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Thanks! I suppose we have options. I am leaning towards going with EX 1 just for consistency's sake to keep all the brands together.

Thanks again!

Hi Moz community!

I am working with a team to launch an eCommerce project that is becoming increasingly complex.

The client has three major brands that are owned by a fourth parent company that they would like to bring together for the first time. We have done a ton of user research and have found that there is a good deal of overlap with two of the brands; the third is very distinct and the parent company is virtually unknown in America.

Because of this, we have designed different feels for each brand while making them significantly more coherent. We have also done our homework re: keyword and market research. Our goals are 1) unify and improve their brand identity, 2) create a supreme eCommerce user experience, 3) have smart SEO.

So here is my question: should the URL structure best be:

EX 1: brand1.parentco.com , brand1.parentco.com/products , brand1.paretnco.com/products/specific-product etc...

EX 2: parentco.com/brand1 , parentco.com/brand1/products , parentco.com/brand1/product

EX 3: parentco.com/brand1-products , parentco.com/brand1-products/specific-product

EX 4: brand1.com , brand2.com , brand3.com , parentco.com

Would it be best to have the brands on their own subdomain or subdirectory?

Does it make it looks like the brands aren't significant enough if they are on a subdirectory to humans and/or bots?

Are there problems with sharing cart information across subdomains?

Currently, between the three brands and the parent company there are about 8 sites that are basically copies of one another. Their domain authority is between 40-70 and 5 of the 8 sites have a significant amount of natural, high quality links. These current sites are basically like EX 4 above and are totally disconnected to one another. Regardless of the structure we chose we are going to redirect everything to keep as much of the current assets as possible.

Any insights or information would be so appreciated!

Thank you, Keri! Everyone here is so helpful! This was my first Q&A and it certainly won't be my last.

p.s. That video is gold! I sent it with my email response to the client for a third-party endorsement.

Thanks for you help! Funny enough, it turns out this SEO himself uses WordPress for his own blog, so it must not be that scary.

Anyway, I found this SEO's comments very misleading. To me, this was a reminder of the corny but true sentiment that with great power comes great responsibility. It is easy for SEOs to scare the bejeebus out of people who know very little about the web.

Thank you very much! I appreciate the support! This is a great answer and very balanced.

I think you are right that he sounds like a developer. If I give him a very generous read of what he is saying, perhaps he means that CMS get in the way of having full control over the code. As you point, out there are smart, easy ways around that.

Thank you very much! Very helpful!

I smell baloney but I could use a little backup from the community!

My client was recently told by an SEO that search engines have a hard time getting to their site because using a CMS (like WordPress) doesn't allow "direct access to the html".

Here is what they emailed my client:

"Word Press (like your site is built with) and other similar “do it yourself” web builder programs and websites are not good for search engine optimization since they do not allow direct access to the HTML. Direct HTML access is needed to input important items to enhance your websites search engine visibility, performance and creditability in order to gain higher search engine rankings."

Bots are blind to CMSs and html is html, correct?  What do you think about the information given by the other SEO?

Thank you, Keri! Everyone here is so helpful! This was my first Q&A and it certainly won't be my last.