Directory vs. Domain?

My current website is about general real estate. I plan to post information on more specific real estate topics such as "commercial" real estate.

Does it make more sense to add a directory [/commercial] to my exhisting web or go ahead and host seperate domains targeting these specific topics?

In my mind, the advantage of the seperate domain is a site focusing on one specific topic. [Better SE placement?]

On the other hand, there is an advantage with the SERPs to adding more theme [real estate] based pages right? Plus, the [future] backlinks would point to one URL instead of seperate URLs for each domain.

Your thoughts?

 

Backlinks - you want them to different pages targeting your different terms.

Subdomains - these are a very cheep alternative to a seperate domain...
commercial-real-estate.domain.com

It would be just as good (in my view) to use:
www. domain.com/commercial-real-estate/

But make sure what ever you do to direct the links for 'Commercial Real Estate etc' to the page about commercial real estate (not the one catch all home page).

 

Inbound Links is the big deal. Having the two domains may make it easier for you to get two inbound links when obtaining (trading?) links with other sites instead of just one. Many webmasters might not want to give you two for your one domain. Just a thought...

 

I would suggest that you use the existing web and add directory to it. Google will index your popular pages and you will have a consolidated increase in your pagerank.

 

Thanks everyone. I decided to use the directory and point the specific back links to that directory's main page. This compells me to change my back links strategy [not all to one page] but it sounds like its for the better. Thanks again.

 

I just started up a directory to help out my domain since it's set up funky. So hopefully it helps more.