Again - thanks a lot. I totally agree. Next client meeting I'll stress that not only do Ifeel strongly about the subfolder issue, but the good people at SimplifySEO feel the same:) And they know their ish. Or something.

Hey Rob,

Thanks a lot for this. This is great advice and really well-written. And you're preaching to the choir. I also prefer subfolders, but it's just not in the cards for this client for the time being. As it stands, we're stuck with subdomains.

Any other thoughts re: fourth-level vs. third-level domains, folks?

Hey moz

New client has a site that uses:

subdomains ("third-level" stuff like location.business.com) and;

"fourth-level" subdomains (location.parent.business.com)

Are these fourth-level addresses at risk of being treated differently than the other subdomains? Screaming Frog, for example, doesn't return these fourth-level addresses when doing a crawl for business.com except in the External tab. But maybe I'm just configuring the crawls incorrectly.

These addresses rank, but I'm worried that we're losing some link juice along the way. Any thoughts would be appreciated!

Again - thanks a lot. I totally agree. Next client meeting I'll stress that not only do Ifeel strongly about the subfolder issue, but the good people at SimplifySEO feel the same:) And they know their ish. Or something.