Using Subdomains

[jwypick]

Hi! I'm working on a local directory. I know there have been other posts on whether they are worth the effort or not but I have a system that I think can be monetized and expand my local business. I will share later so I can get some feedback.

My niche is local restaurants. My question is:
Let's say I own newyorkrestaurants.com. I would build a landing page that contained the different cities within New York, for example brooklyn. I would create a subdomain, brooklyn.restaurantsnewyork.com to create a new page and listing for the restaurants in that area. That would be a full page with types of food etc.

It seems there would be SEO advantages. Would brooklyn.restaurantsnewyork.com be an advantage as a URL? It would also keep my site lite and mobile by only having one city at a time on the site, assuming each subdomain runs as a seperate site.

I am new to a lot of this, especially as far as implementation goes. Of all the sites I've found this is by far the most valuable both for information and community.

Thank you
John

 

[Colan Nielsen]

It seems there would be SEO advantages. Would brooklyn.restaurantsnewyork.com be an advantage as a URL?

Thank you
John

Hi John, can you clarify what you mean by this?

 

[jwypick]

Let me see if I can Colin.
My idea is to create a local directory, based on cities, for restaurants. I would like to have a main page such as restaurantsnewyork.com. On this page, besides advertising, I would like to have the listing of different cities.
I thought, can't say why exactly, that presenting each individual city as a subdomain would:
1. Keep my pages less intense for Mobile usage. Having one main page with several different city's that contain multiple listings would be slow loading and really large data wise.
2. By creating a subdomain I would actually double my SEO results. Example restaurantsnewyork. and brooklyn.restaurantsnewyork.com. Using good SEO I can possibly rank both.
3. By using a subdomain I would also be able to offer several different price points for each restaurant. This product is "hyper-local", my new SEO phrase.
4. By creating a subdomain specifically for a certain city, Brooklyn, the organic search results would be better.

I guess Colin, I'm just looking for the best way to set up this project. I could just do specific domains by city, restaurantsbrooklyny.com, restaurantsalbanyny.com.

There's a good possiblity that my "understanding" of subdomains is wrong. I've researched but not been able to find anything really definitive.

Thanks for checking it out.
John

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Based on my understanding of subdomains, I would actually advise not using them in your case. Have you read this post yet during your research? https://moz.com/community/q/moz-s-official-stance-on-subdomain-vs-subfolder-does-it-need-updating

 

[jwypick]

Thanks Colan, I'll check it out.
Much appreciated.
John

 

[leadjoint]

Subdomains are a good idea when you are offering two or more things independently. For example, Google is a search engine that also offers email (gmail) and storage (Google Drive). In such a case, you have separate subdomains to indicate that they are indeed separate 'domains'.

But in your case, Brooklyn restaurants is just a part of your New York Restaurants. They are categories or sections and should be placed as a folder - /locations/brooklyn if you will.

 

[jwypick]

Thank you so much. Great info. Going with folders. What a great community!

 

[JoyHawkins]

I agree with what leadjoint says but wouldn't bother with a "locations" folder and would just have domain.com/brooklyn/examplepage.

Shorter URLs perform better in Google so I try to remove any excess folders if at all possible.

 

[dealerpower]

Also, while developing your local directory, consider using schema.org for local business profile pages and take a look at the breadcrumbs schema. The breadcrumbs schema can improve what is seen as the URL in search results if you have long urls.