I have a website which references places to travel to in the world. Those places are (of course) grouped by countries.

Here is an example of an actual URL of my website:

http://awespot.org/country/105/iceland

I am wondering if it would be better, in terms of SEO, to have the countries separated in subdomains:

http://iceland.awespot.org/

I know subdomains are considered by Google as different websites, so I am considering the 2 options:

• separating would mean also separating the pagerank and benefits of links to the website
• but separating would enable me to create a "web" or related websites (all related to travel and all) that link and benefit to each other

I am only asking about SEO here, I know there are other questions raised by this possibility (user experience, administration... even password completion by web browsers)