Subdomains vs. Subfolders - Which is best and why

[News]

There are some basic questions about SEO that come up really frequently, and it's often easy to assume an answer that isn't exactly right. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand tackles three of them:

1. Should I put subsections of my site on subdomains or in subfolders?
2. Should I use a rel canonical or a 301 redirect to move content on a separate site over to my main domain?
3. If I have multiple websites all linking back to my main site, does that help or hurt my SEO?

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to chat about structuring content, placing content, and placing links, specifically with regards to some things that have come up over and over again in the SEO world, but still seem to be a challenge for many of us who play in the field.

I can't tell you how many times we've seen and we've actually tested ourselves by first putting content on a subdomain and then moving it back over to the main domain with Moz. We've done that three times over that past two years. Each time we've seen a considerable boost in rankings and in search traffic, both long tail and head of the demand curve to these, and we're not alone. Many others have seen it, particularly in the startup world, where it's very popular to put blog.yourwebsite.com, and then eventually people move it over to a subfolder, and they see ranking benefits.

Full Article: http://moz.com/blog/subdomains-vs-s...ure-links-optimally-for-seo-whiteboard-friday

 

[RU]

subdomains.rocks

 

[enlytend]

But subfolders are (often) better. Domainers should pay careful attention to point #3 - minisites pointing to a main domain - there seems to be a compulsion to develop a site on every domain you own, but unless there's a really good reason, "less is more."

 

[Joseph Green]

But subfolders are (often) better.

Let's say your site has high-quality content (professionally written) and low-quality content (user-submitted), would you suggest separating that content so that the lower quality content is on a subdomain? Is there a benefit to mixing vs separating this content on a single domain name?

Also, what if your professionally written content has high-quality backlinks and your user-submitted content has low-quality/spammy backlinks? Would it help to separate the different quality content (and thus, quality of backlinks) via a subdomain?

 

[enlytend]

Every situation is different and every rule has an exception . Don't do something that's confusing to your visitors. Manage your UGC (user-submitted content isn't necessarily "low quality") and keep an eye on your link profile.

All sites get some low quality links. If they aren't known to be causing a problem usually best to leave them be.

Percentages are key. Keep in mind that if you split them, the percentage of crap on the UGC portion of the site will go way up. You're also removing links from the other part.

Lots of options, what you do totally depends on what the content is and how much harm vs good it's doing.

 

[Name Trader]

The basic decision between using sub-domain or sub-folder revolves around the fact that sub-domains are completely separate entities to the main domain. Meaning, they might as well be another domain, as there is no SEO juice flowing between the sub-domain and the main domain. Now this maybe what you want under certain circumstances. But most often, you would want all parts of your domain to enjoy any SEO juice it may have, and so you would use sub-folders.

A good example of this is if you have a Forum or a Blog, as part of your website, you would probably want any SEO juice it might have, to benefit your entire website, and so should set it up as a sub-folder. Whereas a Shopping Cart, which probably doesn't have any SEO juice, you might consider putting it on a sub-domain. But it's not compulsory to do so.

 

[robert_jones]

stub nailed it - it really depends on what the PURPOSE is behind what you’re doing in the subdomain/subfolder