Advice wanted - multiple installations or one installation..

[ohiobiz]

I've purchased the unlimited domain license for eSyndicat and currently run a regional business directory. I need some advice. Geographically, I cover a state that basically has 5 economic regions.

Should I:

1. With regards to eSyndicat, have 5 separate directories - one for each region or use one directory and break it up into 5 regions?

2. Should I use subdomains and/or separate IP addresses for each region (i.e. northeast.ohiobiz.com) or just make each region a subdirectory (i.e. www.ohiobiz.com/northeast)?

Any advice, with relation to SEO, would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks a lot.

[Sai_dallas]

Good Question, I would like to know the answer as well.

Basically, I want add USA and CANADA

Currently planning on two installations.

Any advice wold be nice from Simon..

Thanks
Sai

[Simon Gooffin]

well, I'm not an expert in SEO
I think you can simply create subcategories for them and that's all. Personally I do not like subdomains. Also I'm not sure if you should create 5 separate directories. It's better to promote just one I think.
So if I were you I would create one directory with different 5 categories for your regions.
I think it's the same for search engine what pages to index:
www.ohiobiz.com/northeast/ or northeast.ohiobiz.com

[ohiobiz]

Thanks Simon for your input. Also, from an administrative standpoint having one admin area would be simpler and less confusing. Anyone else?

[barthes202]

From a SEO perspective it's definately better to use subfolders as subdomains will be treated as separate domains. Page rank is distributed on a per domain basis so getting a good position for one of the subdomains doesn't necessarily mean that the other subdomains will be positively influenced by this. While promoting only one domain, will more easily influence the different subcategories with regards to page rank and keyword positioning.

On the other hand it can be useful and easier to promote different subdomains if the subject of the different categories justifies to separate them.

[ohiobiz]

That's what I thought but it's great to get confimation on that from others in the SEO field. Thanks a lot.

Also, I wasn't sure, if in my case, if there would be much performance gained if I used a separate database for each geographic region of my site - approx. 10 links each with 5 regions versus dumping 50,000 links into one db. It's probably insignificant....

[cgc0202]

Originally Posted by Simon Gooffin

well, I'm not an expert in SEO
I think you can simply create subcategories for them and that's all. Personally I do not like subdomains. Also I'm not sure if you should create 5 separate directories. It's better to promote just one I think.
So if I were you I would create one directory with different 5 categories for your regions.
I think it's the same for search engine what pages to index:
www.ohiobiz.com/northeast/ or northeast.ohiobiz.com

Hi Simon,

If I remember correctly, I asked the same issue before. It dependes on the complexity and depth, I think.

Just to give an example. I wanted to create a taxonomy directory of living things -- animals, plants, fungi, etc. because I wanted to use it as a general index for the photogalleries and the related articles webpages that I have been creating.

I have a general Ecosystems page that will encompass all of them, However, for systematic classification of all living things, it is too complicated and will become too bulky to have them all in one links directory.

I tried placing all of them in general main categories and then sequential subcategory groupings, in another application (a photogallery that can be categorized much like the eSyndicat links directory).

What I realized early on, is that it was very cumbersome to Administer. In the photogallery, random photos may be shown that will allow people to bypass the category-subcategory.

I do not know yet how this can be accomplished in the Links directory because the level could go as deep as 7-10 categories and subcategories. I do not think a browser visitor will have that patience to click and click before reaching the destination. That is why there is a need for a good search function and also an A-Z navigation system

Let us take the simplest: Animals.

If you have taken biology before, here is the stat of the Animal taxonomy. However, even if you did not take biology the numbers below will generate into the "categories-subcategories" that need to be created:

Classification depth: (#categories and subcategories)
Phylum -> Class: 125
Phylum -> Order: 743
Phylum -> Family: 6,512
Phylum -> Genus: 41,390

There are actually more but the US Dept of Agriculture database is not complete, Once you add the links, there will be several millions of really good files and pages to include. There are many good information there that could be linked.

Insects alone comprise almost 20,000 of those cats-subcats. I am tempted for this reason to create even more specialized directories for some groups of animals to reduce the complexity and depth of the cats-subcats.

With those numbers, it is not practical to try a manual reordering of the catgories. It was cumbersome when I tried doing this with just a couple of dozens. Taxonomy is very exacting in the order of the categories and the related sites. It would be good to have a process for multiple upload of related sites for each category. Something that I will request in the Features request section.

I think personally, it would be interesting to see how eSyndicat link directory would behave with those numbers.

cgc0202

[Simon Gooffin]

Originally Posted by cgc0202

I think personally, it would be interesting to see how eSyndicat link directory would behave with those numbers.

For me either We already have a directory with 50000 categories but there are very few links

[cgc0202]

Originally Posted by Simon Gooffin

For me either We already have a directory with 50000 categories but there are very few links

It can be tested with the example I gave above Simon. In fact, the example is only for animals.

One very famous site: "Fish base" uses multiple servers and several mirror sites around the world. Still it can be very slow sometimes because there are too many users. To think that the category fish has only a few thousand cats-subcats in the Animal kingdom classification.

There are more categories-subcategories in plants, fungi and lower organisms (I do not even want to think about the lower organisms now since it is too complex).

But, what would be needed would be the multiple links upload like the one proposed by plattappus in:

http://www.esyndicat.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=986

I just read it the other day, and something like that was what I had been looking for. Or, more like the "CSV" equivalent of what subseo proposed for the dir-categories.

In regard dir-categories, there was a change in the number of fields from v1.1 to v1.2. I found some other discrepancies.

Before embarking on creating the >43K catg-subcats in the Animal Kingdom I outilined above, I entered manually some root categories and subcategories.

The table format for dir-categories suggested that there are 17 fields; but I only counted 15 fields showing in each of the entries that were entered manually using the Admin panel (they work by the way when I click on them).

I was analyzing my manual entries using the manage database. If I diagnosed it correctly, it looks like it is the

PRIMARY KEY (id),
UNIQUE id (id)

that were missing to complete the 17 (instead of 15) fields. I presented my observations in:

http://www.esyndicat.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1933

I would be grateful if you or one of the staff would comment on the issues raised.

cgc0202

[Simon Gooffin]

I will comment on those topics asap.