I split my site into 500 different subdomains, one for each town eg crawley guildford brighton. I am of the impression that Google sees these as seperate sites, but does it TREAT them like seperate sites? For example, - if they all link to each other will they be penalised in some way for recip linking? - if I sell a sitewide link am I selling a sitewide on 500 sites or only 1 site? is there anything I should be cautious of or be made aware of? thanks James.
I don't have much hard evidence of this, but because of the emergence of subdomain sites it would seem appropriate for Google to flag a site that immediately created 500 subdomains. I know several years ago, creating subdomains like this was an effective strategy. Now, I'm not so sure. You will find Craigslist subs in the SERPs all day long. I would just make sure you have ample reason and content to support all the subs, and it's a logical breakup.
It would depend somewhat on your navigation. If all the subdomains have the same navigation and templates then its clear to google that they are part of the same unbrella site and they will be treated more like folders. Alternatively if the subdomain is apparently unrelated and not linked from the main site then maybe they treat it as more of a seperate site. With all the subdomain spam at the moment I would expect google to be making big changes to the way this is handled.
I was thinking of setting up a subdomain for each keyword with the keyword in the subdomain e.g. http://keyword.woteva.com, and then optimising the page for that keyword. The subdomain would have the same nav and template as the main site. Will this benefit or harm my se rankings?