Subdomain vs Subfolder - Which is best for SEO?

Which is better Subdomain or Subfolder?

It’s been a long since we have been hearing SEOs debating on this. Many SEOs prefer saying that subfolders are better for SEO and they also insist on using them as well. This was a myth that was on the basis of older studies. But Google has mentioned that either of them is fine. 

What’s more silly is to argue for a path that has never been traveled. Without getting into much of a technical detail these paths are the virtual ones in most modern systems, these sums up that they don’t point towards the actual locations onto a server. It’s simpler just to just change the name and their location in the URL structure which is a matter of just minutes. 

If you think about it constructively, when you can change a subdomain that can be served as a subfolder quickly that too without changing or adding anything else, then why do people assume that it’s most important where the path is located in the URL?

SEOs have always believed that subdomains are treated to be separate domains but the truth is that it is even more complicated than it’s ever thought of. What important to note is that a person who incorporates the subdomains as one of their major parts then their site is going to be treated as the exact same as a subfolder would be treated. If a person is not going to consider the subdomains as a part of their main website then in that case they will be treated separately. Let’s take you through a bit of a history lesson. In the earlier days, subdomains could help you get additional listings in the SERPs. As don with many other things, SEOs had abused this. What did Google do? Google closed these loopholes in one of the old domains clustering the updates. While in the present day, subdomains can be created as a part of the same website provided they appear to be part of the same website. You should also note that even site links even include links to subdomains. 

 

There are several case studies that have shown that subfolders are better than subdomains, but researchers haven’t seen them as one that wasn’t complicated by other changes such as additional interlinking or migrating multiple properties into one. 

For example, What Github did was migrated from a subfolder to a subdomain and the next they did was to completely change to a different domain. A huge flux was noticed during the migration period along with few other changes during the transition but given the fact that the URLs have changed, it becomes harder to decide on which one of these is faster than the others.

Differences in Traffic

Several different reasons why people consider that migration has more or less impact than they really did. But here are a few differences:

• Temporary Signal Changes

• Measuring issues

• Blocked or nonindexed changes

• Redesigning or changes in the platform

• Changes in the internal links

• Removed or content being updated.  

Thoughts to Ponder 

Changes in any field introduce risk. Before you make a decision to change from a subdomain to a subfolder you would definitely want to think twice, if you are only doing this for SEO.