School Me on subdomains

Can someone school me on the value or detriment of sub domains?

Brad

Value is that they can be used to organize/segment your overall website or be used for redirects etc.... detriment is that they are all still linked to your top level domain and leave a foot print... at least that is how I see it, I am sure others will add more.

Subdomains are an interesting animal... supposedly Google treats them as a separate domain as far as ranking in the SERPS... I haven't found that to be completely true, I find that the main domain passes some trust rank, etc, although I believe G disputes this.

They are a great way of getting keyword rich domains... I have about 50 subdomains ranked on the first page of G right now, and it was pretty easy to get that done.

The bad news, as mentioned already, is that it leaves a large footprint and everything could be gone in one little action from Google.

If you have a whitehat site, I think it is a decent way to go, at least from my experience, so far.

The beauty of them at first glance is that I can create keyword in your url for every niche but I know that there is more to it than that from an SEO perspective. Google would not let things be so easy at least in working with them.

I am wonder if with some creative htaccess work you could insure that it is treated uniquely. I am using a plugin that is supposed to pare all subs into thier own sitemap.

They are fantastic. If you are on a separate IP G treats it as a different site. The . is just like a space or dash to G. I have one for a great keyword phrase that ranks spectacularly for a competitive phrase.