CHange insite Urls structure

[SEOTeamDespegar]

Hello Guys!

I have a situation with a website and I need some opinions.

Today, the structured of my site is: (I have had this site architecture since many years)

• Main country home (www.mysite.com.tld)

o   Product_1 Home (www.mysite.com.tld/product1/)

§  Product_1 articles

• www.mysite.com.tld/product1/product1_art1
• www.mysite.com.tld/product1/product1_art2
• www.mysite.com.tld/product1/product1_artx

o   Product_2 Home (www.mysite.com.tld/product2/)

§  Product_2 articles

• www.mysite.com.tld/product1/product2_art1
• www.mysite.com.tld/product1/product2_art2
• www.mysite.com.tld/product1/product2_artx

I have several TLDs with their main and their products.

We are thinking in modify this structure and begin to use subdomains for each product (The IT guys need this approach because is simpler to distribute the servers load). I not very friendly with subdomains and big changes like this always can produce some problem (although the SEO migration would be ok, problems could appear, like ranking drops),   But, the solution (the reasons are technical stuff), requires the mix of directories and subdomains in each product, leaving the structured in this way:

• Main country home (www.mysite.com.tld)

o   Product_1 Home (www.mysite.com.tld/product1/)

§  Product_1 articles

• product1.mysite.com.tld/product1_art1
• product1.mysite.com.tld/product1_art2
• product1.mysite.com.tld/product1_artx

o   Product_2 Home (www.mysite.com.tld/product2/)

§  Product_2 articles

• product2.mysite.com.tld/product1_art1
• product2.mysite.com.tld/product1_art2
• product2.mysite.com.tld/product1_artx

So, the product home will be in a directory buy the pages of the articles of this product will be in a subdomain.

What do you think about this solution?  Beyond that the SEO migration would be fine, 301s, etc, can bring us difficulties in the rankings or the change can be done without any consideration?

Thanks very much!

Agustin

[FedeEinhorn]

It will bring lots of issues. That's not a solution but a problem. Your IT should work on another approach to solve the server load instead of that URL restructure.

Subdomains are considered different sites, therefore hundreds of links from several subdomains could possibly bring a penalty, and the way to avoid that would be to use a nofollow tag for the links, which will hurt your SEO dramatically.

I am sure your IT can solve the server load distribution issue using another approach (DB servers, file servers, server cluster, etc.), if not, you better look for another IT.

[MoosaHemani]

As per my information sub domains are considered to be the part of the same domain for quite some time now (http://www.seroundtable.com/subdomains-google-webmaster-tools-13960.html) but as per my experience the sub domain value is not as powerful as sub directory so the ranking drop is very much expected.

My advice to you is to sit with the IT person and come up with some alternate solutions ot this problem and in case this is the only solution, in that case plan a powerful marketing strategy and execute it once you restructure the domains to reduce the loss to minimum.

Hope this helps!