Hello:

I have about 80 domains (and growing) for an individual cities directory site Im starting. I am curious how PARKING domains would affect my search engine rankings. This is what I want to do:

Format: "DOMAIN TO BE PARKED > SUBDOMAIN TO BE PARKED ON"

city1.com > city1.mydomain.com
city2.com > city2.mydomain.com
city3.com > city3.mydomain.com
city4.com > city4.mydomain.com

Would this affect my search engine rankings badly, or is this a good idea? My main reason for doing it this way is so I can just ftp to 'mydomain.com' and go to whatever folder I want to instead of having 80+ (and growing) ftp accounts to remember usernames and passwords of. Also it would be annoying logging into WHM and seeing hundreds of domain accounts. I've parked a few domains in the past and it seems like Google may not like them, but I used to be pretty crappy at SEO, Im getting a lot better. If anyone here is an SEO expert, your help would be appreciated.

It shouldn't, because they are parked on subdomains. Subdomains are not considered part of the main domain in the search engine world.

Do you think I should park them though, or do each individual domain? I figure if Im registering the domain name, it will be easier for the client to remember 'city1.com' instead of 'city1.mydomain.com'. What is your opinion? Also others who view this thread please reply, I would like other opinions / information as well.

They could use 'city1.com' instead of 'city1.mydomain.com' they both would go to the same place. Just add them as an addon domain.

I know this, Ive been working with the tech side of hosting for many years, I was asking about SEO results. I know they would go to the same place, but I dont know if Google likes parked domains though, thats my question. Im just talking about URL indexing on Google, it would show 'city1.mydomain.com' instead of 'city1.com', so I think it may be a better idea to do them individually.

Your best method would be a 301 redirect from the domain to the subdomain. Search engines do not penalize for 301 redirects.

Originally posted by tadevelopers
I know this, Ive been working with the tech side of hosting for many years, I was asking about SEO results. I know they would go to the same place, but I dont know if Google likes parked domains though, thats my question. Im just talking about URL indexing on Google, it would show 'city1.mydomain.com' instead of 'city1.com', so I think it may be a better idea to do them individually.

Why park the domain? If you want to do the city1.domain.com do that. Just make the main page domain.com link into each city area. Maybe add some text content on the main page about that city.

Better then a redirect, better then a parked domain. Links into each subdomain. A good way to make sure each subdomain is found and when you update the main domain.com page with new city1.domain.com you will be getting it index faster then just getting outside links.

Also have each subdomain link back to the main domain. If you domain is allcities.com link back to the main domain with All Cities.

While reading this I came up with one question. If you have lots of subdomains, do you get AdSense revenue from all of them, or just the 2nd level domain?

Originally posted by 47lab
While reading this I came up with one question. If you have lots of subdomains, do you get AdSense revenue from all of them, or just the 2nd level domain? You get AdSense revenue from any pages on which you're displaying ads, regarless of that page's url. So maybe I'm missing the point of your question, but why would it make any difference?

Subdomains are not considered as the same domain in search engines