Site Structure Decision under Following Circumstances

Scenario: My brother has started a PPC SE Advertising Campaign Management Co. Holding to his belief that PPC advertising is really the only effective way to SE market, he's elected not to optimize his site or even submit his site to be indexed by the SEs.

This is where I come in. I disagree with this decision and have offered to optimize his site and submit it for indexing - essentially, to market the service online everywhere except the PPC ads.

Since I will get a percentage of sales from any business that my efforts generate, I had to come up with a way to isolate my results.

My Approach: This is all new to me, but here goes. At first, I created what apparently is considered a "mirror" website, just changing the contact info. essentially. (As I learned a ton about SEO, the PPC SE industry and web design, the site content changed significantly. Not sure if it would be considered a mirror anymore, but I guess I am still an "affiliate.") I also placed "noindex,nofollow" tags on each of his pages, to hopefully avoid being see as duplicate content in the eyes of the SEs.

My Current Question: I believe I'm almost ready to go, but have one last fundamental structure question. Subdomain v. Domain

#1 My site can sit in files just off his root domain. This is how it is currently structured. 6 pages/files with internal navigation to each other but not to the root level or any page of his site for that matter.

#2 I could move my affiliate site to a subdomain of his site.

Naturally, I'm trying to think about it all when I wrestle w/ this question - usability and SEO.

Any feedback of any nature about any of this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Mike

 

Here's the differences that I perceive, although at this point, I'm not sure I trust my judgment - as I'm awash in far too many assumptions. From what I've read...

Subdomains

-On the one hand, it seems directories might be more responsive to the submission of a clean subdomain for a listing as opposed to the likes of www.root.com/myhomepage.shtml.

-In addition, it seems inbound linkers might appreciate a clean subdomain, as opposed to the longer subdirectory. Just in the name of ease.

-Finally, I've heard SEs consider subdomains their own site, which sounds appealing - in what sense I'm not sure. Not to say I didn't also come across your insight which states there's no difference.

Subdirectories

-On the other hand, when I think in terms of the appearance of SERPs and web credibility, the simple root/file appearance might have more legitimacy in some folks eyes. I guess I'm afraid the subdomain might dilute the root brand name enough to have a negative effect on click-thru rates.

-Finally, if all my pages/files reside at the same level - just below the root - don't I risk losing the pagerank benefits of a true "home page." In other words, since I won't sit at the root level with a home page, won't the SEs treat my "home page" just like any old page of the root site. I guess I'm not sure how the spiders would differentiate my home page from my other pages. Whereas, with a subdomain my home page would sit at a higher level in relation to my other pages. Although, maybe I'd have the same problem with a subdomain.

Or, maybe it's just all in my head. I can see my thinking is getting a little convoluted, so I'll rap this up.

Hope that all makes sense,
Mike

 

Didn't get any help here, but thought I'd provide some closure to my pursuits for others to possibly benefit.

Currently, I elected to go with the subdirectory layout. Mainly because that's the way things currently are set up and the benefits of a change to a subdomain seem questionable. Also, I don't always trust subdomains when I see them in the SERPS so I'm projecting my own tendencies.

I still have some concerns that those directories that don't outright deny subdomain listings would prefer a subdomain over a rootlevel.com/homepagename.html listing. But, I'm in the process of dealing, as the kids say... or used to say.