Editor’s Note: This blog post was originally published on January 5, 2017 and has been updated and republished to reflect current information. The article was cleaned up, recommendations were reassessed, and references refreshed.
One of the best things that companies can do to improve their SEO results is to maintain a blog where they can create valuable content for their visitors and customers. Even companies who may not think they can produce content on their products can benefit from a blog.
The trick is knowing how to incorporate it into your website for best results.
In SEO, how you set up your website matters, and from that perspective, there is a history of disagreement on the impact of subdomains and how they affect rankings.
There are times that a subdomain’s use on a website is recommended, but when adding a blog, it is better to use a subfolder, also called a subdirectory.
So, what is a subdomain and what is the difference?
A subdomain would have an address like: www.blog.yourdomain.com.
A subfolder would be set up like: www.yourdomain.com/blog.
It seems like a small distinction at first, but it makes a big difference.
A subfolder makes the blog a part of the main domain. It is acting like another page on a website, so any SEO you do on it can have an effect on the main domain.
Google has not weighed in on the debate much. Their most recent statement was in December of 2017 by John Mueller in this video and their official position hasn’t changed. He says that using subdomains versus subfolders are okay. He also says it may take a few days to learn how to crawl both separately.
The key here is that they are crawled separately.
A Blog on a Subdomain is Crawled as a Different Site
To break this down even more, it is important to understand that there are two main factors that impact SEO results: content and links.
A blog provides valuable content for site visitors, helping establish a domain’s authority. Inbound links come naturally to well written content which will contribute to results, too.
Since subdomains are crawled separately, having the content and links on a subdomain – separate from the main site – means their results and authority are also divided.
Google says that you won’t be punished for listing it separately, but it won’t help you either. Properly integrating your blog and website so they count toward the main domain will help improve traffic, rankings, and revenue by combining the results.
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Is There Ever a Time to Use Subdomains?
We don’t mean to imply that using a subdomain is all bad. There are instances where it is helpful or even better to use a subdomain. It can be easier to organize pages or site versions for different audiences and languages.
Using them appropriately as separate sites is the key.
An example of this may include companies who operate in multiple countries and have websites in different languages or have different prices for geographic locations. Separating them by subdomains can be very effective because they are treated as separate websites but still connected to the main domain. If you plan to produce a blog in multiple languages, subdomains may be beneficial.
Another great example is adding in a Shopify site, which forces the use of subdomains. With ecommerce, some companies prefer to use a subdomain because it keeps their blog separate from their ecommerce side of business.
Since subdomains and SEO results are treated separately by Google, you should, too. Your company’s marketing team needs to focus their goals and efforts on each subdomain as a separate website, which means having separate plans for local optimization and link building.
Our Recommendation
Integrating a blog into your company strategy with high-quality, relevant content is a great way to give your SEO results a boost. It is something we regularly suggest. Keep the good stuff together for the most benefit and focus on directing traffic to the main domain.
In most cases, our recommendation is to have everything on a main domain with subfolders and avoid subdomains. Some servers and older websites work better for a web designer to create subdomains instead of subfolders, which could be why a site is set up that way. If that’s the case, it may be time to get a new website.
It can be a pain switching from a subdomain to a subfolder set-up, but it is worth the effort.
Do you want to learn more about how to create content for your blog to help boost SEO results? Download a copy of our free eBook to learn more.
I absolutely agree with you Andy as many consultants do direct companies to create a subdomain verses a subfolder…
As some believe that not all backlnks are not worthy and thus won’t hurt their primary domain if built on verses in –
It can definitely be a problem if consultants automatically recommend that sort of thing. While there are certainly valid reasons to use a subdomain, it’s usually better to just avoid them.
From an seo stand point the subdomain has its own page rank so if you care about seo try not to use subdomains use it like
example.com/customer1/function … and so on
That is definitely what it all comes down to: do you need your content to rank? If you do, subfolders are the way to go. If not, well, maybe a subdomain can help keep temporary content organized.
Sub folder structure is better than sub domain but there can be various reasone one may want to use sub domain instead of sub folder, especially if someone wants to separate something logically from the main site. But yes, from SEO standpoint sub folders work better because those stay on the main site itself as a part of it.
I often get the request to create multiple “vanity links” that point to the same page. In other words, if someone is writing about how to bake bread, they have the primary URL domain.com/how-to-bake-bread and then want multiple “vanity links” domain.com/howtobakebread, and domain.com/htbb. SEO implications of this type of request?
I completely agree with you.
