Subdomain initials vs full city name(s) for a multi city subdomain site?

[vmialik]

Helping with a multi-city non-profit magazine/news blog. Subdomain options;

1. sf.domain.com, ny.domain.com, la.domain.com

2. sanfrancisco.domain.com, newyork.domain.com, ...

Some cities added, will as an example seol.domain.com a city that doesnt have a recognizable initlals, like NYC for example.

For brand, recognition, seo benefit, what have you used and why?

Thanks

[nurzhyk]

You need to develop one type of site name structure for your case. Shortened variants will be suitable for small count of cities. And if you pland expanding your presence over other cities ther emight appear a problem creating shortened urls. About SEO, branding or recognition of site - there is no use to speak about those without understanding your market exactly.

[Reinhart]

Quick and Sloppy Answer: the full names probably have more SEO benefit (if any is possible) as opposed to the city initials.

Better Answer: I'm not really liking the idea of creating a site with a pile of subdomains.  Are you planning on creating truly rich, full sites for each subdomain with location-specific content?  Putting something on a subdomain causes a degree of separation between each entity.  This could cause a bit of a loss for you when it comes to sharing the benefit of a link to one of the sd's or another.  For example:  batman.wordpress.com does not benefit as much from a link to wordpress.com or reallygoodsite.wordpress.com.  Of course this would be a different scenario but I still think you'd probably be better off using subdirectories ie: example.com/San-Fransisco-Real-Estate.  This ensures that there is no separation between one section and another and each benefits from links to the other.

In my experience subdirectories are easier to work with technically as well.

I'd rethink any situation where I was going to have to create potentially infinite subdomains and consider making sub directories with keyword-rich URLs instead if that's possible.  Do you really want to create 50 Webmaster Tools accounts and GA profiles?  I wouldn't.

Good Luck!