What is the best way to get a subdomain to be masked [look like] a domain?

Question

Hi…I’m putting together a site for a real estate company and I’m not sure how to put their request together. They want their main domain to showcase their properties for sale and once a property is clicked on their main domain, that property comes up as a custom-template single-page site. I figured to use subdomains for each property but the company owner does not like the way the subdomain URL looks on their printed materials—it’s too long and company owner believe buyers obtaining the printed materials will not type in such a long URL.

For example… https://realestatecompanydomain.com as a main site. Say the company has 10 properties for sale, I figured do a www.subdomain.realestatecompanydomain.com for each of the 10 properties.

My solution was to have the company purchase 10 domains and each domain name correlate to the street name and mask each subdomain with a domain.

For example… www.subdomain.realestatecompanydomain.com—>mask with—>www.mainstreet.com

The solution above would remove the lengthy subdomain on printed materials to a more shortened and simple domain.

But my solution seems to be costly and ineffective. I’m sure there’s another way of accomplishing what they want but I cannot seem to find an answer. I’ve read about CNAME Flattening and DNS providers such as CloudFlare but I’m not well-versed at those options.

I would appreciate any help.

Thanks!

jarland · Answer

Greetings!

I think this is more about strategy than a technical problem, but I might have advice under both circumstances.

Masking is fine, but I think this scenario overthinks it:

subdomain.domain.com masked as www.domaintwo.com

At this point you need a web server virtual host for both, domaintwo.com could be a reverse proxy for subdomain.domain.com. But then, at that point, why not just point domaintwo.com directly to the content. Since the business owner doesn’t seem to want or care about the subdomain, it starts to look like unnecessary excess.

Since the issue is URL length, and they don’t like subdomains, I think you end up with two options:

Their main website presents an opportunity to easily click the property that someone is looking for, so visitors go to their main website and quickly find themselves able to navigate to a page that shows the relevant property.
You use unique domains for property, each one pointing directly to the relevant content.

Those are my initial thoughts at least.

Jarland

JeanLikeDenim · Answer

From an SEO perspective—I’m wondering why the sub domain at all? This is common with property companies, pretty sure its a company structure issue more than anything. Anyhow…

Why not a logical web structure? https://realestatecompanydomain.com

Home: https://realestatecompanydomain.com Rentals: /rentals Buy: /buy Developments: /developments FAQ:https: /faq Contact: /contact

so…

https://realestatecompanydomain.com/developments/suburb/name-of-project

This way you localise the project through the domain which is obviously important in real estate, but also for search. Plus, you will absorb the web authority of a developed website.

If you build on a subdomain it’s like starting everything from scratch. Rather than adding a page, you’re adding a whole other website. It has it’s pros and cons but from my perspective it’s mostly cons for this purpose.

Main Cons of a subdomain for this purpose: -building a hosting environment for the subdomain -duplicating the look and feel of something pre-existing but with the agents “own style” -no website authority assuming it’s a new sub domain.

I realise this is a late answer but hopefully it can help someone in the future.

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What is the best way to get a subdomain to be masked [look like] a domain?

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