The pros and consof subdomains in terms of google search engine optimization

I am thinking about creating a site with several categories. I was wondering would it better to have subdomains from a search engine persepective. Knowing google sometimes removed a domain from their SERPS for varying length of time, would it better to have subdomains to counter this problem.

What are the pros and cons of subdoaining?

 

Subdomains are fine and can help add keywords to the url. Personally, though, I prefer subdirectories. 1- you can still add keywords, 2- since Google sees subdomains as a whole other site, you're spreading content thin. By using directories you show that your site has more content. I'm a believer in the power of good content.

 

Using sub-directories is the better option IF all the content is somewhat related. If you are using the domain name for different topics, it would be smarted to use subdomains.

 

That's a good point. Unless you site is like wikipedia (unlikely) keep the content focused.

That being said, unless your domain name allows, having multiple subdomains of various topics seems strange.

 

A sub-domain is considered a seperate site. So I would go with categories.

 

But what about the point that subdomains allows some saftey if the whole domain was dropped from rankings (not de-indexed but just dropped from SERPS). Since subdomains are treated as seperate sites, you can still get traffic to various subdomains even if the main domain was dropped.

 

If you're doing something that makes you worry your domain will be de-indexed, then stop doing it.