[Question] My site is currently structured as such:
city.example.com/
To improve my Google rankings, should I restructure it as
such:
www.example.com/city/
It believe it will eventually help for BL's...but are there any
other advantages?
[Answer] It actually depends on what you're doing with
your site. For example, if you host several different "themes"
on your domain example.com, I'd create a sub domain, b/c as we
know, SEs see them as a separate site. That way,
city1.example.com can contain 1000's of sub
folders/pages pertinent to city1:
EXAMPLE #1
city1.example.com/events
city1.example.com/dining
city1.example.com/recreation
But, for example, if you have:
EXAMPLE #2 www.example.com/city1
www.example.com/dog-grooming
www.example.com/classic-cars
You are now not capitalizing on the ability to create
keyword-rich URLs, as you can do with creating your sub domain
(IE: dog-grooming.example.com
You'd then consider each sub domain vs. domain.com/sub-folder as
separate sites, and work on separate SEO strategies (IBLs, etc.)
for them.
PS: Imagine your sitemap for EXAMPLE #2? It'll look like a link
directory! As apposed to EXAMPLE #1 - which would show SEs the
"theme" for your site.