Domain Structure - without www.

[NickMacario]

I'm working on a new project and we would prefer to not use the www. - for name/branding reasons. Are there any SEO ramifications from setting the domain without the www and using 301 redirects for all home page extensions to forward to -> domain.com(without the www)?

Furthermore, we will be hosting many profiles on this site and would like to structure them for optimal SEO.  Would there be an issue with using sub domains - user.domain.com, or would sub directories be more optimal?

Thank you in advance!

[KempRugeLawGroup]

For the first question, the answer is...possibly. It all depends on how other people link to your site. If they link to it via www.yoursite.com, then the redirect will lose you some link juice. If they link to you via yoursite.com, then no. However, considering moz, doesn't use the www, I have to think it's really not that big of a deal.

[Linda-Vassily]

As far as the question of subdomain vs subfolder, Matt Cutts said to do whichever is easiest: http://youtu.be/_MswMYk05tk

However, there was a question about that topic here on Moz a few months ago, and Rand Fishkin "strongly urged" a single subdomain (which is also my own preference): http://moz.com/community/q/moz-s-official-stance-on-subdomain-vs-subfolder-does-it-need-updating

And for www vs not, you will have to 301 it one way or the other and there is generally very little link juice lost with a 301 so if no www is better for your brand, I would go for it.

[Bryan_Loconto]

If this is truly a "NEW" project and you are setting it up from scratch, go ahead and proceed without the www. This will not effect your project in any way unless of course there ARE existing links coming into the www version. If so, you may lose that as KempRugeLawGroup stated. Otherwise you should be just fine.

For the subdomain vs subfolder, IMO, the best approach would be to go with the subfolder keeping it all within the one domain like Rand mentioned.

Best of luck!

[DennisSeymour]

1. It sounds like the site already has the www right now. You don't really need to change it, but since you want to, then go ahead and forward it. I have never experienced any bad coming from this personally. I does take a while to get ALL the urls that are indexed to show the right one but aside from that, none really.

2. Is it going to be an easily spammable, unmoderated platform? Then I'd go with user.domain.com.

But in most cases, use the /folder.