Hi All, I'm confused for my sites structure, my site is performing well in SEs and has some amount of branding too, now I want to add few more sections but i'm confused in usage of sub-directories and sub-domains. With SEO prospective which one is better? Pls help me out with reasons and eg. Regards Harry
Depends on what you're trying to do. Subdirectores work fine if you're buidling a regular website. But if you want to make a site with multiple users (i.e blogs) then its better to install them on subdomains.
Subdomains better for google. (i think ) http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=craigslist&spell=1 and read this http://www.esoos.com/archives/subdirectories_vs_subdomains_which_is_better.html
If you promote this new site from your current website you should create subdirectory cause SE's not see these links as outbound link. It's good for you.
Each sub-domain is treated as a single domain by search engines. I guess it's a lot better to use sub-domain than sub-directory. I agree with "BWDOW", since it's also depending on your purpose!
From my experience, Google looks at the subdomains as an entity by itself. If you have it where the category is a subfolder then search engines look at it as part of the primary domain. So, domain.tld/category is part of the contents of domain.tld and category.domain.tld is a separate entity from domain.tld.
Personally i use subdomain rather than subdirectory. It is easier to manage and neat. The cons so far i know is, the PR for new subdomain won't be shared from main domain.
In most cases you'll want to use a subdirectory for SEO. Google has a tendency to treat subdomains (somewhat) as separate sites. That means that any links you get to your subdomain won't increase the overall PageRank/authority/link popularity of your main site as much as if you got a link to a subdirectory. That could change going forward, but that's where things stand now.