Archive for Technical SEO

Technical SEO Issues: Sub-domain Vs. Sub-Directory

June 6, 2008 at 3:39 pm · Filed under SEO, Technical SEO ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

Many clients have asked me about various technical SEO issues. These issues are related with domains, use of sub-domains, sub-directories, canonicalization, 301 redirects, 404 error pages, hyphen Vs. underscores in URLs, doorway pages any many others.

I want to discuss all these issues (in subsequent posts) with all of you to find out the best SEO practices in technical terms.

Today, I am discussing about one very common issue i.e. use of Sub-Domain or Sub-Directory.

Before going further I would like to define: Top Level Domain (TLD), Subdomain and Subdirectory.

Top Level Domain Name (TLDN): In www.google.com URL, com is the TLDN i.e. the last part of internet domain name (here, domain name is google.com). In case of www.google.co.uk your TLD would be uk. The uk domain is also referred to as a country-code top-level domain or ccTLD.

Subdomain: Subdomains are basically parts of the main domain. You can define it as a part of domain name hierarchy. For example:

In video.google.com, video is the subdomain.

Subdirectory: Subdirectories are basically defined as the folders in the root directory. For example: In http://desktop.google.com/plugins/ , plugins is the directory.

So, http://desktop.google.com/plugins/ in this URL:

Com is the TLD

Desktop is the subdomain

Plugins is the directory or subfolder

Now, we come to our main discussion i.e. why subdomains & why subdirectories?

Subdomains are used as separate domains by major search engines. See the results below for the search query seochat:

(You might know that Google shows 2 relevant results from a single domain)

Here, you can clearly view that Google is showing 2 results from forums.seochat.com/.

Subdomain should be used when your site is very large and you want to market some of your unique product or content thru different URL. For example: if your site has 1500 pages and you want to market your content/services/products thru different URLs with an appealing & relevant subdomain to popularize it, as in case of seochat. In forums.seochat.com; it is clearly understood that forums is a part of SEOchat which is used to discuss SEO related things.

So you can devise a subdomain strategy that would help focus certain areas of the site to help them market or compete individually.

For example:

Google uses many subdomains for its different product & services like maps.google.com/, video.google.com/, earth.google.com/ and many others.

Once any of your subdomains get enough link popularity, you can transfer it to other domains or main domain of your site to get them benefited by this.

Now, we will discuss directories. Directories are always the best choice for all as it has all the functionality & flexibility of subdomains and it is easy to manage. Subfolders are considered as the part of the domain as a whole. Search engines treat them as the content is coming from the same domain. But beware!! Don’t use lots of subdirectories in to directories because content that resides in subfolders is given a lower priority that content that resides in the root of a website. The deeper down in subfolders e.g. ‘example.com/google/website/seo/link/oneway/…’ that content resides the lower priority it gets from the major search engines. Do not go deeper than 1 or 2 sub folder from the root folder of your website.

This is according to my experience so far; however you might know something else which I did not mention or you feel should be included, so have your saying by leaving the comment. Even your opinion is also welcome. I will appreciate your response as this will also help others to solve their SEO dilemmas.

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SEO for E-commerce site: Part-2 Tips to Remember

May 10, 2008 at 5:55 pm · Filed under SEO, Technical SEO ·Tagged , , ,

In my previous post, I have listed down few most common mistakes which may cost much to the site.

Here, I am writing some tips to optimize Ecommerce sites to make them more search engine & user friendly.

Ecommerce Site Optimization Tips:

  • On site optimization is most important for Ecommerce sites. On site optimization can be defined as site wide optimization which helps to create the overall theme & hierarchy of the site. This involves keywords placement & management as per the site structure. Generally Ecommerce sites are huge in size (too many web pages) & diversified in terms of products & industry. For example, shopping sites that usually offers too many products from different categories like consumer electronics, household goods, jewellery etc. and in this case the number of categories, data & products are too large that it becomes difficult for search engines (even for users too) to relate the data & keywords. So to minimize this confusion, site-wide optimization is one of the best solutions.

  • Site Accessibility & navigability is the another important factor from both search engine & users perspective. Every page of the site should be easily accessible from the other pages of the site (should be maximum 2 click away from the home page).

  • Site Map (XML for SE’s & HTML for users) is very helpful tool to enhance the accessibility of the site for both SE’s & users. XML site map submissions helps Search Engines to know about all pages of your site including URLs that may not be discovered by SE’s normal crawling process. So don’t avoid it!!

  • Many webmasters unknowingly put all the products on a single page of the site. We always should create a separate page for each product category instead of putting all product (especially of different category) on same page.

Always try to write the product or service description in detail including all features & benefits. This is again good for both Search engine & user. See the following example:

Here, the product is very well defined with all features, rates, images from different angel etc.

  • On page optimization is very important for the site to rank them higher. I know it is always not possible to optimize all the pages of a very large Ecommerce site however we can try to optimize the first level (high importance) pages of the site.
  • Many webmasters miss the image optimization (alt tags creation) for the site which helps search engines to read the images.
  • Don’t underestimate the Website Design. The first impression of a website by a user arises in less than 10 seconds. A well defined site with great navigation & intuitive flow of information can do wonders for you.

Also, don’t forget to correct the common Ecommerce SEO mistakes listed in my previous post.

Try these points & you can capture the whole world!!!!!

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