What will rank best.

[wonder_lander]

I've got an information site, for this example let's say it's about train stations and that I run it on the fictional domain station.co.uk

There are around 100 unique different stations, some live and some closed.

What's the best website strutcutre to adopt?

http://euston.staton.co.uk
http://bedford.station.co.uk

or

http://www.station.co.uk/euston
http://www.station.co.uk/bedford

or

http://www.station.co.uk/live/euston
http://www.station.co.uk/closed/bedford

Obviously in the first example the name reads the best for someone looking for euston station but does Google like it?

 

[Jamie101]

Personally I'd go for the second option. The first option may read better but I'm not sure whether it'd be good for SEO to have loads of subdomains?

 

[max99x]

def the 2nd. Sub domains big no no

 

[alex]

In this case I'd choose to go for a subdirectory structure over subdomains. In terms of Google reading them, both are acceptable, however it's much easier to build the authority of www.example.com than for each individual subdomain of example.com, not to mention the fact that subdirectories look more logical to users navigating your site.

A logical directory structure (i.e option 3), such as /live/ and /closed/, is best practice for SEO assuming the pages logically group together within those categories. For example:

/books/harry-potter/
/books/lord-of-the-rings/

and

/films/harry-potter/
/films/lord-of-the-rings/

These clearly define what the content is about and is useful to search engines and visitors.

In terms of using 'live' and 'closed', I'm not sure that these would add that much value to stations, but a similar structure more relevant to your actual site would be useful.

So option 3 would be my preference, assuming the subdirectories were a searched keyword and highly relevant. Option 2 would also work.

Now if you were considering 'stations' in different countries, then maybe different subdomains for each country would be more appropriate.

This article by Matt Cutts may be helpful http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/subdomains-and-subdirectories/


EDIT: also to note that in terms of users viewing the page in SERPs, your title tag including the term 'Euston Station' will have much more impact than the subdomain euston.stations... so my point is that the subdomain structure may appear to read better, but I think this is irrelevant

 

[wonder_lander]

Cheers for the thoughts guys. What about the situation whereby Euston Station didn't have their own website and I could then lease them the entire subdomain Euston.Station.co.uk ?

 

[alex]

Cheers for the thoughts guys. What about the situation whereby Euston Station didn't have their own website and I could then lease them the entire subdomain Euston.Station.co.uk ?

If your goal was to allow 'stations' to manage their own sites then the subdomain structure would be more practical. You can change the DNS so they have full access to the subdomain on their own servers, for example, and if they were penalised in Google or by spam filters then the knock-on effect on the other subdomains would be reduced compared to a subdirectory structure (which is why many content marketers send emails from subdomains). However, you should always be aware that when leasing a subdomain you're giving others the ability to affect your domain's authority and credibility to visitors and search engines.

 

[Edwin]

It depends how much high-quality, unique content you're planning for each station. If it's only a couple of pages or so, put it in a subdirectory. If each station is going to be fleshed out into a complete in-depth site (with substantially different content for each station) and promoted independently in different ways, then consider the subdomain route. Finally, if it's literally only ever ONE page per station, I'd keep them as pages under the root i.e. /euston.html /paddington.html and so on

 

[gordi555]

Yeah 2nd option. Subdomains get messy with no real benefit (unless on another server).

Like Edwin says, if it's got a few pages of content then subdirectory. If not, a domain.co.uk/page.html is still a great method.

 

[Edwin]

Yeah 2nd option. Subdomains get messy with no real benefit (unless on another server).

Not as simple as that. If you have plenty of UNIQUE content then subdomains can let you promote more easily than subdirectories. For example, you might be able to get 2+ listings for "sites" that are differentiated by subdirectories if each is totally different (and the quality is there) whereas the same site/index might only be willing to link to one subdirectory/page, figuring that it is "representative" of the whole site.

In other words, a site talking about "Stations on the Victoria Line" might be willing to link to both euston.station.co.uk and kingscross.station.co.uk if each of the sites looked meaningfully different, and contained lots of unique content. At the same time, they'd probably balk at linking to station.co.uk/euston.html and station.co.uk/kingscross.html and (if anything) just say for example "Go to station.co.uk for information about a number of stations on this line"

The more you can build up an independent backlink profile (from quality sites) to each subdirectory, the more they stand out as sites in their own right and start climbing the search rankings independently of each other (while judicious cross-linking can help you pass on some of the benefits from site to site)

 

[wonder_lander]

Many thanks. There is certainly enough information to expand them out to fill domain names but it sounds like option 2 is the right approach for now!

Thanks for everyone's feedback