(51 characters) Subdomain Vs Subdirectory, Which Is Better For SEO?

Summarise this blog

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok

Key Takeaways

• A subdomain is a sub-section of a domain that sits in front of the main name, such as news.kapook.com, used to separate distinct content or systems from the main website.
• Subdomains make large sites easier to organise, remember and maintain, and they can run on a separate server or stack from the main site.
• Google says it treats subdomains and subdirectories as essentially equivalent, but a subdomain can still be crawled and assessed as a separate site, so its authority does not automatically pool with the main domain.
• A subdirectory (domain.com/blog) keeps everything under one domain, which makes analytics simpler and concentrates link authority in one place.
• For pure SEO, a subdirectory is the safer default; for a separate system, a separate team or a separate server, a subdomain earns its place.

Many people have seen websites with separate sub-links that stand apart from the main site, usually split by content type. That is called a “subdomain”, an addition to the main domain, and it is widely believed to affect SEO performance too. Whether the effect is positive or negative is the question we answer today, starting with what is a subdomain, and what it is good for.

What Is A Subdomain?

The subdomain meaning is simple: a subdomain is a sub-section of a domain used to divide a website into categories, to organise it and guide users to its different parts. It is common on websites with several types of content, because it helps users understand the site and find what they want. The name takes the form subdomain.domain.com. Kapook, for example, splits content off from its main site as news.kapook.com and travel.kapook.com.

What Are The Benefits Of A Subdomain?

• It divides the website’s content into tidy categories that are easier to use.
• It helps users remember the site name, or the sub-sections split off from it.
• It makes the site easier for the development team to maintain, for example on a bilingual website with a team for each language.
• Even a website too small to need a separate section can use a subdomain as a practice site: a real site on the live host for testing website builds, instead of simulating a server on a local computer.

Does A Subdomain Affect SEO?

Before doing anything to their own website, anyone in SEO worries about how much it will affect their rankings, and creating a subdomain is no exception. Some have heard that a subdomain affects SEO, but nobody has said clearly whether that is true, so subdomain SEO stays a grey area.

The answer is yes, but not directly, and it cannot be said to do more good than harm. Creating a subdomain apart from the main domain is much like building two websites, and Google can crawl and assess a subdomain as a separate site. So instead of concentrating all the site’s authority in one place, some of it sits on the second site, and the main site’s SEO ranking may not be as strong as it could be. Anyone who really wants to use a subdomain should build it carefully and follow Google’s guidelines closely to protect the site’s rankings, with a website development specialist involved.

If you want a separate section for each category and still want to keep the site’s SEO performance, we recommend a “subdirectory” instead. The two are often confused, and people constantly ask how they differ, but in practice the difference is large. A subdirectory takes the form domain.com/subdirectory, such as primal.co.th/blog.

The position of a subdomain and a subdirectory differs only slightly, one in front of the main domain and one behind it, but technically and in practice they differ a great deal. If you are still unsure which to choose, read the next section before deciding.

Subdomain Vs Subdirectory, What Is The Difference?

Ease Of Setup And Flexibility

As mentioned, a subdomain is much like building a new website, with no system-level connection to the existing one. With a subdirectory, running a different system or technology is harder than with a subdomain, especially for large websites such as a public company’s, or a site with heavy security such as a bank’s, where building a connected system as a subdirectory adds further complexity.

So on ease of setup and flexibility alone, the subdomain wins.

Analytics And Tracking

Improving anything starts with measuring it. The more accurate the results, the clearer the limits, the problems and the way forward, and the better the chance of improving.

By comparison, analytics and tracking on a subdomain are harder than on a subdirectory, because a new domain is much like a new website, unlike a subdirectory where everything sits inside one site.

If that is hard to picture, think of installing Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Facebook Pixel or any other script on both the main domain and the subdomains. The script has to be installed once per subdomain, so five subdomains means five installations, and in practice combining every site’s data for analysis is harder than with a subdirectory.

Website Performance And Speed

Performance and speed are another factor every website builder has to consider. Google’s own research found that 53% of mobile visits are abandoned if a page takes longer than three seconds to load, and one widely cited estimate put the cost to Amazon of a one-second slowdown at $1.6 billion in revenue a year, so there is no denying how much this factor matters.

Because a subdomain is a site built apart from the main domain, it does not have to carry the same software or scripts as the main site. A subdirectory, by contrast, is very likely to have its software and scripts tied to the main website.

So a subdomain can run on a server separate from the main site, which means that when the main website goes down the subdomain stays up, while a subdirectory goes down with the main site and may load more slowly because it carries more data.

SEO Performance

Now to the point website builders most want to know, which of the two performs better for subdomain SEO versus subdirectory SEO. Rand Fishkin, co-founder of Moz, one of the most respected SEO sites in the world, has argued that from an SEO standpoint, keeping everything on one site is best, and Moz’s own tests of moving content from a subdomain into the main domain produced gains in rankings and visits each time. That means a subdirectory beats spreading a site across several subdomains.

Summary

Once the subdomain meaning is clear, whether to use one depends on your purpose. If you want convenience in back-of-house work and website performance, a subdomain is a good option, though its SEO results may not be all they could be. It is not so bad that it should never be done. But if the focus is purely SEO, we recommend a subdirectory, because at the very least the site’s authority stays in one place, and a strong score pushes the website towards the top of Google’s first page.

That said, effective SEO can be done in many ways, depending on budget and the type of brand, and the wrong method may not deliver the result you hoped for. So if you would rather not spend without return, use an agency that provides an SEO service directly. Primal, a digital marketing agency, is ready to advise brand owners with attention to the kind of brand each one runs, and always selects the approach that fits each client best.

Frequently Asked Questions About Subdomains (FAQs)

Explore with AI

ChatGPT Key takeaways Explain principles Create action plan Future perspectives

Perplexity Key takeaways Explain principles Create action plan Future perspectives

Claude Key takeaways Explain principles Create action plan Future perspectives

Grok Key takeaways Explain principles Create action plan Future perspectives