Difference between 5 domains covering 5 categories or 1 domain covering them all

[Yasodaran]

I am in the process of creating a loans site. There are several types of loans I have identified all of which could yield 50-100 pages of content/information.

The loans I am intending to cover are:

- Personal Loan
- Home Loan
- Car Loan
- Student Loan
- Unsecured Loan

The question in terms of keyword density and consequently search engine placement is would it be better to create one (potentially) 500 page website covering all these types of loan at SomethingLoan.com or create five 100 page websites at SomethingPersonalLoan.com, SomethingHomeLoan.com etc.

Bearing in mind that all these sites will be linking to each other.

From what I've read I am swaying towards the 5 different sites although I am still unsure if all those pages under one domain would give a better search engine placement and page rank.

[incka]

I would go for different sites as you would get better search results for 'Home Loan' and 'Student Loan'...

[Yasodaran]

Well I am optimising for pages so I guess what I'm really asking is which of these two is better:

SomethingLoan.com/hsbc-personal-loan/

VS

SomethingPersonalLoan.com/hsbc-personal-loan/

Given that the second site would only have 100 pages but I'm assuming would have greater keyword density (because its more focused on personal loans).

[ozgression]

Go for the 5 domain option. They will be linking to eachother anyway, right?

Better keyword density in the domains and have the ability to get link exchanges for 5 sites, instead of 1. So, your PR should be better. Also, there will be anchor text benefits...
________
silver surfer vaporizer

[chromate]

I would do different sites too. Mainly because it's easier to build PR that way. A webmaster's more likely to link to 5 different sites than 5 different sections of the same site.

But apart from that, it doesn't actually make any difference whether it's one site or 5 different sites. All the pages are treated as separate entities by the search engines anyway.

Also keep in mind that we believe local rank is now in play and possibly looks for affiliations between linked pages. If you go for 5 different sites, I would place them on all on different IP's if they're to be inter-linked.

Depends on your point of view though. Personally, I prefer to have lots of smaller separate sites. (my kitchen sites for example). I just feel more comfortable with it.

[Yasodaran]

Thanks for the input everyone - I will be going with different sites.

Also means I can get them up quicker individually one at a time.