Subdomain vs Directory

city.domain or domain/city? Advantages?

[silverbytes]

Does anyone knows what difference it makes (benefits) building those structures: subdomain.domain or domain/directory?

Case:

A Hotels website lists hotels from different cities, so I wonder if it would be better a structure like this

city.myhotelssite.com
city2.myhotelssite.com

Or

myshotelssite.com/city/
myshotelssite.com/city2/

What difference it makes?

[dougmcc1]

One factor to consider is your choice of keywords. If your keyword is "city my hotel site" then using subdomains would be better because the keywords are put in the order you want. Likewise, if your keyword is "my hotel site city" then using subdirecties would be better.

Some people also use subdomains as a way of alleviating the number of subdirectories they have to use. Search engines are more likely to index the pages closest to the root directory, so subdomains can be used to move pages closer to the root directory. For exmaple:

www.widgets.com/big/blue/fuzzy/round/

can be changed to big.widgets.com/blue/fuzzy/round/

and the default page is now 3 levels from the root directory instead of 4.

[silverbytes]

Thank you!

In case I decide to use subdomains: May I split my 3 main destinations city1, city2, city3 into subdomains and submit those as independent websites to Google and others?

I think they have regional importance and surely users will find it faster this way...
Is this acceptable?

[dougmcc1]

If your main site is already listed in the SE's and will be linking to your subdomains, then there is no need to submit the subdomains because they will be found by the SE's anyways. Letting SE's find your site is better than submitting to them because when you submit to a SE, you are saying "my website is not popular enough to be found on it's own".

If your main site won't be linking to your subdomains or if your main site isn't listed in the SE's, then it would be ok to submit each subdomain independently, but only submit 3-5 subdomains per search enngine per day, and delete your cookies afterwards (just as a precaution so they don't think you are spamming them with excessive submissions).

Using subdirectories in your case is acceptable and I would do the same thing in your case.

[silverbytes]

But if I use subdirectories should I submit I must not submit again, right?

What about english verions of the site? (main is spanish) Since my primary submission is mysite.com.ar how will english version be listed?

Spiders will crawl and find my english pages itself?

However, I can't get in english sites with a primary spanish site right?

Should I split my site into:

mysite.com.ar
english.mysite.com.ar

and submit again just > english.mysite.com.ar?

[dougmcc1]

Don't submit subdirectories. Subdomains are considered separate sites from your main site, but subdirectories are all part of your main site. So submitting subdirectories would be like resubmitting your main site over and over which is spamming. So if you use subdirectories, make sure you link to them from your regular pages.

I would buy a new domain for each language if that is affordable to you. Otherwise I think I would create a subdomain for every language and a subdirectory for every city. Such as:

english.mysite.com.ar/city1

[silverbytes]

Thanks! Creating a subdomain will be the best in my case I think.

I've heard that dmoz likes just the homepage submitted where language links are... In fact is in the guidelines, but that would be crappy for my title and keywords...

So May I use a city.domain.com.ar/index.htm (English version) with it's own title and keyowords to re-submit?

[dougmcc1]

I would link the subdomains from my main site so the SE's can find them by themselves. Remember, your visiters need to find the subdomains as well. How will they know that city1.mysite.com.ar/index.html exists unless you link to it?

Only submit if you absolutely have to.

[nakulgoyal]

Does Internal Linking as well external linking also work well for subdomains similar to sub directories /?

I mean, that if I have a xyz.mydomain.com instead of mydomain.com/xyz

what are the total advantages and disadvantes?

Since each subdomain is regarded as a separate website but is linked to the main website as stated above, does each such new website need a different robots.txt

[teeceo]

If you have a hotel site with "subdomains" do you put the "subdomains" on there own IP or do you use the same IP for all?

teeceo.

[dougmcc1]

nakulgoyal,
I don't believe there is any difference as far as linking is concerned. A page is a page, whether it's in a subdirectory or a subdomain. Any negatives and positives should cancel each other out. For example, the main domain has more external links since it's pointing to subdomains, but the main site has more incoming links from the subdomains at the same time. And even if you're not linking back to the main domain, then thats a loss for your main domain, but it's a gain for your subdomains.

I would put a robots.txt file in every subdomain. Who's to say that the spiders are going to come in to your site through the root directory every time? People are going to be linking to your subdomains so you need a robots.txt file in each one. I would still build the root robots.txt file of the main domain without that in mind however (just as extra precaution). Example: Say you wanted to disallow the 'scripts' folder for sub.domain.com. Then in your robots.txt file you would do this:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /sub/scripts/

teeceo,
I can't think of any reason why a subdomain would need it's own IP. Just as you wouldn't give a subdirectory it's own IP, I don't think a subdomain needs it's own IP. In fact, I wonder if that would get you penalized. SE's might think your subdomains are duplicate, promotional, or affiliate sites. None of which they like.

[Watcher of the Skies]

Whoowee silverbytes, let it all hang out...have you realized that probably half the people in here are your competitors?

With that firmly in mind, i strongly caution you against sub-domains. Google treats them as separate sites and will view any cross-linking of them as spam! Better to go with sub-directories. ;-)

Hmmmmmm, what to believe......

[dougmcc1]

"separate sites"
Think we got that covered.

"Google...will view any cross-linking of them as spam"
Too much cross-linking, yes. How could subdomains exist without cross-linking?

Google states in their guidelines:
"Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content"

As long as your subdomains have unique content you should be alright. I wouldn't worry about cross-linking. Build for your visitors and you should be fine.

"Hmmmmmm, what to believe......"
lol. Depends on who your competitor is ;)

[Watcher of the Skies]

Dougie, I was trying to put him off! A la, this:

Q: What's the difference between an developer and a conservationist?

A: The conservationist has already built his home in the woods.

The Moral of the Story is....SHHHHHHHH! :-)

[dougmcc1]

"The Moral of the Story is....SHHHHHHHH!"
Sure, from a conservationist point of view.

From a webmasterworld.com point of view, the Moral of the Story is developers houses keep getting bigger and better, thanks to the help of other fellow developers.

[silverbytes]

How about same content in different languages? Is that a good base for creating a subdomain?

[dougmcc1]

Yep.

[agerhart]

So submitting subdirectories would be like resubmitting your main site over and over which is spamming

This needs clarification. If you are referring to search engines, don't even bother submitting anything aside from your homepage. If you are referring to directories such as L$, ODP, Yahoo, or Zeal, the above statement isn't true for all sites. Dig through the directories or through the search results at another engine that list the directory pages (Google), and you will see that a lot of websites have multiple listings. I have seen some directory listings of sub-directories, sub-domains, and some that are single webpages within a deep directory. The fact of the matter is that it depends on the quality of the content, if their is similar or duplicate content already within the directory, and who the editor is.

[silverbytes]

Yes indeed. I've seen sites listed in at least 5 different categories.