question regarding best practice for sub domain

guitar.website.com vs website.com/guitar

[thinkbigger]

Hi All,

Sorry if i dont know the lingo for my question but we are redoing my music site that gets around 100k uniques a month and with this redo I had a question. We are a large music portal and we are social network in features. We have a large community and each instrument has its own area, now its website.com/guitar website.com/clarinet etc...

WHich is more beneficial from a SEO/SEM standpoint

option 1 - website.com/guitar

Or

option 2 - guitar.website.com

While my guys are building the site i would like to let them know which way i want to proceed, is there a pro or con for either? Thanks so much!

[gullsinn]

having subdomain or directory are the same from a SEO standpoint
people prefer subdomain to have easy things in case if there hosting provider take care it as sub-site

from a SEO stand point just let them do in which they feel easy to handle i know they might be highly professional but they might tank working so if they rank 1st managing site in subdomain easily let them do

[thinkbigger]

guitar.website.com is subdomain and /guitar is directory right?

[phranque]

guitar.example.com is subdomain and example.com/guitar/ is subdirectory.
strictly speaking example.com/guitar is a document or resource named "guitar" in the root directory and a trailing slash means it is a directory.

as far as SEO is concerned, you should start with your existing (subdirectory) urls and build from there.

[maximillianos]

Subdomains are considered separate sites. Generally used for different content not really related.

Instruments seem related enough to me to keep them as folders.

Also you will keep more PR within the main domain by using folders.