Subdomain vs subdirectory confusion

Hello everyone,

I have a travel (hotel) related affiliate site, which is not performing well, and have been advised to redesign the site. I am confused about seo friendly site architecture and choice between subdomain and subdirectory.

At present the pages created at different times are as under (not good at all!)

www.hotelsite.com/folder1/hotel1
www.hotelsite.com/folder2/hotel2
www.hotelsite.com/hotel3

The options which I can think of are as under:

1. www.budget.hotelsite.com/hotel1 and so on...
This will allow me to create different categories (subdomains) such as luxury, cheap, discount etc. There will be around 10 hotels in each category.

2. www.mydomain.com/budget/hotel1 and so on...
Same as above, different folders can be created.

3. www.mydomain.com/budget-hotel1 and so on...
All hotels will have to have a category in url followed by hotel name.

It is likely that hotel1 can be added to more than 1 category, for example budget and cheap. Will the same content on two different subdomains or two different folders or with slightly different url be considered duplicate by search engines?

Which is the best option to get seo benefits without angering search engines?

What should be done to old pages on server, most of which are not indexed by search engines? A 301 redirect or just remove from server or something else?

Any guidance will be highly appreciated.

Many thanks in advance..

Madhukar Shah.

The problem here is that each new subdomain counts as a new site so you'd have to start from scratch as far as building its PR and authority goes.



Better and helps keep the pages more organized for you, but the flatter your structure is, the better.



Best option if you are dead-set on organizing the hotels into categories.



Yes. If the hotels cross multiple categories, you need to change the content both to avoid the hit and tailor it more to the audience you are marketing to. This change includes how it reads and the keywords you use.



Your best bet is Option 3, but I'm not sure why you want to have the same hotels in multiple categories in this way. Why not just go with /hotel1 and have the hotels appear in multiple category lists, if necessary? For example: Cheap Hotels - Hotel 1, Hotel 2; and Budget Hotels - Hotel 1, Hotel 3. Then you'd only have to edit the content for each hotel in one place and you'd avoid any duplicate content issues.



301 redirect them to the new relevant pages. Even if they're not indexed, it doesn't mean that someone hasn't linked to one.

Thanks very much Roa! Clouds are clearing. I would go for your best bet suggestion. I will now start thinking on proper navigation structure. Any ideas are welcome!