Many of my clients and friends have emailed me regarding the seo benefits of using a subdomain or a subfolder in their websites.Are sub folders recommended or are sub domains recommended?
First of all let me explain you the difference between both of them.
SubFolder : A folder created inside a folder on your web hosting account similar to the sub folder you create in your computer’s hard drive. It is followed by a front slash from the main directory, like http://www.yourwebsite.com/subfolder.
SubDomain : A Sub domain is a part of the main directory/domain and is comes as a part of the main domain name like http://www.subdomain.yourwebsite.com. In the following domain name www.internet.com internet is a sub domain for the com domain name and this is the same way sub domains are created.
Advantages, benefits and disadvantages compared :
SubFolder in terms of SEO gets the maximum benefits of the main domain name since its a part of the main domain name. If you have a website by name www.wikipedia.org every sub folder created like www.wikipedia.org/health would normally get all the search engine rankings benefits of the main domain and this folder would always be a part of the main domain name, but in case of the SubDomain they are normally always treated as a new domain in the eyes of search engines [based on my experience] and they normally dont get any extra advantages unless and until they are heavily interlinked with the main domain name.
There is always a advantage of sub domain which is branding, because if you are having a website which is not going to be promoted much via SEO, but to be promoted via media like television, newspapers etc then sub domains are always recommended because games.yoursite.com , shopping.yoursite.com & jobs.yoursite.com would always look more professional rather than yoursite.com/shopping.
Let me know if you have found any more advantages or disadvantages of using subfolders or subdomains.
The SEO Expert offers a great tip about difference between subdomain and subfolder.keep it up…..
Selvam
yea amit this is nice tip, its ture.. also i have same experiance.. thanks for sharing with all new and seo 🙂
Google treats subdomain.domain.com different to domain.com while alexa dosent. A sub folder is always better than a sub domain. Sub domains are mainly used for websites who would like to host the subdomain content on another server.
Nice Information Amit… That is why Blogger blogs dont get the PR of the homepage but still they get ranked easily.. there might be some consideration by the SE to the sub-domain also..
The reason for that is simple , those sub domains are again interlinked to the main domain.
Is the sub-domain we get for FREE for blogging from blogger.com is interlinked with the main page ?? that is Blogger.com or Blogspot.com ?
Yes they are for sure, did you ever check the tags/labels options? which are normally the categories renamed as labels/tags and also the latest updated blogs are linked from homepage and most categories.
No i did not… Wait I will do it right now.. Thanks for highlighting this 🙂
subdomains are separate from their parent domain. However, the use of a sub domain to include keywords can and has been used to great effect in terms of SEO. You’ll see many subdomains ranking at the No.1 spot for a lot of highly competitive terms.
If you’re talking in terms of structuring your content within your website – you should always go for sub folders.
i guess you are correct i have also noticed that sub domains are given diff alexa ranking and treated as a diff domain name… but i guess it would be helpful in the loong run if every subdomain has good content and are linked to the main domain name !
If I install 7 wordpress blog in my subfolder and the main wordpress remains in the root directory, will all the wordpress will get the same priority by google search bots?