Subdomains or directories

I' m interested in peoples thoughts on what the best SEO way is of grouping content, subdomains or directories.

Using directories will give you better results on a "site:www...." search which may be reflected in SERPS but how does a subdomain also offer any advantages.

 

There are several discussions and articles around the web on this question -- see
Folders vs. Subdomains and Subdomain for my site?.

 

It depends. See Minstrel's answer for details.

 

Thanks Minstrel, guess I should have done a bit more searching before asking. The articles you pointed out did confirm my suspicions.

 

That wasn't meant as a criticism, dcteam -- what I meant was that the answer you get depends on who you ask as well as the circumstances but the sources I cited I think lay out the issues to be considered fairly well.

 

No criticism taken

 

I find that SEO wise subdirs work better as they are not regarded as "new domains" by some important se's

 

There are pros and cons to each, depending on things like how big your site is currently and how closely related are the topics for main site vs. the subdomain/subfolder. I think this is well laid out in the article I reference above at http://www.highrankings.com/issue105.htm -- scroll down until you find "Folders vs. Subdomains".

 

If your content relates, then do a subdirectory, it makes more sense imho.
I use subdomains for topics that have nothing to do with what my home page is about. it seems that the new msn beta version disregards unrelated content on subdirectories but validates sub domains as individual sites and ranks them for completely different keyterms than what the home page is ranked for.

 

In general, I would agree, sitetutor. For one thing, adding additional pages as subfolders gives you potentially more keywords/search terms leading back to the main site, as well as more (internal) backlinks. On the other hand, even if the content is related, if there is a logical separation between the content (for example, a main information site and a forum) and the main site is already a reasonable size, it may well make sense to create the secondary site (i.e., a forum) as a subdomain.

 

you're absolutely right, Minstrel. What relates in our opinion does not always relate in the opinions of Google and msn.

You should always start by knowing what you site is about and not get sidetracked into too many different directions.

My subdomains have complete unrelated rankings but the subdirectories are losing them.