Should I Use Subdomains for This?

[Ann H]

I really like static pages for every category in my website, and then blog pages after that. For instance, if someone is on the home page and clicks on "dental" or "health insurance", I don't like it to go to a blog style page immediately. I would prefer for it to go to another static page that has all the glamour and good looks of a home page, along with a few simple widget areas summarizing what the blog posts would describe in more detail.

So, I was thinking of doing subdomains. For instance, the following site for Panera does that when you click on some of the menu items, or the catering widget under the slider for instance.
Panera Bread › Home

Please forgive me if my questions seem a little pedestrian. I built my website back in 2005 with Frontpage plus some html coding, and now am updating to Wordpress.

Questions -
1 - Does Google index the whole domain, or does it consider the main site and all the sub-domains to be different?
2 - Would this potentially hurt my SEO?
3 - Can I use different child themes on the sub-domains, and/or even different frameworks, like Genesis theme for the main site, but a Thesis theme for one of the sub-domains?
4 – Should I use pages instead, like copy the home page, then change the name to “dental” instead of “Home” or “Index”?
4 - Is a sub-domain the best way to accomplish my goals stated above, or is there a smarter way?

 

[ksigmtsu]

I really like static pages for every category in my website, and then blog pages after that. For instance, if someone is on the home page and clicks on "dental" or "health insurance", I don't like it to go to a blog style page immediately. I would prefer for it to go to another static page that has all the glamour and good looks of a home page, along with a few simple widget areas summarizing what the blog posts would describe in more detail.

So, I was thinking of doing subdomains. For instance, the following site for Panera does that when you click on some of the menu items, or the catering widget under the slider for instance.
Panera Bread › Home

Please forgive me if my questions seem a little pedestrian. I built my website back in 2005 with Frontpage plus some html coding, and now am updating to Wordpress.

Questions -
1 - Does Google index the whole domain, or does it consider the main site and all the sub-domains to be different?
2 - Would this potentially hurt my SEO?
3 - Can I use different child themes on the sub-domains, and/or even different frameworks, like Genesis theme for the main site, but a Thesis theme for one of the sub-domains?
4 – Should I use pages instead, like copy the home page, then change the name to “dental” instead of “Home” or “Index”?
4 - Is a sub-domain the best way to accomplish my goals stated above, or is there a smarter way?

It would be seen like a bunch of different sites and absolutely obliterate your seo. That's without the other technical hurdles, but in theory you could use different themes on every page if you wanted to expend the resources to do so. You can make headway theme style and lay out every page different if you see fit.

The best suggestion I would have for you would be to use the parent/child page relationship in wordpress and make a parent page for each "topic" which was like a home page for that topic, then put the pages behind that "parent" page. That's the appropriate way to do what you're suggesting.

Don't use subdomains unless you have plans other than SEO ever producing your traffic, you'd be shooting yourself in the foot.

 

[YouGotMyMoney]

Keep in mind that what may work for an e-commerce site or a brand like Panera bread, isn't necessarily what is good for an insurance lead generation website

 

[Ann H]

It would be seen like a bunch of different sites and absolutely obliterate your seo. That's without the other technical hurdles, but in theory you could use different themes on every page if you wanted to expend the resources to do so. You can make headway theme style and lay out every page different if you see fit.

The best suggestion I would have for you would be to use the parent/child page relationship in wordpress and make a parent page for each "topic" which was like a home page for that topic, then put the pages behind that "parent" page. That's the appropriate way to do what you're suggesting.

Don't use subdomains unless you have plans other than SEO ever producing your traffic, you'd be shooting yourself in the foot.

Thanks for the answer. I think your suggestion of a parent page for each topic with pages behind that parent page is a great solution. And, no, I don't want to shoot myself in the foot and ruin the SEO! Thanks again. Ann

 

[ksigmtsu]

Thanks for the answer. I think your suggestion of a parent page for each topic with pages behind that parent page is a great solution. And, no, I don't want to shoot myself in the foot and ruin the SEO! Thanks again. Ann

I've been shooting a bunch of videos showing how to do simple seo and things in wordpress, I'll try to shoot a video showing exactly what I mean by that parent-child thing and how it does the menus for it.

If you look at this page (Its just the most recent I've been working on, its not done yet) Term Life Insurance Quotes Online | Great Term Life Insurance Rates - you can see an example of parent-child relationship in the menu and in how it displays the dropdown under "Life Insurance Types" but I'm not even close to done with that page yet.

The basic idea is that you make those parent categories, then make pages that go under them by using the "Parent" option in the right column when you're making pages. Then you use the "Order" number to determine where in the menu order they fall. Then you can design those parent pages however you want.

Moving from frontpage to wordpress is probably a hell of a leap, I remember going from dreamweaver to handwriting the php then to wordpress, and it was a hell of a learning curve each time.
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Keep in mind that what may work for an e-commerce site or a brand like Panera bread, isn't necessarily what is good for an insurance lead generation website

Yeah, keep in mind that what you see fortune 500 companies doing, in general, will not work for you.

They have huge pockets to advertise their brand name, and they mostly do godawful SEO but it doesn't matter because people visit their site no matter the search results, they don't need the organic traffic.

I see a huge mistake like 80% of the time on agent sites where their main page doesn't even really have 150 words of content on it, and they have this cute ass theme with like 3 columns that looks really cute and has 0% chance of ever ranking for anything, but it looks a lot like something a huge company would do.

Sites that get organic traffic for keywords generally have 350-2000 words of content on the page. Just a fun fact. I think the average page 1 position 1 result last time I saw had around 1000 words to the page. I will freely admit that wikipedia probably throws it off a lot, but you can look at how high wikipedia ranks for EVERYTHING and tell that content of the page matters a lot.
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https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYNTkGbeXwn9PLf2L5JqjZi4SH-Elete3

That playlist shows a bunch of setup and info on wordpress.

 

[Ann H]

I think the parent/child solution is exactly what I want. You are so kind to offer a video explaining it. Thank you for that, and also for your detailed answers.

You wrote a couple of paragraphs that just struck me. They said:

I see a huge mistake like 80% of the time on agent sites where their main page doesn't even really have 150 words of content on it, and they have this cute ass theme with like 3 columns that looks really cute and has 0% chance of ever ranking for anything, but it looks a lot like something a huge company would do.

Sites that get organic traffic for keywords generally have 350-2000 words of content on the page. Just a fun fact. I think the average page 1 position 1 result last time I saw had around 1000 words to the page. I will freely admit that wikipedia probably throws it off a lot, but you can look at how high wikipedia ranks for EVERYTHING and tell that content of the page matters a lot.

So, even though I want a "pretty brochure" look, form should follow function. It is more important for my SEO to have content. Decision made - content always turns out to be king, doesn't it?

 

[ksigmtsu]

I think the parent/child solution is exactly what I want. You are so kind to offer a video explaining it. Thank you for that, and also for your detailed answers.

You wrote a couple of paragraphs that just struck me. They said:
So, even though I want a "pretty brochure" look, form should follow function. It is more important for my SEO to have content. Decision made - content always turns out to be king, doesn't it?

Yeah, basically if you want a brochure look, do that, but make sure you still have paragraph style content on the page under it. You always want content on the page if you want the page to rank organically. It's possible to achieve both by using things like accordions and sliders, but the way google looks at those has always been questioned for seo purposes. Word has always been that google had a hard time reading content hidden by java.

Eventually when I get a minute I'll do a video showing how to do keyword research and how to structure the content for seo purposes, but it's likely to be a very long video or a whole series of them.

I'm firmly of the belief that 350 words of content should be the bare minimum on any page if you want it to rank.