Subdomains are domains set up almost as folders within the main domain. For example, what if your main domain is:

www.Books.com

The Subdomains could be:

Cook.Books.com

Fiction.Books.com

Used.Books.com

From these examples it’s clear that they’re often used to focus on a subcategory of the primary domain. This application for the purposes of SEO will have to wait for a different article. Right now we want to examine how they can be used to raise your Pay-Per-Click (PPC) or Paid Search profits. But you should know the ‘Why’ first.

Why would you use subdomains for your Google AdWords campaigns? There’s a couple of reasons. Number 1, they allow you to get another occurrence of an important keyword into your ad. Let’s say you’re a real estate agent. You want to match your ad copy and content to your most important keywords, and their markets, as closely as possible. Here’s what you'd do.

For your business prospects you’d create a subdomain like this one:

Commercial.RealEstateAgent.com

This insertion of ‘Commercial’ clearly communicates that you serve business real estate clients. The space you have to work with in a Google AdWords ad is very limited. Therefore any extra keyword mention can be very valuable to you. After all, most searchers who are looking for space for their shop or business are going to use that word, ‘Commercial’, when they’re searching in Google. It just makes sense because that’s how most define and label that type of real estate, right? But that subdomain gives you more than just that bump up in searcher’s minds

The AdWords Built-In Advantage

You might have noticed that Google bolds the words in your AdWords ads when they match a search term a searcher has used. So when someone has searched for ‘Commercial real estate agent’, all occurrences of any of those 4 words in your ad will now be in bold type. And that benefit extends to terms in your URL. If you haven’t noticed, Bold Type makes things stand out.

Anything that causes your ad & your message to stand out on that search page is an advantage over your competition. You need to grab any and every edge you can get in business because that can be the difference between success and failure. That’s why this is something you need to think about.

What You Give Your Pay-Per-Click Visitors Matters. A lot.

That’s not the only reason to use a subdomain in your Pay-Per-Click campaigns, though. Subdomains also give you the ability to focus on serving that customer you’ve gained from Google with exactly what they want.

Every day businesses online lose customers and clients because their visitors can’t find what they’re looking for fast enough. How soon do you leave a site if you can’t locate that one thing you want? Pretty quick, I’m sure. You and I both know there’s another person selling the same thing a click or 2 away so it’s no big deal to hit the Back button.

A subdomain that’s concentrated purely on a specific area gives you the opportunity to focus very clearly on a specific need. You can, and should, restrict the content on the subdomain to the subject of that subdomain, like commercial real estate, for example. When you serve your visitors precisely what they want, you increase the chances of a sale. Why wouldn’t you do that?

Now to make all of this work you still need to target your AdWords campaign precisely so that the right customers get the right ad and see the right subdomain. You don’t want Residential real estate clients getting the Commercial real estate ad. Especially since that ad will take them to the Commercial content, which a Residential customer has no interest in.

That means you have to create keyword targeting and focus within your campaign. That’s a subject and a process that’ll have to wait for another article, or series of articles. For now, keep in mind the use and powerful benefits of subdomains in Pay-Per-Click. They could make a huge difference for your business.