#weekend tip: Blog as Subdomain vs Subdirectory — Which Is Better For SEO?
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Most startup developers — for some reason — tend to put their Wordpress blogs as subdomain, aka blog.example.com, but some stop to ask whether it is the best configuration. It may be more secure but do you get the most value out of your blog or all this content strategizing and writing effort is for nothing?
Blog as subdomain: blog.example.com
Blog as subdirectory: example.com/blog
This debate has been ongoing since… forever. And while I cannot call myself an SEO expert, when startup founders ask me this question I usually boil it down like this.
When to choose subdomain for my blog?
Sometimes you can feel that blog should have a life on its own due to:
1. Lack of overlap: Your business is not really related to your content (think of TechCrunch and Crunchbase in a case where Crunchbase would be the main product). Or as Rand Fishkin put it during one of his Whiteboard Fridays: when the content and the audience don’t overlap much.
2. Already strong SEO: Your business website SEO is strong enough so you actually do not need the extra boost (Hubspot is a fitting example of this).
Blogging Flail highlights more reasons for a subdomain that don’t apply to 90% of the startups but here’s a list of them anyways:
3. Multiple languages: Your site may sell a product or offer a service, but you want a presence in multiple languages. A subdomain could be established for each language you are targeting.
4. Seller personalization: Franchises may all focus on the same products, but will have unique content that needs to be called out for each franchisee (owner information, address, phone, specials, etc…). In this case a subdomain would be set up for each franchise store.
5. Product specific: Differing products for your company. Perhaps your company wants to focus marketing efforts for some of the various products they sell, in this case a subdomain may be a better approach to targeting traffic to each unique product.
If one of these 5 cases apply to you, go for a subdomain team.
When to choose subdirectory for my blog?
The blog should reinforce your main business as a thought leader as it’s closely related to your main area of expertise. To put simply, the blog = SEO juice, and
if you set up your blog as a subdomain instead of a subdirectory, the ranking of your blog will suffer.
Blogging Flail (quoted above) put a case study from their own experience for your perusal. And Rand Fishkin generally agrees.
If you want your main business page (example.com) to benefit from the blog, choose the subdirectory option.
What if my blog is in subdomain and I want to move it to subdirectory?
As long as you place 301 redirects, there shouldn’t be a problem with Google. Well, almost.
After moving you should expect a couple months of search traffic down time; eventually it will recover and hopefully improve (as in Blogging Flail and moz cases) — if you don’t receive much traffic now, you won’t notice the dip.
What about you?
Share your experience on the blog on a subdomain vs subdirectory!
More Pineapple a Day growth bites on SEO:
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#9 First Steps For On-Page SEO: Start with Page Titles & Meta Descriptions
