Subdomains - keeping up with the competition

I have a competitor that uses subdomains rather well because he ranks #1 in Google, Yahoo and MSN for just about every "keyword phrase city " he goes after.

On the home page and other pages he points to both a normal folder and subdomain:
http://cityName.competitor.com
http://www.competitor.com/default.asp?cityName=50

Also for each listing he has (which are 1,000's) he points to a normal folder and a subdomain as well.

Is this a good practice to do? He seems to be #1 for over a year and a half with this method - should i join him?

Nothing creates success like imitating the success of your competitors, then working harder and doing it better. IMHO

I'd take a hard look at what they are doing and how they are doing it, then I would imitate it and if possible, improve upon it so long as it is legit.

Cheerios

google and most SE's view subdomains as their own entity. therefore they can be used as a powerfull tool to get ranked individually and provide backlinks and cross-linking.

If i copy his site subdomain structure, do i need to worry about duplicate content?

Ohhh....I don't encourage using others material unless it from a .gov site as then it is public information you can use as you see fit. (if you pay taxes, you paid for it....if you don't pay taxes, everyone else paid for it for you...either way, its paid for...lol...and great place to get snippets of great quality reference material you actually blend into your own content!)

First rule of site development drumat, know your target market.

Analyze you competitions site for clues to exand your existing market. Your clues are found in the kw focus of the site, whether description, title, kw meta or page content. Breaking down a market segment is not something you do overnight. Its clean and quick only when you are targeting the primary national searches. When you start drilling down the variations are only limited to searchers use of phrases to describe the same thing.

You competitor has broken it down into regional and/or state from what you are looking at. Expand upon this by doing your own KW research independent of your competitor. Let your KW research feed your structure as you break them down. Develop your own material. Then expand that material with what your competitor is doing. Compare notes on KW phrases Vs traffic levels. Build your sites using a this analysis of relevance.

When I say duplicate, I mean imitate how they are succeeding. Your own structure of domains may be based on higher traffic KW phrases you competitor has missed or you feel are better suited to search and offer a higher ROI in terms of dollars and time. Egol wrote a great post yesterday about creating a tree. You need to this.

What you're getting involved in is highly complicated and very expansive IMHO. It is something you will need to take your time with to do right. Use your competitor as a guide to success, but establish your own identity. ;)

Cheerios