How to structure my new sites?

subdirectories or subdomains

[IPfreely]

Hi guys!

I just started my web business and could use some advice on how to structure my sites. I made my main site a while ago- lets call it my_portfolio.com and now have expanded to include hosting. I have the hosting site as a subdomain: hosting.my_portfolio.com. I haven't submitted the hosting site to any search engines yet and my_portfolio.com is at position 2.7 million or so on google i've nothing to lose by reorganizing.

1) Do you advise having two separate sites to submit to search engines or should i ditch the hosting subdomain and make it my primary sitename with the my_portfolio.com site just as a subdirectory? that way there are more pages for search engines to spider right? or is it better to be very specific for each site (keywords-wise i mean)?

2) I've already submitted my_portfolio site to google & yahoo etc.. so is it bad to change what's @ that sitename?

thanks for any advice!
-IPfreely

[oilman]

In my experience something.domain.com and domain.com/something haven't been getting any different treatment in google. There was a time awhile back where some were arguing that subdomains worked better than subdirectories but lately those arguements have been few and far between. Personally I just use subdirectories.

>>so is it bad to change what's @ that sitename?
if you were ranking very well for something I wouldn't change anything but as you've said yourself - you've got nothing to lose.

[pageoneresults]

Logical vs. Physical Domains [webmasterworld.com]

Hey there IP (I'll assume that refers to Internet Protocol). Marcia started the above discussion a few weeks ago and I think you'll find it to be a very interesting read.

I'm with oilman and Marcia on this, use the sub-directory approach and plan well.

[IPfreely]

nice link pageoneresults! the more i've thought about it the more i'm leaning towards sub-directories (although omg that's going to take some effort to reoganize!) mostly to avoid confusing visitors: 1 company <--> 1 site name <--> 1 link on the business card.

so getting to my portfolio would be by clicking on a design link on the main HOSTING site: 'my_portfolio.com/design/ choose flash or non-flash /index.html' or something like that

the 'hosting.my_portfolio.com' portion is in the same theme as 'my_portfolio.com' but they are still 2 completely separate sites. hope i don't screw this up! ;)

thank you for your input and any more suggestions are welcomed

-IPfreely