My reviews site is getting quite big, so I feel I'd be better off splitting off some of the brands I cover into little webites on subdomains, to make them more organised. This would also allow me to submit them to more directories as many more accept subdomains compared to deep links.

I plan to do a 301 redirect from the individual pages of the old site to the new sites, as to avoid duplicate content. All internal links from the old site I will update to point to the right pages in the subdomain.

Are there any other SEO implications of making this change?

Thanks a lot!

IMO there should be no problem, in fact I think its a good idea to organize very large sites.

well, best to be careful in which order you do it

make sure you don't have any links pointing to the new sub domains, until those are finished, then do a remove from the google index, I know that's rather drastic, but it's needed, then do the redirect

thing is that I've done more or less the same about a year ago, and for about 1-2 weeks I disappeared from the rankings as google needed to recalculate etc, but I've heard from many other people who didn't remove the old pages from the index that they dropped a whole lot longer, this because the new pages ended up in the supplemental index, while the old pages were redirected

I had contact with a client about this, he didn't want to remove his pages from the index, fearing that it would damage him, after 2 months, he gave up and removed them anyway, as he lost all of his rankings and didn't got them back ...

so, make sure that google don't pick up those new pages, as long they're in the google index, even if you have a redirect of them, google will place them in the supplemental index and then it's very hard to get out of it again

Hmm thanks guys... I sort of thought that a 301 was meant for exactly this reason, ie a permanent move of a page... so google should not penalise it... doesn't mean it won't though...

well, google doesn't penalize it, you just confuse their system, that's why the gave you the remove tool ;-)

From what I hear though, their removal tool can take months to remove.... Also any link value from the old pages 'should' be passed to the new re-directed pages... but it may be lost if the pages are removed?

If you put your 301 redirect in the .htaccess file you can safely remove the old pages as soon as the new ones are spidered by all the search engines you care about. This should not result in a loss of rankings or PR.

Indeed......using 301 redirect will be the best idea because it is only redirect which is recomended by search engines. Using 301 is just like replacing your domain and as soon as you done it old pages will be removed and relaced by new ones and even it does not effect on your page rank search engine ranking.

My 301 re-directs are done through cpanel, which I assume gives the same results? It clearly lables them as 301 or 302 redirect...

I believe that cpanel puts the 301 redirects in the .htaccess file and it seems to work fine.

So long as you have 3o1 redirects in place you do not have to worry about the old pages being seen as duplicates, but if you need to speed up the removal of the old pages from Google, get a Google account and use their webmaster tools to send a list of pages which need to be removed. Google claim that the use of this tool will result in the old pages being removed the next time the site is spidered.

Thank you Mel!

well, maybe like Mel said, if the website is very large, but otherwise I wouldn't do that,

Isn't sub-domain considered as a whole different website by Search Engines?

Yes it is but the fact is that your subdomains are legitimate sources of links and a great way for your viewers to concentrate on the area they are most interested in.

Not much different than directories on you main site, but with a few advantages.

Nope. If I type in one of my client's brand names, then the main domain's homepage comes up at #1, with two subdomains included in the Google Sitelinks. Subdomains are not considered as wholly different to the parent domain, nor are they considered as wholly the same...

ha, i didn't know, can you explain a little more? Thanks

Not sure what that proves as a search for the domain name will turn up pages that only mention the domain name. One of my dormant domains is showing phantom pages in Google search results as a result of the page being redirected to the active domain.
The Sitelinks are interesting though as that shows that Google is aware that they are related,

Hiya Mel. Just to clarify, I mentioned searching for a brand term rather than a domain name search.

This would appear to indicate that the subdomains are in googles eyes related to the root domain, but what that means for rankings is not at all clear.

Given a choice I would prefer links from subdomains over links from folders.

I have just seen this on Search Engine Land:

http://searchengineland.com/071207-090257.php

Wow...I guess I got what I wished for.

That is ground breaking.

Sucks for SRM too.

Well the news travels fast. I am glad this will make it clear for everyone.
On the other hand, this will affect SRM as Gennady said.

SRM?

Search reputation management.

I was thinking if something like that, but not in that acronym lol.

I think my name requires a little bit of SRM.

Makes sense

Google's already been treating subdomains like folders in a lot of ways anyway.

I guess owners will just have to purchase a proper domain instead of the subdomain, and do a 301 re-direct from the sub...