I have setup a system that will allow me to generate sub websites. These will be completely independent websites that will share a single users database and will all fall under video games. The parent site is a gaming site and the sub websites will be for specific gsmes.   I need to decide whether I should go with a system like calloftuty.example.com or example.com/callofduty.   I want to be able to make potentially 1000s of these so I want to get it right from the start. Subdomains seem the best to me since session data isn't shared and that's what I want as all sub websites use the same code base but have a different dB.   The reason I ask is because I have seen a lot of guides that say subdomains are bad and others say its good. I saw a post that mentioned Google could penalise you if you use subdomains to cheat in keywords. E.g. how-to-do-something.example.com.   Will I be OK from an SEO and website point of view to create many subdomains dedicated to specific games or game series rather than going with sub directories?  I can go with either system if one is better than the other.
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If I have example.com, and blog.example.com, do search engines see those as one site or two? Will using subdomains hurt SEO? I have some technical reasons why I can't use example.com/blog.
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My company has two websites a main one at www.example.com and one at subdomain.example.com which is a subdomain of the first and is our self hosted blog.   The way Google sees these with the www or no-www (called naked for now on) is that each of these actually are different when the www or naked version is used/not used in the front of the domain. I completely understand this. It is also advised that both should be set up in the Google Webmaster Tools, which I have done. Correct me if I am wrong on that in regard to having both set up.  Now the way it appears is that we can set a preferred domain up in Webmaster Tools only at the root domain level. The subdomain cannot have this and actually says the following:  **Restricted to root level domains only**.  So it appears that the domain should follow what the root domain says, which on our preferred one says to display the www.example.com and not the naked version. That is one issue I have in that one displays one way and the other displays another.   Is it that we have the wrong redirects in place for the subdomain? Another question is does this have any affect on SEO in regards to duplicate content on the web in how we have set this up?
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We have a ton of alternate domain names. What is the best strategy as far as SEO strategy is concerned? Do we want to 301 redirect them all to our primary domain or set up simple landing pages that link to the main site?
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I'm building an inventory database that stores IT hardware, such as desktop computers, laptops, switches, routers, mobile phones, etc. I'm using supertype/subtype pattern, where all devices are stored in a single table, and specific information is put into subtype tables. My dilemma is choosing between the following two designs:    In the top diagram all devices share common subtypes. For example, desktop computers and laptops would have records in the following tables: Device, NetworkDevice. A switch would have records in: Device, NetworkDevice. A router would have records in: Device, NetworkDevice, WANDevice. Any device for which we track location will have a record in Location. Some pros and cons that I thought of for this setup:   Pro: SELECTing records based on a common field, like Hostname, or LocationID is easier. Pro: No null fields. Con: Tables that should be included in CRUD operations for a particular device are not obvious, and may confuse future DBAs.   In the bottom diagram all devices have their own subtype (There are more classes of device that are not shown here). In this situation, it is obvious which tables records get inserted to or selected from. Desktop computers and laptops go in Computer, etc. Some pros and cons that I thought of for this setup:   Pro: It is immediately obvious which tables to use for CRUD operations for subtypes. Pro: Only have to use one table for CRUD operations. Con: SELECTing records based on common subtype fields requires all tables to be combined, for example searching by Hostname, or LocationID.   In both situations, the ClassDiscriminator field is placed in subtype tables for use with a CHECK constraint to control which types can be inserted.  Are there any recommendations for which design is better, or is it completely a matter of opinion and dependent on the intended purpose of the database?  EDIT: A specific question I have regards the overlapping nature of the table "NetworkDevice". This table is meant to hold network information for any device with a hostname and/or IP address, whether it is a computer, switch, or router. Is the overlapping nature of this table something that could cause problems, or is it okay to implement it this way?  Thank you in advance for any input provided. Please ask if any additional information is needed.
