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Dear Kalena…
Topweddingsites.com main domain is doing fine in the serps but our state sub domains dropped from page one for all of our top keywords to page 5 and below. Trying to figure out - is it that Google has decided folders are a better way to do a portal like this over sub domains?
Donna
Kalena’s Answer:
Dear Donna
As far as I know, Google doesn’t have a preference when it comes to sites that use sub directories like http://www.yoursite.com/state/index.htm or sub domains like http://state.yoursite.com. Both versions are indexable. But something to keep in mind is that most search engines only index a certain number of sub levels deep on your site. So, for example, a page like http://www.yoursite.com/state/city/index.htm might get indexed, while http://www.yoursite.com/state/city/region/street/index.htm may not.
The closer your content is to the top level of your site, the more likely it will be found and indexed. It’s also widely assumed that content closer to the top level is considered to be more important by Google and given more relevancy weight in Google’s ranking algorithm. Many SEO experts insist that sub-domains are more effective than sub directories and rank better too.
As for your situation, I don’t think it has anything to do with your use of sub domains. I think it has more to do with the fact that your State pages are all very similar to each other. For example http://ok.topweddingsites.com/ is almost identical to http://mi.topweddingsites.com/. Multiply that by 50 States and you’ve got yourself a serious duplicate content problem.
In their Webmaster Guidelines, Google specifically states:
“Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.”
My guess is that your State sub domains have tripped a duplicate content filter and have been slapped with a ranking suppression or penalty. If you review Google’s definition of duplicate content, you’ll see some helpful suggestions for fixing the problem.
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