Subdomain (or host name) vs folder name.

[gary@warrantyex.co.uk]

I work for a site that sells extended warranties on a whole range of different goods. We're going to add a group of pages specifically for warranties on TVs. I'm not expecting visitors to have to type this URL at any time - they'll either follow an internal link or find it in a SE - so I'm wondering which would be the best purely from an SEO perspective:

1) http://www.warrantyex.co.uk/tv-warranty.htm
2) http://tv-warranty.warrantyex.co.uk
3) http://www.warrantyex.co.uk/tv-warranty (i.e. a specific folder)

Clearly we're looking at the keywords 'tv' and 'warranty'. Since 'warranty' already appears in the domain name, would I be better using just 'tv' instead of 'tv-warranty'?

Any thoughts or suggestions would be most welcome.

[cltwebs]

I would say 3 at this point in time a subdomain would effect be treaded as a separate site and PR from your site would not filter down.

In some cases subdomains are good example would be a forum.

[awall19]

the words in the domain name itself run together so those do not really count for direct bonus that a domain name or filepath would have (although the biggest bonus is usually indirect due to linkage data)

I would say go with 2 or 3.

many times people spend a ton of effort worrying excessively about minor points and miss the bigger picture. the key is to do what you can to get many keyword rich links from many unique locations and make sure the pages are structured well and have good internal linking.

[John Scott]

I would recommend the subdomain.

[gary@warrantyex.co.uk]

Thanks for the advice, chaps.

I'm a little confused by cltwebs comment that option 2 would be seen as a seperate site and I'd not get all of the PR. I thought all pages were effectively on their own from a PR point of view. Is this not the case?

[awall19]

PR really just matters how the pages link to each other, but not whether or not the pages are on a domain or subdomain