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Your Web writer’s Web site: Domains, folders, and sub-domains

May 3rd, 2007 Subscribe To Our Feed

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When you’re setting up your writer’s Web site (or any other site for that matter), you’ll want to consider how to organize it, that is, whether to create subfolders or subdomains. If your domain, or URL, is www.fakeyourname.com, a subfolder would look like this www.fakeyourname.com/subfolder. A subdomain would look like this: subdomain.fakeyourname.com.

How to decide

Name each of your pages as descriptively as possible, without making the URL too long. This helps with search engine optimization (SEO). You also want a person who only sees your URL to have a good idea of what content they would find if they clicked on your link.

Most people can organize their site info by simply using subfolders. Let’s say you were setting up a site with information on family vacation ideas, you might choose to organize your site into folders by geographical region or by activity. If you have a site devoted to household organization, your folders could be named after rooms of the house.

Each subfolder can also have its own subfolders. Using the example of the family vacation site, the geographical region and activity folders can be further divided by cost. If you were going to have a content page that described budget friendly options for traveling to Florida, your page might be named something like: www.fakefamilyvacationideas.com/florida/budget.

If you want to create a bit of separation between your content, yet still create brand recognition, you would want to add a subdomain. For instance, if you have a website that contains information about raising children and have been thinking about adding content about home schooling, setting up a subdomain may be your best option.

The search engines will treat your subdomain as if it is a separate website. By having incoming links to your main site, you can add to the traffic coming in to that site, as well. If someone is familiar with your main website, they will automatically relate your subdomain to your main domain. Yet, they will also understand exactly what type of information the subdomain has to offer.

Another reason to use subdomains is if you are creating a special event for your main website, such as an expo or class. Again, people that are already familiar with your main site will see that the site is affiliated with you. There is no concrete evidence that one method works better for search engine traffic. It is simply a matter of preference over which way you would rather organize things.

You may prefer a blog

Tip: over the past few months, I’ve been setting up more blogs than sites - because with a blog, you don’t need to break your brain wondering what you’ll have on the site. Site folders just become categories, and you can add as many categories as you need.