively! Looks fine, but who is going to start coming to your fashion website searching for baby care product? And who in their right state of mind would go to fashions to search for babycare?

In this situation, it would be best to purchase a new domain name and create a new website.

Your two products are unrelated in any manner, unless a parent wanted to buy baby care products for his/her children. Because you don't get many of these people, buying a new domain name is the better option

OPTION C: A Custom Domain Name

This is an example of Google. Google has many services created on subdomains. When we open Google it shows domain name google.co.on.

if you see Google translate it is displayed as translate.google.co.in, here google.co.in is main website and translate is subdomain.

Subdomain of Google for Example

If you have a generic domain name that is running well, it may be worth it to keep it. Even if it can't be linked to a specific type of product like fashions.com, it's your brand.

You may start by promoting your first "off-topic" product or services with a subdomain and see how it works. Finally, like Google, your site may be identified as a "provide-all" domain.

For each type of service, you can buy a new domain name. This may be better for you at first, but it will be more expensive. The benefit of using a subdomain is that you can explain what you've been up to on your main domain's homepage.

Initially, you might give a product listing with a link to the appropriate subdomain. Your visitors will know what to search for as a response.

What about this? That's the way Google does things! Your visitors would go to your main domain first, much like Google, before looking for the right subdomain.

So why not just use folders which your visitors may visit by clicking on?

SEO Benefits of Subdomains

You may think that if you want to optimize each page on your website for the top rankings, you need create new domains.

To quote George Gershwin, "It ain't always so!" You can get the following benefits by using subdomains:

  • Branding and authority in a niche area are maintained.
  • You'll be able to link your multiple subdomains more easily.
  • Each subdomain will inherit a part of the main domain's authority and trust.
  • You don't have to start from scratch with SEO, as you would with individual websites.
  • A website with one main domain and several subdomains is easier to handle than one with multiple domain names that may need to be interconnected if you want them all to be connected with your brand.

When increasing the level of a brand or product range, what are the benefits and drawbacks of using a new domain or subdomain?

There is no difference in terms of performance. It makes no difference to a visitor whether they visit 'mensfashion.com' or 'mens.fasion.com'.

In fact, they are more likely to click on the anchor text ‘mensfashion' rather than the full URL. This is despite Google's recommendation to keep anchor text to a limited and replace it with naked URLs.

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