Domain names, subdomains and /folders

[kimarie]

Tweet

If you had a large site for example cheaptvs.co.uk would you be able to hit get to the top of google for exact searches for "sony model number 123 tv" by having the url cheaptvs.co.uk/sony-123 or would sony-123.cheaptvs.co.uk be better?

I'm sure I read somewhere that subdomains are seen as different websites but cant find where I read this and cant work out if google thinking cheaptvs.co.uk and sony-123.cheaptvs.co.uk are different sites is a good thing? especially when the subdomain will be on the same website design/structure as the domain and linked back to it and other pages on the domain several times?

Or would a better strategy be to have modelnumbertv.co.uk?

[Jack Russell]

Although sub-domains are treated as separate domains but if you have too many of them and they are inter linked, you might get hit for farming. I would go with separate individual pages like mydomain.com/product1.htm

If you build authority and backlinks for those pages , you will achieve good ranking for that product keyword.

[Brendon]

I always reckon that a good measure is whether you would be happy to put a given set of content out as a standalone site. If the answer is yes, then you could put it on a subdomain, otherwise keep it in a folder