Hello, I'm working on a client website, that will soon be launched. I'm wondering what would be the best architecture for their website: 1) Only 1 domain name will be used 2) Company is present in numerous countries 3) Those countries may have more than 1 language 4) In each country, their "customers" will be able to build their own website, located on the main domain. 5) They have more than 10000 "customers" 6) The customers will be able to build their own content, but will generally select from a Database the content they want to show, so the content will be partially the same, from a customer to the other 7) The main site will link to the regional website 8) The regional website will link to the customers in that region 9) The client website will like to the region, and eventually to the main site So basically, my dilemna is related to the use of subdomains vs directories. What structure would you recommend: uk.en.domain.com/customername uk.domain.com/en/customername customername.domain.com/uk/en domain.com/uk/en/customername As there are 10000 customers, and that content will be partially the same, I think that using 10000 subdomains may be problematic. However, in terms of branding, I think it is best to use subdomains. I would personnaly go with uk.en.domain.com/customername, because it legitimates the use of subdomains for regional purpose. What do you think?
I would go with directories. For the purposes of branding In most cases (possibly not yours, I don't know enough yet) If you want people to remember your website - they're going to have to remember the main domain. You should keep that domain as simple and consistent as possible. Furthermore, using subdomains usually means there's no "www" before the domain. For some reason, your average joe is stuck on "www," and tends to get confused without it. Directories also seem cleaner to me. I have no data to back this up, but slashes seem more navigable and organized than the subdomain.othersubdomain.doman.com. I doubt that spiders have a hard time getting through them. I also just heard on SEO rockstars Matt Cutts saying that Google is about to cut down on subdomain spam. So. If you're spamming, definetly don't do it. The only reason why I like the subdomain arch. is if you're geographically redirecting your clients from the homepage to a specific geographically optimized subdomain of the site. That's all I can tell you.
Thanks mtb167 "In most cases (possibly not yours, I don't know enough yet) If you want people to remember your website - they're going to have to remember the main domain. You should keep that domain as simple and consistent as possible. Furthermore, using subdomains usually means there's no "www" before the domain. For some reason, your average joe is stuck on "www," and tends to get confused without it." Good point. However, whether I use directories or subdomains, people will land on the main page, unless they found the subdomain through SE or links. I don't think this is the kind of website you visit every day "Directories also seem cleaner to me. I have no data to back this up, but slashes seem more navigable and organized than the subdomain.othersubdomain.doman.com. I doubt that spiders have a hard time getting through them. I also just heard on SEO rockstars Matt Cutts saying that Google is about to cut down on subdomain spam. So. If you're spamming, definetly don't do it." It's no spam. We are talking about a multinational company, who wants to do some regional portals, and they want to do it on the same domain. Also, the problem is that having a lot of "/" is no good for SEO purpose. Finally, I think spiders will be more wary about subdomains, because they are often used for SEO/spam purposes, but I guess that they should finally give them more weight than a directory if it's use is legitimate, because the owner of the website created this subdomain because it was important enough to have it's own domain..but I may be wrong.. "The only reason why I like the subdomain arch. is if you're geographically redirecting your clients from the homepage to a specific geographically optimized subdomain of the site." Yes, this is the main reason I want to do this. People from UK will have access to all the british "clients" of the company, they won't care about the rest of the world.