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There is much overlap between the SO, SF and SU sites.  For instance, questions about shell programming are programming related (since they are about programming), about system administration (because they manage the shell) and for single users too, if they want to script their computer.    I suggest allowing questions that overlap sites to be posted to more than one site simultaneously in order to:   avoid duplication between sites get answers from all 3 communities.   I suggest that the answers be visible on all relevant sites, and that any votes apply to all relevant sites.  Edit:  For instance, questions about VIM have appeared in SO (637/222780 questions) and in SF (17/8142 questions).  VIM is a valuable tool for programmers as well as sysadmins.  Where do such questions belong?  I didn't review all the questions in SO but the ones in SF could easily be in SO as well.  How about Perl?  9/8142 on SF and 1772/222780 on SO.  If you're a sysadmin but not a programmer, Perl is most certainly relevant.  These are two cases where there is overlap.  I'm sure there are many more.  Edit: Here are some good examples of questions on SU that are relevant to SF and SO as well:       Edit: Here's another example of such concerns:
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Simple question  What is better:  http://www.example.com/product/123/subpage/456.html   or  http://www.example.com/product?123/subpage/456   As far as I know they would rank the same SEO wise, but my SEO knowledge might be a little off. Also the last one seems to be easier and cleaner to implement on my end.  Please explain to me which is better and for what reasons.
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Is there anything inherently more insecure about using a wildcard SSL certificate over a regular SSL certificate?  We are looking to implement a subdomained web application (a la FreshBooks and BaseCamp, where users pick a subdomain), and one of our team members is concerned that a wildcard SSL approach is not secure enough (if so, how do FreshBooks and BaseCamp do it?!?).  The alternate solution is to use a single subdomain, like https://ssl.domain.com and when a user types in http://user.domain.com we set the subdomain in the session, and immediately redirect the user's future requests to "" and use the session information to show the user's information.  My concern is that if a user wants to send a link to their domain to a friend, they will copy/paste the URL in the browser (now https://ssl.domain.com) which will be our main home page, and not the user's home page.  BTW, if I have missed a major best-practice for this kind of scenario, please let me know.
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I have a website with couple of pages.  In the home page I have fair amount of content with required amount of keyword density. Other pages are fine and having enough amount of content whereas contact page is just a simple page with no content except a contact form.  When I search for my domain name in Google Search, on the third page I'm ranked 26, 27, 28, and the pages are:  mydomain/contact mydomain/someservice mydomain/someservice2   Whereas I am more interested to find my domain name alone in a Google search instead of inner pages; moreover I don't want to see that weird contact page appearing instead of my homepage.  If I use &lt;link rel="canonical" href="http://homepage.com/" /&gt; for all the rest pages will that help me?
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As I see it, the only effect of having three sites instead of one is that questions in Server&nbsp;Fault and Super&nbsp;User are seen less and answered less.   This just causes audience fragmentation and dissipation for no reason.   In addition it causes useless friction and waste regarding the endless issue, where does this question belong? Belongs-there, belongs-here...  The site comes with a powerful tag filtering feature anyway.  Those three sites have very similar audiences, questions, and expertise fields.  Take for example:   Where is the limit between writing macros and programming (Super&nbsp;User or Stack&nbsp;Overflow)? Is configuring rewrite rules for Apache programming or administration (Super&nbsp;User or Server&nbsp;Fault)? Is advanced registry configuration administration or power-user tasks (Super&nbsp;User or Server&nbsp;Fault)? Is writing Bash scripts programming or server administration (Stack&nbsp;Overflow or Server&nbsp;Fault)?   Feel free to add your examples in the comments...  I think the answer is that most questions fit in at least two sites and what matters is not the issue itself but what was the bigger issue the asker was trying to solve.
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I have one website. I have two domain names that I want to point to the same site install.   So whether you go to name-one.com or name-two.com you see the exact same site.  Now, I can either set up name-two.com to serve 301 redirect header redirecting to name-one.com – or, I can set up name-two.com as a CNAME in the DNS pointing to name-one.com  What is the different implications for SEO on this? What is recommended?  I would guess it's better for branding to use a 301 redirect, so that visitors will see one consistent url for my site, right?  The reason I want the two domains is that I want a version with regional letters ('ö' instead of 'oe' ) in the name.
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In researching the best practice for adding sites to the Search Console, I've often seen it suggested to add separate properties for different versions of the same website. Even in  it states:     "Similarly, if your site has http:// and https:// versions, you should   add each as a separate site."   I've seen the same suggested for www/non-www. So if a site is accessible at all the variations of http/s and www/non-www we should have four properties.  But what if the site is only accessible at one variant? i.e. https and www are forced via htaccess, so only  can ever be accessed - should we still add all the variants?   In essence, the problem is that I don't know why Google wants us to do this, so I can't work out if it'll be ok just to have one instance.
