Sub domain names will they help with rankings

[ClaireH-184886]

Hi, i have a site where i want to use sub domains to showcase the different areas in the country that we work, and i was thinking of having a couple of domain names with the city names to showcase the work we do in that city.

I would like to know if by having a subdomain name and then linking it back to the main site if this will help me with the rankings for the main site.

look forward to hearing from you

[ClaireH-184886]

thank you for this. I was looking at sites such as citylocal.co.uk and thebest.co.uk who do this for each city. They are a totally different type of website to our health site but they have a subdomain for each city, so i thought this maybe a way to go but obviously with what you have said, it is not the best approach to take.

many thanks

[mihaiaperghis]

Hey Tim,

There have been quite a few signals that, outside blogging and similar platforms that offer websites as subdomains, Google generally treats a subdomain and its parent domain as the same entity. This has been actually reinforced last year when they changed how Google treats subdomains inside Webmaster Tools.

I'll also quote Rand Fishkin on an answer he gave on subdomains vs subfolders last year:

"Thus, having a single subdomain (even just domainname.tld with no subdomain extension) with all of your content is absolutely ideal from an SEO perspective. It's also more usable and brandable, too IMO."

Regarding your domain-per-city idea, going on what Rand said, it would make even less sense from an SEO perspective.

To answer your question, linking back from the subdomain to main site will likely not help you with any rankings.

Hope this helps!