Online Marketing Today

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“My daughter is now full time in the family web business so we’re setting her up with a blog whose theme will be about her backyard poultry keeping. Now I’m not sure of the best way to proceed. I’ve got 3 options:

1. Set up a completely new domain for her – which I could link to from existing established sites but I think would still take time to get out of the sandbox
2. Set up a sub-domain off my existing poultry site. I run my blog like this off my gardening site and it seems to work well. We recently set up a new sub-domain for a classified advert section and it was indexed the same day it was linked to from the main site.
3. Set it up in a directory off the main site

A big part of the purpose of the blog is to link back to articles and to ‘introduce’ new articles on the main site. I prefer to do my articles manually as I can better position adverts on the page etc. Any thoughts on which option would be the best to go for?” ~ John Harrison

Hi John,

I personally know what a powerful web property you have, so here are a few things for you to consider when making this decision.

Ultimately it depends on whether or not you plan on building this section out as an “independent” asset to the primary website. By that I mean if you would like the option to sell that proportion of your website as an independent identity in the future – whilst you keep the remaining, or sell that separately.

Obviously it’s going to largely be tied into your primary website to begin with – but in terms of a future sale – there is no reason why a buyer could not be found based on securing a 12 month continuation. That is the “new asset” remains supported by your primary website “as is” for that term so the new owner can develop things from there.

Now that’s some long term planning, but I bring that up because based on how powerful your website is, realistically you could go with any of the 3 options you mention and still have excellent success.

If you go for a new domain entirely, then that’s where the potential resell value lies.

No one is going to be interested in purchasing a sub-domain (well they might but you wont get the same value).

I think you’d be hard pressed to sell a “directory” off your website as well ;-0

As for how the search engines actually see the 3 distinct options…

1. A new domain is obviously seen as a completely new domain.
2. A sub-domain is treated by Google as an entirely different domain (so this is the same as the above when we’re talking about building an entirely new channel on the website).
3. A directory or folder off the primary domain is seen as an extension to the main website. As a result it’s going to be “seen” as the same website.

If you don’t care about the idea of potentially selling the new channel as a separate entity in the future, I would run with the latter. Simply create a directory off the primary domain. That way it’s going to become just as strong as the rest of the website and you’ll see results much faster.

Your new pages will be index faster. They will rank faster. They will receive the benefits of the existing “theme relevancy” of the primary website. I know you’re already doing well for “poultry” related content.

This all means you’ll get more traffic arriving from organic search engine rankings, and any respective increase in revenue, in the shortest time frame.

If potential resell as a separate entity is an option (and remember, you will still be adding value to the existing total asset if you simply go down the directory route) then I wouldn’t go for the sub-domain. You might as well build a new domain entirely because the SEO impacts (potential sandboxing) are the same.

You already mentioned that your new sub-domain classified section was indexed within a day – so, given what an authority your website is, there’s no reason why a totally new domain wouldn’t get the same result if you linked to it in the same fashion.

As far as sandboxing goes – really that’s about the content.

Content will be found and indexed quickly, and might receive high search engine rankings for a brief time – generally a couple of days – before it drops right back in ranking. It then takes some time for it to mature and spring back in the rankings.

This effect happens on all new content (and websites), but it seems more prominent in highly competitive niche industries (of which I wouldn’t consider you a part of).

So I wouldn’t be concerned about getting sandboxed at all. Worst case you won’t receive as much traffic as you’re going to receive after 3 months – but if you’re not into the instant gratification thing then there’s no issue.

Plus, given the existing volume of traffic your website currently receives (and how much can be redirected to a new domain) the new blog should receive excellent exposure during the early stages anyway.

Now having said all of that you also mentioned…

“A big part of the purpose of the blog is to link back to articles and to ‘introduce’ new articles on the main site.”

If that is the case, and if the blog has going to have very little unique content of its own – again I would go down the creating a new directory route as it will help to strengthen the primary website via the internal linking.

It might also not have as much “resell value” if you’re simply going to be using it to reference existing articles on the primary domain. Of course, that again depends on what you and your daughter envisage for the blog long term.

Anyway, hope this has given you a few things to think about and will help in making your final decision.

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