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I'm a designer and my company has a single app that serves two different types of user.   One group is the general public, who uses the app to navigate big events (e.g. annual user group meeting sessions, exhibitors, connect with other attendees).  The second group is staff. They primarily access the profiles created by general users. They can add details, e.g. notes about conversations with them.  We have been asked to provide more 'staff' functionality. The app is getting quite large. I remember hearing that an app shouldn't be too "deep" (I think at an NNG course probably 2 yrs ago)... I think we can avoid a drill-down nightmare, but am worried about how large the footprint is getting.  Is there a rule of thumb for when to create a separate app, vs. wedging a lot of functionality into one? And/or can someone point me to a resource?
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When I set up a site in multiple languages, how should I set up my URLs for search engines and usability?  Let's say my site is www.example.com, and I'm translating into French and Spanish. What is best for usability and SEO?  Directory option:  http://www.example.com/sample.html http://www.example.com/fr/sample.html http://www.example.com/es/sample.html   Subdomain option:  http://www.example.com/sample.html http://fr.example.com/sample.html http://es.example.com/sample.html   Filename option:  http://www.example.com/sample.html http://www.example.com/sample.fr.html http://www.example.com/sample.es.html   Accept-Language header:  Or should I simply parse the  header and generate content server-side to suit that header?  Is there another way to do this? If the different language versions don't have different urls, what do I do about the search engines?    UPDATE 2011-12-06  Google has new recommendations for meta tags for explicitly pointing to other language content: .  UPDATE 2012-05-25  Related but not precisely:   UPDATE 2013-06-12  includes discussion of several URL schemes directly relevant to the question.
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We are currently planning on registering multiple domains for different parts of the website we own. For example consider that we have example.com as the main domain and have assigned all the sub-departments their own subdomain.    There will be tutorials.example.com, videos.example.com, articles.example.com, etc.  Now for marketing reasons we plan to register examplevids.com, exampletuts.com, etc.    The catch here is all these domains should somehow point to their respective subdomains. We can either use a permanent redirect or have and iframe to display the content directly from the subdomains.   Which approach is better considering SEO?  Will using iframes be considered replicating content by search engines? Or is it at all wise to have different domains?
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I have a client with a dozen territorial domains, like mydomain.co.uk, mydomain.fr, mydomain.de, etc Most of these domains hold a different language of the same dynamic content (shop), but some, like co.uk and .com, have the same language and content, except for some content customized to each country/domain in the front page, contact and other pages.  I am aware that we should use the canonical meta tag to mark those duplicated contents, but, we want the co.uk to be present in UK ( indexed in google.co.uk ) and the .com to be present in US and other countries, for example, or least that is the goal.  Is there anything we can do to "help" google determine the geographical meaning of each domain? If we mark with canonical tag the .com and co.uk sites, do you know how google will decide which one to show on a given search?
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I recently posted a question about using a site structure similar to what's shown below.   example.com/bikes/foo-bike/wheels    //content about foo-bike's wheels example.com/bikes/bar-bike/wheels    //content about bar-bike's wheels   If two bikes are at comparable price points, it's likely that they will have similar components. Should I be concerned if multiple bikes have similar content and the only major difference between them is their component name?  The website I'm creating is a user guide for bikes. With the URL structure above I'm a little worried that I run the risk for creating duplicate content.
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I'm trying to set up tracking on a project that I'm working on.   The main site is at http://www.example.com/  The order page is at https://www.example.com/index.php   Currently they have two different profiles under separate domains:     Main Site:   UA-aaaaaaaa-1   Order Site  UA-aaaaaaaa-2   This isn't giving me the results I want. When on the order page, I would like to see where on the main page users came from. Also, when on the main page I'd like to see when they navigate away to the order page, right now I can't tell the difference between an exit and order page click.  I'm not even getting the main site as a referrer to the order page.  What am I doing wrong? Should they be under one profile? Or two like I have them. Should I be setting the domain name (_setDomainName)? Should I be using _link() when linking to the order page. I can't find the right resource for what I need.