How best to use subdomains.

1. 96

   Thomas Swanposted 10 years ago

   I am someone who writes on a lot of different subjects including science, history, psychology, politics, religion, and sport. I have noticed that google tends to associate my subdomain with a particular type of article (sport), and gives me more traffic in that area. Google seems to have this idea that everyone's website should be on a niche topic, and I believe it associates keywords with our subdomains/sites for the topic that it has deemed to be our main source of content. Would this be a good reason to split my account into 3 or 4 subdomains, with each focussing on one area (e.g. politics and history in one subdomain, science and psychology in another, etc)?
   
   Is this a common argument for using multiple subdomains? I suppose the downside would be losing the traffic I currently get on some of these articles, and losing comments during the process of republishing. Any help is welcome.

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   1. 87

      Simone Smithposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Hey Thomas Swan!
      I have not, internally or externally, heard of any concrete or verifiable benefits of either splitting one's work into themed subdomains or publishing on a variety of subjects within one.
      If I were to recommend one thing over another, it might be to keep everything together, as HubPages is specially structured in manner that does *not* require one to only publish on one subject to make sense. Then again, it's really up to you!

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      1. 96

         Thomas Swanposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         Thanks Simone. Yes, it would be a lot of work to republish most of my articles, so I'll stick with one subdomain for now.

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2. STAFF

   Paul Edmondsonposted 10 years ago

   A while ago, Johnmu over at google told me there was a lot of room between an authority site on a topic and a general site.  I've always been of the opinion that it's best to write under your own name, and make sure the content is very good regardless of the topic you're covering.  So, my subdomain is my name and I write about everything from BBQ to SEO on the same site.

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   1. 96

      Thomas Swanposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Well if google says it's ok, I suppose it is. Thanks for the reply Paul. I also write under my own name and put a lot of effort into my work. It's almost impossible for me to finish a hub entirely in one day.
      
      I raised the point because my father recently put some articles about "Taut Law" on his website. The main focus of the site is quotations, of which he has thousands separated over about 100 topics. He already had some articles on there too. However, after putting the new articles up, webmaster tools told him that his keywords now included the words "taut" and "law". After this, traffic to his quotes pages plummeted. He took the articles down shortly after that. It makes me think that google likes to categorize websites into a certain niche, and objects when you try to move outside the little box they've placed you in.

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      1. 90

         Will Apseposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         Your fathers' quotes may have triggered a duplicate issue if the same text appeared elsewhere online. Certainly, anything that makes Google think your site is a scraper site is a problem.

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3. 79

   snakeslaneposted 10 years ago

   Simone Smith posted
   
   "Hey Thomas Swan!
   I have not, internally or externally, heard of any concrete or verifiable benefits of either splitting one's work into themed subdomains or publishing on a variety of subjects within one.
   If I were to recommend one thing over another, it might be to keep everything together, as HubPages is specially structured in manner that does *not* require one to only publish on one subject to make sense. Then again, it's really up to you! big_smile"
   
   
   
   Paul Edmondson posted
   
   "A while ago, Johnmu over at google told me there was a lot of room between an authority site on a topic and a general site.  I've always been of the opinion that it's best to write under your own name, and make sure the content is very good regardless of the topic you're covering.  So, my subdomain is my name and I write about everything from BBQ to SEO on the same site."
   
   Interesting...

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4. 0

   Educateurselfposted 10 years ago

   i think its even better to write on different subjects.

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   1. 86

      TIMETRAVELER2posted 10 years agoin reply to this

      I write in one sub domain, but I write in five niches within that domain and link them to each other.  This really helps me to stay focused yet gives me the opportunity to write what I like.  Maybe this will work for you, too.

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