Subdomains vs. Subfolders Inheriting Authority/Ranking Value

[UWPCE]

Our website is a continuing education website that is linked to a large university, and our URL is a subdomain of that larger university domain. We offer degrees as well, but because of the modifications we'd like to make to the degree webpages, our content management system won't let them be a part of our website.

Now we're trying to figure out if we should create a separate subdomain for all degrees, and put the individual degrees in separate folders (so, all degrees' URLs woudl be degrees.us.university.edu/degree-name/), or if we should give each its own URL, which would be completely separate from ours (degree urls would be degree-name.university.edu).

So our question is, how well do subdomains carry the value of the domain? Is it better to have twenty websites that are all separate subdomains of a strong domain, or one subdomain in a subdomain that houses all twenty websites in folders?

And, as a side note, will housing the degrees in degrees.us.university.edu pass value to us (us.university.edu)?

Thanks!

[randfish]

Hi Kristina - I actually wrote an in-depth post about this and did a whiteboard Friday on the topic:

• http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites
• http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-the-microsite-mistake

Basically, the answer is "sometimes" subdomains will be connected with the root domain and other subdomains in the eyes of the engines, but other times, this isn't the case.

In the specific one you're describing, my guess is that much of the root domain authority and ranking power will pass to the subdomain, so long as there are good links passing between the two (indicating a relationship, rather than a new, separate site).

best,

Rand

[Dan-Petrovic]

I don't think you're gaining much with a complex subdomain play. My recommendation would be to use the usual format: domain.tld/geo/category/degree-name this format will provide clear URLs which are easy to understand by both search engines and users.

[AlanMosley]

I have a client with subdomains, and they seem to group together nicely, I do plent of closs linking, it helps that the content is relevant accross domains, but one thing I do is locate all the images and some js and css files on the root domain and link to them from the subdomains. now i have no evidence that this makes a diference besides my gut feeling, but i hope that Se's see this as one big site, i would if i was working at Bing or Google

[UWPCE]

Thanks, Rand - I wasn't able to find those articles on my own. They're really helpful.

I think one of the subtleties of our question is, is there a higher chance of gaining value from a strong root domain beause you're only one subdomain away? We're worried that, by creating subdomain.subdomain.root-domain.edu, we're completely losing any chance of value from our root domain.

[randfish]

Hi Kristina - sorry for the long delay!

I definitely wouldn't go with sub.subdomain.rootdomain.edu - I'd go with a subfolder and hopefully, something as close to the root/main domain as possible.