Everything you need to know about Sub Domains.
The reason this article has been created, is due to the need of a clear understanding of Sub Domains, their benefits, and answers to common sub domain questions that never have a good resource to point too in a reply, we are here to change that. These questions can include things such as "What is a sub domain?" "Will my rankings decrease if I use a subdomain?" "Are there any benefits to using subdomain's?". These questions are something that need a good final answer, and this article is here to do just that, so lets get started!
What is a subdomain?
A subdomain is sort of a "new domain" but under and existing standard domain. Standard domains can take the form of "www.viperchill.com" or "http://viperchill.com" whereas subdomain's tend to take the form of "http://subdomain.viperchill.com" NOTICE that the "WWW" which stands for World Wide Web is not present in subdomain's.
Will my rankings decrease if I use a subdomain?
NO. Subdomain's are just the same as normal domains in getting rankings. The same things that you do to a standard domain to optimise it for the Search Engines, you will need to apply to a sub-domain to get the same or desired effect.
Pro's and Con's of using subdomain's?
There are quite a few pros to using sub domains. One is that you can submit these to directories, and gain independent link's etc, which you could not do with a page such as www.viperchill.com/folder/ . Also, all links from a subdomain to the main page, are seen as 1 way inbound links, rather than internal links, which is also a big bonus.
All the Con's of using subdomains, are the exact! same cons you would find starting a website completely from scratch. This includes things such as battling the Google Sandbox, getting inbound links, and getting the page popular so that its crawled, and then ultimately crawled more often.
If my subdomain is banned, will it affect my main domain?
The answer to this question, is sadly..YES!. However, that's not a set, or certain thing. This highly depends on the linking between the sub domain and the main domain, close relationship between the two is more likely to leave an effect on the main domain. There have been many, many instances for both cases of the story. Some times it has been known that sub domain banning has caused the main domain to be banned also. However, on the other side of the coin, sub domain banning has sometimes also led to no effect on the main domain, so its clearly dependant on circumstances, sadly of which are not fully clear.
Round-Up
So, do we recommend using sub-domains? Well, basically, its up to you. We do use a sub domain on this site, if we are honest, it wasn't by choice, and the way it was originally set up, but now that it is in place, we decide to keep it, this is our Search Engine Optimisation Blog of course which was set-up by our host in fact. Anyways, the point of the matter is it does add a lot of work, but there can be many advantages that you would like to take from it aswell. Certainly its either folders or subdomains, most of the time, in all honesty we would head towards folders, but in terms of the Blog, we wanted to be able to advertise it in many ways, so a sub domain it will stay.