Certainly subdomains are not bad at all, but if the SEO is the main reason for expanding your site, then subdomain won’t do you much good in that regard.
Uhhhhh no. This is false. Here is Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team to explain why: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MswMYk05tk&feature=youtu.be
That video was poster in 2012. Things have changed in the last 7 years.
Yes, your view is in line with mine. Subdomain usage is also good. More and more attention has been paid to subdomain names and your website has more reading.
And what if we use a subdomain as the main domain ? Bad idea ?
That is the ideal architecture!
Your article was very helpful, but I still don’t know what to do or which option to chose. Because I want to direct myself to an english and spanish audience, and in the future different age groups so in that case the subdomain would be better. But I would be sacrificing the benefit of having traffic come to my website. Is it really that bad to not have the blog traffic come to your website? Personally, I prefer the idea of having them seperate, because I want them to have equal importance. I don’t like the idea of my blog hiding in a menu on my website where someone might see it or not. But that’s just how I feel about it. But your article really help me see the cost benefits of both options. I am going to go for the subdomain option, but I wanted to ask you if you could give me any tips on how to keep my website active as well. I would really appreciate your help. Thanks!
Yes that’s right. We’re in the same boat. But have your website structurer been used subdomain? Hence does each subdomain represent spesific region as particular?
May i thankfull if u reply this. Thank you..
According to Google – it doesn’t really matter whether you use sub domains or sub folder. Unless you know more than the guys that run the biggest search engine.
Hi Andy, interesting point of view. I have to disagree though. The company I work for has dozens of websites under our charge and have done this using both methods dozens and dozens of times each, for different storage and structural reasons. I have never seen any difference in the methods as far as organic search metrics go and Google seems to agree:
Matt Cutts from several years ago – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MswMYk05tk&feature=youtu.be
Mr. Mueller from last December – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJGDyAN9g-g
Organic algorithms of today are smart enough to know that the same primary domain name is directly connected to both methods as long as they are hosted on the same server. If you set up your tracking correctly, you see the same thing in your reporting as well.
Take care!
Hi All,
I am planning to start a blog for my just launched website, it’s a website for posting classifieds with a lot of subdomains (each country in the world has a subdomain connected to my website. Exhample: us.example.com, uk.example.com)
I plan to start the blog for SEO purpose, so my question is, how should I put it;
1. blog.example.com
2. example.com/blog
3. example.blog (I checked and .blog domain is available for my site)
Please answer from the point view of SEO
Thank you All
I think it would be hard to maintain blog on that many levels of sub-domains. Although this article clearly stated as for your SEO PURPOSE that you should not segment blog as a different website at all!
Go for http://www.example.com/blog if haven’t done already.
Wishes,
Rees Gargi
Hi,
Nice article as always. Help me on this though:
I have a resume like website “www.example.com”, and I regularly write articles not on a particular niche and I am planning to make “blog.example.com”.
Now, I don’t need any particular traffic on my resume site (it’s a one page static site).
Should I go with Subdirectory in this scenario?
Ur article helps always help me . And I have still questions if I created 2 sub domain of my main domain . So do I have still same page and website speed load ? Or my site we’ll slow loading ?
I want to introduce a new website for home delivery but i already have a ecommerce website for selling clothes which is having a good domain age& authority so do i need to register a new domain for home delivery or need to start it as a subdomain of my ecommerce site? Which do you think is better – creating a new website or registering it as sub domain as my ecommerce is having a good DA. Which is good for seo? Please help
Recently, I change my domain name from blogspot.com to .com. All things are good, I connected it to my blog but I don’t know when I try to see DA and PA of MY blog it shows 0 and 1 but from my blogspot.com domain, it shows 16 and 15. I really feel helpless, I think you should write something on its side-effects. But overall your article is nice.
Thank You
Good Idea. Thanks For This Article I Want to Know Which Kind of SUBDOMAINS Should We Use For Better SEO? Like i Am From India And Many People Don’t Know English Should i Create A Subdomain Like- Hindi.Mydomain.xyz? Or Any Suggestion?
it does not matter if you use sub domains or sub folder. Unless you know more than the guys that run the biggest search engine (google)
true
Google treats sub domains and sub folders equally
I just read an article that recommends subdomain for SEO purposes. Personally I use subdomains internally that don’t need SEO specialties. You said about infrastructure concerns I agree with that.
Hi Admin, I want to segregate my company’s website for two locations India and UK. Which domain type will be good to go.
https://emailholidays.com/uk & https://emailholidays.com/in
OR
https://emailholidays.co.uk & https://emailholidays.co.in
Please suggest.