When organizing the information on your site, there are a couple of options to consider: subdomain or subfolder. But which is better for SEO?
While many site owners may see this as a simple organizational issue, whether you use subdomains or subfolders can actually have a big impact on your site’s performance. As SEO strategies evolve, it’s even more important to stay on top of these elements influencing your rankings.
Let’s explore the difference between subdomains and subfolders, and how you can utilize them to improve your SEO strategy.
Defining Subdomains and Subfolders for SEO
When we’re asking the question ‘subdomain or subfolder: which is better for SEO?’, first, we need to define subdomains and subfolders so we know exactly what we’re talking about before we break down their uses further.
What Is A Subdomain?
A subdomain is a page or section of your website that is essentially treated as a separate website in and of itself. You can recognize a subdomain because its URL will be structured as follows: page.example.com.
You can think of subdomains as creating a new mini-website within your website.
What Is A Subfolder?
A subfolder is part of your main website, which is organized into its own separate section or “folder.” You can recognize when a page is categorized as a subfolder because its URL will be structured as follows: example.com/page.
If subdomains are like mini-websites within your website, then subfolders can be thought of as a specific section of your site. It is still an integrated part of your main website rather than a separate site altogether.
How Do Subdomains and Subfolders Impact SEO?
Google’s official stance is that subdomains and subfolders are treated equally when it comes to SEO. This means that, in theory, they should perform the same. However, this is not often how things work out in practice, and which one you choose can either help or harm your SEO performance. So, which is better for SEO – subdomains or subfolders?
Subdomain or Subfolder: Which Is Better For SEO?
When it comes to SEO, subfolders tend to produce better results.
Despite Google intending to treat both subdomains and subfolders equally, subdomains are often treated as completely separate entities from the main domain. This means that their performance is completely insulated and will not benefit from being part of your main site, nor will they support your site’s SEO authority.
Subfolders, on the other hand, are treated as part of the main site, sharing link equity and receiving all the benefits of being attached to your main domain.
Another benefit of subfolders for SEO is that, thanks to the way they are structured, they can make crawling your site more efficient. Due to everything being under the same domain structure, crawling is more streamlined. This means that your content will be discovered and indexed more quickly, compared to subdomains, which usually take more time.
When to Use a Subfolder
Let’s break down the best times to use a subfolder and why this is the structure you will want to use most often.
Pages With Ties To Main Website
For content that is closely tied to your main brand or website, such as blogs, SEO pages, and support, you will definitely want to use a subfolder. This will clearly indicate to Google that you want to connect these pages to your main site.
Improving Organic Rankings
Not only do subfolders benefit from the authority of the root domain, but they also help Google to use established signals to rank pages. With things like internal linking, content relevance, user behavior, and backlinks more clearly organized under one domain, these signals are stronger and communicate higher topic relevance and trustworthiness to Google.
Faster SEO Gains
Part of answering our question of ‘subdomain or subfolder: which is better for SEO?’ is considering the speed of gaining SEO rankings. If you’re a new site or small business owner looking to build your SEO more quickly, then subfolders can really help with this. As discussed, crawlers can discover and index pages more quickly when they are placed under subfolders, making this the top option when trying to quickly grow your site’s SEO performance.
When to Use a Subdomain
So, if subfolders are clearly better for SEO than subdomains, then why do people still choose to use subdomains? There are some circumstances when subdomains can be really helpful, so let’s break down some of the times you may want to use them on your site.
Targeting Different Regions Or Languages
When you’re targeting a different region or language, it can be helpful to put this content under a subdomain. For example, if you’re producing content in French, you may use the subdomain: fr.example.com. This means that all the content you produce under this domain will be linked together in its own group, containing it in its own space.
Using A Separate Platform Or CMS
Some elements of your site may need to be hosted on a separate platform or CMS, such as hosting your online shop on Shopify or a help portal on Zendesk. Using a subdomain will enable you to host these sections of your site on different platforms, while keeping them linked to your main domain and site.
For Distinct Audiences Or Branding
If you want to create different versions of your site that are entirely redesigned in order to target different audiences, such as including a developer portal, then subdomains are a great option. This may also be useful when part of your company functions as its own brand, such as with a specific product line or community. Subdomains are useful when part of your content doesn’t fit in neatly with the rest of your content and wants to be kept separate.
Final Recommendation
Ultimately, when considering whether subdomains or subfolders are better for SEO, the answer is always that subfolders are the better choice.
While subdomains have their uses, they aren’t useful specifically for your entire site’s SEO rankings, and should be used only when technically necessary or when they truly fit your site strategy.
In the end, subfolders come out on top.
Why Should You Work With SEO Baguette?
Technical SEO, such as how to properly organize the structure of your site’s domains, can be one of the most confusing and overwhelming elements of SEO for site owners to work with. If your site is currently not organized in the way you want it to be, it can also feel like an enormous undertaking to fix it.
At SEO Baguette, we offer technical SEO services that can not only help you get your domains straightened out but also improve your overall crawling and indexing, site speed, and fix broken links and redirects.
Our experience in the sphere has taught us just how crucial technical SEO can be for sites to thrive, despite often being overlooked and ignored. Through our free SEO audit, we can identify exactly what your site needs to improve its performance, so you can effectively address your SEO needs.
