Is it fine to put different category of stuff in a single domain name?

Question

I own a website which is regarding startups and finance. I am looking forward to work on Wordpress programming in which I would be selling wordpress themes. I thought of buying a domain name for Wordpress website but it takes quite lot of time to setup a website and then do its SEO.

Is it fine(in terms of SEO and professionalism) to put the Wordpress category inside my old domain like,

Domain:

www.startupsandfinance.com

Wordpress domain,

www.wp.startupsandfinance.com

Answer 1

First of all remember that sub-domains are considered by the search engines as completely new domains different from the main domain. So you do not get any of the SEO benefits including Page Rank, Link Juice, etc. It is better to have a separate domain if you want to build a new site unrelated to the main site. SEO benefits would be almost the same either wise.

As for your plan of a new topic, it is way better from SEO perspective to have niche specific sites and blogs. I am talking of this scenario.

www.startupsandfinance.com/wpthemes

If you have Google Adsense on your website or ads from third parties, it is imperative that your niche is specific on a particular domain. WordPress themes and startups & finance are two diametrically opposite marketplaces and mixing these two up would be harmful rather than beneficial for you.

That being said, you had better buy a new domain for WordPress themes. Of course, you would have to do all the SEO from the scratch but it would go a long way for you at the end of the day. You would have to do that in any case. Good Luck!

Answer 2

Any SEO you have done on your original domain will not automatically transfer to the subdomain, as it will be considered a separate entity by search engines.

From a professional standpoint, I would not recommend using a subdomain with a completely unrelated parent name, unless your WordPress themes will be focused on the same business sector (startup companies and finance, in this case). The use of any available name is a fine practice for developing the site, but you will probably not save enough time or effort to offset the possible confusion resulting from deploying it to the public in that manner.