Domain or directory?

...which would be better, marketing wise?

[Jello]

I currently have 3 domains:
www.mycompany.tld
www.myproject.tld
www.myotherproject.tld

I've always liked showing domains as separate sites, but lately I've been wondering: in order to promote my company, would it be better to redirect the second and third domains to:
www.mycompany.tld/myproject/ and www.mycompany.tld/myotherproject/

Which of the two options would be the 'professional' way to go? Major entertainment companies seem to like presenting the sites as directories better. What do you think?

[korkus2000]

I would most likely use subdomians.

myotherproject.mycompany.tld
myproject.mycompany.tld

If you are not able to do that then personally I would use the directory structure.

[toolman]

If you can fill the 3 domains with unique content then that's the way to go. The more pages the better I always say. Lots and lots of text. Don't crosslink the 3 sites together either. Make them stand on their own. Use links sparingly between them.

[Jello]

Thanks for responding!

I actually hadn't even thought of subdomains yet. Another option... that's not making it any easier! ;)

Both project-domains are centered around entertainment, and not so much on text. They have very separate content and can really stand on their own, so I could easily keep them as separate domains. The question remains however, is if you think it would be smarter, or more 'professional' to do that, or to represent them as part of my company-website.

[joelpcox]

jello

until recently, i was webmaster at a large company. the marketing department was constantly having me set up unlinked subdirectories (www.companyname.com/projectname) off of our main site. they were huge on name recognition. as a matter of fact, i went through many logo changes and other painstaking projects just for the sake of name recognition (corporate branding initiatives, or whatever the heck youwant to call it).

either subdirectories or subdomains will, of course, include your company name. IMHO, i would say choose one one of these options, as opposed to the three separate domain names.

subdirectories are just slightly easier to set and also they put your company name first in the url.

hope this helps...

[Gaill]

I think all the layouts are profressional as long as the basic domain "MyDomain" has a professional sound. I have seen all styles from major companies.

Does Google prefer one over the other to get better spidered, positioned and page ranked?

[MyDomain.com...] (a directory that has index.htm)
Versus
[MyDomain.com...] (a page)
Versus
[Product1.MyDomain.com...] (sub domain)
Versus
[Product1MyDomain.com...] (I would have to have lots of domains.)