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Subdomain or Subdirectory Name for a SEO Blog?

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10th August 2007

Subdomain or Subdirectory Name for a SEO Blog?

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Subdomain or Subdirectory Name for a SEO Blog?–It depends!

Some quick definitions of “Subdomain” and “Subdirectory”:

A subdomain is a completely different website (from the ‘main-domain’) and it looks like this, “http://subdomain.main-domain.com”.

*Note–For ease of clarification, I’ve used ‘main-domain’ instead of ’site-domain’ as the Top Level Domain (TLD): e.g. http://main-domain.com or http://Top-Level-Domain.com

The URL of a subdirectory looks like this: “http://main-domain.com/subdirectory.”

Search engines see subdirectory just that–subdirectory of the website’s domain. Basically, what that means is that the subdirectory belong to the site’s main domain or subdomain, which again is a different website from the ‘main-domain’.

So, if the main-domain has high page rank (PR), the page rank gets distribute throughout the subdirectories within the main-domain; but the subdomain does NOT, however, feel the PR love from the main-domain :razz: . This is, again, because the subdomain is a different website from the main-domain.

O.K. Now that we’ve gotten the subdomain/subdirectory definitions down, let’s go back to the question of whether a subdomain name or a subdirectory name is best fitted for your SEO blog.

To simply put, if you have have a main-domain site about cat, “www.cat-domain.com,” and you want to create a blog on “cat food,” then you should choose “cat-food” as a subdirectory for your SEO blog, “www.cat-domain.com/cat-food.” This is because “cat-food” is related to your ‘main’ website topic, so your subdirectory SEO blog will feel ‘more’ PR love from your ‘main-domain’.

On the other hand, if you want to create another site for “dog-food,” you should choose “dog-food” as a subdomain of the “cat-domain.com,” since “dog-food” has little relevance to your main-domain site, www.cat-domain.com.

And because a subdomain is a different website, you can actually have a subdirectory-blog in the subdomain (e.g. http://subdomain.main-domain.com/subdirectory-blog).

So, if you want an SEO blog out of the subdomain, you can have “luxury-dog-food” as a subdirectory name: “http://dog-food.cat-domain.com/luxury-dog-food”. And yes, if you have high PR for the subdomain “dog-food,” your SEO blog on “luxury-dog-food” also feels the PR love from your SUBDOMAIN, but not from your main “cat-domain.com”.

And that’s concluded my rambling on subdomain vs. subdirectory for an optimized SEO blog :cool: .

Anyway, to recap, if you have a blog topic (”cat-food”) that’s related to your main-domain website (”http://cat-domain.com”), for SEO purpose, you should choose the subdirectory route: http://cat-domain.com/cat-food. But if your blog is of different topic than your main-domain website (”dog-food”), you should choose “dog-food” as a subdomain name for your SEO blog: http://dog-food-blog.cat-domain.com.

O.K. Now, I really am finished rambling about the subdomain and subdirectory dilemma :mrgreen: .

*P.S. I didn’t explicitly mention in the article, but the ‘main’ reason you want to have a ‘relevant’ blog on the main domain/subdomain is that when you link to other page with ‘relevant’ content, your link juice have more juice/quality to it… well because it’s “relevant” :eek:

Posted by SEO Blogger in SEO Blogs, SEO Domain |

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4 Comments »

Comment by debra
2007-05-07 11:25:12

One of the better descriptions on the difference between sub domain/directory I’ve read!

 
Comment by SEO Tips
2008-06-06 23:25:52

Good effort. I have also written one post on Subdirectory Vs. Sub-domains.

 
 
Comment by wq member
2008-08-28 07:14:40

Nice article. :wink:

 
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