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We recently received a question from a reader of our articles who wanted to know if there is a benefit to using subdomains as part of his URL structure.

He would then use 301 redirects found in his .htaccess file to point visitors at the subfolder on the same site.  The idea he had was that the subdomains are worth more to search engines and therefore the subdomain’s influence over the link popularity of the rest of the site would be positive. 

In this article I address this common question:

Are subdomains better than subfolders?

One thing you hear often in the search engine optimization and marketing industry is, “it depends.” I think it’s the SEO’s favorite phrase.

This is because there are so many factors which influence a site’s ability to rank that it is difficult, if not impossible to say with 100% certainty what effect a single tactic will have on the outcome of a campaign.

That’s because there is no single tactic that is the be all and end all of SEO.  There is just no way to know for certain that one tactic will outperform another.

Therefore, my answer to the question “are subdomains better than subdirectories” has to be ‘it depends.’

Subdomains can be more effective than folders in certain instances, while in others they are less effective.

For example, if you have a 100 page site that is organized into subfolders, investing the time and money into migrating it to a subdomain structure likely won’t help unless you have plans to grow your site.

This is because, in my experience, the only sites that seem to benefit from subdomains are larger sites.

A good example of just such a site is Ebay.  It is organized into subdomains and it does quite well.  That is because the subdomains are large enough to exist on their own.

For example, stores.ebay.com has over 1 million indexed pages.  This subdomain can easily survive on its own because of its size.

But Ebay is just one example of the types of sites which have used subdomains to logically organize their sites.

And this is another key to the whole subdomain strategy – logically ordering your site so that the subdomain is topical.

I recently consulted with a large legal website and they felt that they weren’t getting the traffic or exposure they should.  Upon my analysis, I determined that this site, while organized into subfolders, was actually causing itself harm in the search engines.  This is because there was so much information available on the site on a variety of topics that the engines were having problems categorizing it.

So we devised a subdomain strategy that would help focus certain areas of the site to help them compete individually with their competitors.

Hot topics such as Bankrupcty and Divorce became their own subdomains because a) there was sufficient content (tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of pages) to support the subdomains and b) because they are highly searched for topics.

Through this strategy they created various subdomains and then used the .htaccess 301 rewrite rules to make it appear that the content had moved.

And such a strategy will work if you have a similar situation.  If you have an area of your site which is topical in nature and either has hundreds of pages or will continue to grow in the future, then you have a good candidate for a subdomain.

But why would you want to split your site up like that?

Often the first question is, “But if I move that content off my main domain, won’t that hurt it?

Well again, it depends.

If you properly link the two domains so that link popularity can flow between them you can actually help your main domain improve.

This is because, as the subdomain becomes established in its own right, it will begin to rank higher and higher.  Over time, it will build more and more links, boosting its link popularity which would then transfer through to the main domain.

Therefore, over the long term the subdomain is actually a benefit to the main domain.

What else can a subdomain be used for?

A subdomain doesn’t only have to be used for existing content.  It can be used for a new section of the site as well.

For example, if you’ve recently hired a blogger or content development team, why not split that content into its own subdomain?

If you’ve recently expanded into a new product line, these pages could also reside in their own subdomain.

Even if you wanted to segregate your corporate information from your storefront you could employ the subdomain strategy.

For example, if you are a full service web shop offering design, hosting and SEO, you could subdomain each of these services.  This way each subdomain could attempt to compete online on its own merits.

So as you can see, you first need to answer a few questions.  You must treat the subdomain as its own site.  And since we know you generally need a larger site to compete, is it realistic at this point to have a subdomain?

In other words, is the subdomain going to be large enough to stand on its own?

Second, even if you have the size, is the subdomain themed enough?  Is it about a single topic, or a handful of topics?  Remember, creating a subdomain for the sake of doing so isn’t a good enough reason.

You must make the subdomain worthy of existing otherwise you are just wasting your time.

Rob Sullivan is a SEO Consultant and Writer for Textlinkbrokers.com. Textlinkbrokers is the trusted leader in building long term rankings through safe and effective link building. Please provide a link directly to Textlinkbrokers when syndicating this article.