Structuring your url for best SEO

I need a little help here and hope some of you experts could help out a noob

Which of the following would you say is the better :

1. my-domain.com/babies/babynames
or
2. babies.my-domain.com/babynames

and

1.my-domain.com/babies
or
2. babies.my-domain.com

I am planning on building a massive store but trying to figure out which would be the better linking structure to use

Thank in advance and a very happy new year to ya all

 

Not sure if it is important but it will all be wordpress based domains and sub folders or sub domains with the pages i want to promote. Using WP as a doorway and to get content which will then be linked to the pages below or sub domains ( pending which u think is better)

 

Think i created this thread in the wrong place, anyway i think i found the answer myself. I simple search of MSN showed that they use sub domains themselves, so WTF if they think it is good whom am i to argue

Code:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...=Google+Search

 

For the first one, it depends if it is just a baby themed site or if there is other stuff. If it's just about babies, then do #2 otherwise do #1

For the second one, I recommend #1. Think of sub-domains as another website that is based off of your main site. ex. digitalpoint.com and forums.digitalpoint.com

 

It depends on the type of site you are creating. What is the site goal and purpose? Are you setting up a blog that you can monetize through affiliates and ad sense or an e-commerce store?

E commerce stores, product and category pages benefit better from sub directories example.com/category/productName - opossed to sub domains because they are easier to interpret by people, encouraging higher click through rates - which in turn provides higher organic and paid rankings for those URL, or keyword searches that the page targets.

 

This thread is from 2008 - please don't bump old threads! check the date before posting.