Subdomain vs Subdirectory: Which is Better for Your WordPress Site SEO?

What is Google’s stand on this?These were just a couple of questions picked from the heaps of most commonly asked questions within the SEO community, which usually receive clashing responses.But don’t worry, we have got your back.In this blog, we will try and clear up this confusion and help put an end to this ongoing debate once and for all.

You must grasp the various usage scenarios and how they can significantly influence your website’s organic performance.This brings us back to the original question once again – where does this confusion come from then?This argument is triggered by the fact Google regards subdomains as separate units to the root domain, mostly because a few sites put distinct content on subdomains that should not really belong to the main website.

yourdomain.com by Google.The subdirectory yourdomain.com/blog/ is regarded as part of your main domain yourdomain.com by Google.This implies that the content, along with its valuable assets like backlinks, you are hosting on a subdomain, are not being considered by Google’s algorithm while ranking your main domain on the search results.It is almost as if the content you have hosted on that subdomain is hosted on a completely separate domain for ranking objectives.

And when we look at it in this way, it helps clear things up a little bit.Even though it may not strike as being a good thing to some people, at times, it only sounds logical for subdomains to be treated as a different unit to the main domain, particularly when the subdomains are portraying a different business or sections.While usually a subdomain is linked to the root domain, either through internal links or a navigation menu, sometimes it won’t be.

In that case, both of these entities’ overall domain authority is going to be lower compared to if everything was placed on the main domain using subfolders instead.This is the reason people commonly notice a boost in their overall organic search visibility as well as traffic inflow (in comparison to the two seen individually) when they shift relevant subdomains into subdirectories on the root domain.You will come across heaps of success stories of site owners bagging substantial gains after migrating their content writing from a subdomain to a subdirectory on their main domain if you look around.Twitter is a great platform to check out such stories as many people love sharing their experiences regularly over there.Let us not forget the fact that all along we have been talking about shifting blog content from subdomains to subfolders.

When this inherited authority is joined with the primary domain’s existing authority, as a result, there is a boost in the site’s overall authority as well as organic search visibility which becomes larger than when the two were viewed as individual entities earlier.Typically, good content that is scoring good backlinks will pretty much always promote improved SEO results when migrated from a subdomain to a subfolder.SUBFOLDERS: THE CHALLENGESIn the perfect universe, you’d have complete control over whether to use subdomains or subfolders for different areas of your website.Nevertheless, in reality, things are not often that straightforward and commonly, you will be required to make some compromises now and then depending on technical limitations including:Inability to set up international websites in subdirectoriesDevelopers not willing to host a blog on the same web server as an eCommerce storeA wish to have a dedicated blogging platform instead of an in-built blog of an eCommerce platformOther features such as quote form not being able to be placed on the same server as the primary domain because of being written in different coding languagesThese were just a few examples of the challenges or limitations you can face while deciding whether to use a subdomain or subdirectory in various areas of your website.For example, Shopify pushes people to utilize subdomains for international stores (i.e.

You have the ability to create subdomains in cPanel.

Let's go over an example.

If you have a forum for your site, you could create a subdomain called "forum" and the address would be "forum.example.com"

Many people use subdomains for mobile versions for their website, forums, blogs, and stores.

Subdomains are easily created in your cPanel.

Let's walk through setting up a subdomain.