Easy Question Regarding Sub Domains

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Easy Question Regarding Sub Domains

Question about sub domains

Rachel1234

5:31 pm on Nov 20, 2009 (gmt 0)

I am in the process of designing a large community style site which will feature several different communities all run of the same domain name. There will be lots of content, reviews and articles on the site.

Can a SEO expert advise which would be the best structure:

Option 1
mainurl.com/communityname/page.html

Option 2
communityname.mainurl.com/page.html

My questions are:

Which would be the best for SEO purposes?

Would option 2 make it harder for the whole site to get spidered and indexed well with Google?

Any other comments / suggestions.

Many Thanks!

Rachel

physics

11:08 pm on Nov 20, 2009 (gmt 0)

Since the communities will be separate, if I were you I'd use subdomains. Not sure which is better for SEO but as a user or leader of a community I'd much prefer mycommunity.example.com over example.com/mycommunity.

Matt Cutts from Google has some input on subdomains vs. subdirectories (though a bit dated)

A subdomain can be useful to separate out content that is completely different. Google uses subdomains for distinct products such news.google.com or maps.google.com, for example.

[mattcutts.com...]

Here's a big thread on this topic from 2008:
The Great Subdomain vs Folder Debate [webmasterworld.com]