Solving the Sub-Domain Equation: Predicting Traffic and Value when Merging Sub-Domains

To sub-domain or not to sub-domain, that is the question. Should you keep your content on separate sub-domains or the same domain? If I do merge my sub-domains, will I gain or lose traffic? How much? Since my first days in SEO back in 2004, the sub-folder vs. sub-domain debate has echoed through nearly every site architecture discussion in which I have participated. It seems trivial in many respects that we would focus so intently on what essentially boils down to the ordering of words in a URL, especially given that www. itself is a sub-domain. However, for a long time, there has been good reason to consider the question vary carefully. Today I am writing about the problem in general, and I propose a programmatic strategy for answering the sub-domain/sub-folder debate. For the purposes of this article, let s assume there is a company named Example Business that sells baseball cards, baseball jerseys and baseball hats. They have two choices for setting up their site architecture. They

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