Does using subdomains for different sections of a website improve search ranking at all? I'm trying to figure out how to organize my newest site to be as search-friendly as possible.

Is this: http://free.website.com

Better than this? http://website.com/free

Anyone know?

It's not any better, in terms of weight or rank, however using subdomains gets you the LINKS on google.

If you go to google and type "handsonwebhosting", you'll see our website, and then a bunch of links to our support, knowledgebase, forums, VPS, etc. There was talk in the past that having the subdomains allowed google to separate things and show the pages easier, however you'll notice that we also have regular pages/folders within our main site ranked with no problem.

For us, the benefit of having subdomains is that we actually have the content/software located on different servers, and sometimes different Class C locations. This will give you bosts in search engines as you're runing on different locations.

I would use subdomains if I was seperate an area of from my main site, either for security or other reasons. eg:

secure.domain
support.domain
forum.domain
blog.domain

If it was for seo, I'd stick with directorys, personal thoughts only.

I think Google still sees sub domains as separate websites, so yes, backlinks strategies would be a plus. They're still looking for value in each and use subdomains themselves.

I think that it is always wise to use just domains for websites that you want "SEO-ed". Subdomains raise the need for at least 2 separate keywords which is harder to rank for than just for one.

Google (not sure if others) will consider free.website.com and website.com as different domain names. and be sure you will need to do a lot of efforts to have good seo for the new domain name

Subdomains ranks just as primary domain names and the incoming links from the subdomain can benefit every page indirectly that you link.

Sub-domain mainly treat as different site by SEO. Sub-domains will not decrease your chances of ranking on search engines. You will have to work on building links and Pr.

with subdomain name after its creation you will have absolutely new domain name for the SE.
Don't think that is the way to improve situation at all

Being the part of the main domain I think the subdomains get some advantage.

So it tells one truth once again.

All web projects which are going to be created must be planned and all aspects must be re-thinked, especially structure of you link, folders,subdomains and etc...

I was recently told that using subdomains help gather more hits to your website if nothing more. I know on the main ones I have worked on the subdomains drive a good bit of traffic due to them pulling up on Google.

When I come to think of it, using subdomains is not a bad idea. You can use your main keyword in your domain and attach some related keyword in subdomain.

For example light.bluekeyword.com.

You would have the same results with 'light.bluekeyword.com" as you would with "bluekeyword.com/light". Detailed URLs are ideal for maximizing Keyword Exposure.

If you market your site right, the extra WEIGHT on a folder will help boost the rank of your main domain, however when it comes to a subdomain, your pagerank would be ZERO and no "link love" trickles down.

You should only use a subdomain if needed to seperate your site or for a completely different theme to your site. If it's the same layout and same information related to your domain name, you should be using folders in order to keep your pagerank and authority higher.

When you're talking about subdomains and pagerank being zero, I'm not following you. Are you saying that subdomains add zero PageRank value to the main domain? For example, when I check maps.google.com, it has a PageRank of 8. Google has a PageRank of 10.