Im looking for some advice on the best way to structure a web project

November 19, 2010 2:02 AM

Im looking for some advice and suggestions on the best way to structure a project. My client has 4 products (SAS) and although they are related most people would only use one due to the specialist nature of each. Currently only one of these products has a website and there is no main company website. They are looking to introduce a main company website either incorporating each of the 4 products within it or having a separate company site and each product has its own separate site with the main company site acting as a knowledge base to establish them as an authority in field they work in. Im wondering what the best approach would be from a usability point of view and an SEO points of view? I guess from an SEO point of view each product sitting on its own domain and being targeted to certain keyphrases might be more preferential than one site will all the content in? Im wondering if anyone knows of any examples out there that handle this particularly well
posted by toocan to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

I'd suggest subdomains, with each subdomain linked from the main page. I believe you can create a separate google site map for each subdomain (don't know about bing), which should let you differentiate each.

Also in my limited and ancedotal experience, people remember subdomains better then anything after a slash.
posted by gryftir at 2:43 AM on November 19, 2010

Response by poster: You rarely see subdomain in googles index though...
posted by toocan at 3:10 AM on November 19, 2010

Separate domains and hosting for each product will cost you next to nothing - so let each stand alone, and work their specific selling points and strengths, both from an SEO and marketing POV.

Look at the hugely successful 37signals.com family of products/sites for inspiration.
posted by MTCreations at 6:19 AM on November 19, 2010