subdomains or directories?

[andrewsclothing]

I have a large site listing hundreds of products.
They are listed in categories for ease of browsing.
I am doing a complete redesign of the site (removing frames) and the basic way I have it set out is www.domain.com/category/product-name.html

I am trying to make each category index page (/category/index.html) higher in rank than product pages, with the hope of getting them well listed for long tail searches and perhaps even scoring some sitelinks in SERPs.

So I am thinking I need to get some links from pages relevant to each category to up their rank. But a lot of niche directories will not let me link to anything but a site root.

If I create the subdomain category.domain.com and 301 it to the category/index.html page will that solve my problems with linking to site roots? Will it bring up any other issues I have not thought of?

Am I thinking on the right track here or should I be doing something completely different?

Thanks for any help.

[Quadrille]

Any directory that baulks at a folder will likely not link to a subdomain with a 301 either (I'd never link to a URL that forwards elsewhere ... would you?), and having subdomains dilutes your incoming links, potentially confuses customers, and may get you in bad neighborhood issues if they interlink.

I'd go with the folders. Most sites have most incoming links to example.com; creating subdomains is not a deeplinking solution.

[vincevincevince]

It may work if you conditionally apply the 301 to only show it to key search engines. That way your niche directories will see a non-redirecting link (200) but when an engine crawls it the 301 will attribute the link to the true deep page and avoid duplicate content problems.

[Quadrille]

I'm sure there's other spam methods too - but it's usually wiser not to ;)

[Ajaxunion]

I would suggest you find ways to get deep links without trying to change your url structure to use sub domains. all the end of the day you want the deep link to also give pr to the root domain. There are many good ways to get links with out using directories that dont allow deep linking.

Also note that if internal linking is done right, even if you link to just the homepage in some instances i found that the cat can greatly benefit too... That doesnt take away from the fact that deep linking is important.