Subdomain vs. Subfolder: What Best Fits Your SEO Needs?

Subdomains and subfolders each offer different features and SEO benefits for your website. But, the age old question between search engine optimizers is which one is better for SEO rankings? Subdomains or subfolders?

The answer often depends on the needs of your site, but it is also helpful to have a thorough understanding of each. Let’s break down the definitions of subdomains and subfolders for you and identify the advantages and disadvantages of each distinction.

What Is a Subdomain?

A subdomain is the section of a domain that is listed before the main domain name and the extension. For example, in the URL blog.bluleadz.com, blog is the subdomain. To begin understanding subdomains, you must understand the structure of a URL.

  • A protocol, such as “https:” is a set of rules that allows data to be sent as requests to the web server. The domain, “bluleadz.com,” is the URL to the website’s main page. 
  • Domains also have two parts, the top level domain (.com, .gov, .net, etc.) and the second level domain (bluleadz).
Basically, the subdomain is a second name before the second level domain (SLD). For instance, if the Bluleadz careers page was hosted on https://careers.bluleadz.com, the subdomain would be careers. 

A subdomain for a website is comparable to apartment communities adding apartment numbers and building numbers to help their guests find their specific home. It helps provide a sense of organization and structure to your site.

What Is a Subdomain Used For?

Subdomains are most often used to separate websites into different sections. As many Local Seo Company go for it. They make it easy to organize your website and provide your users with a simple way to find what they are looking for. 

You can use a subdomain for your site for customer support, blogs, store locations, events, or anything else you’d like to separate from your main content page. 

For instance, if you run a restaurant that has various locations, customers can view a main page with basic content about your restaurant. If a customer is looking for a menu at one of your other locations, they can get the information from your subdomain, newlocation.restaurant.com. 

For example, Wendy’s uses the subdomain order to allow customers to view the menu and submit orders for pickup or delivery.

What Is a Subfolder? 

A subfolder, also known as a subdirectory, is a folder that lives within another folder under a home directory. For example, if your website was a filing cabinet, then the folders in the cabinet are your website’s subdirectories.

What Is a Subfolder Used For? 

A subfolder is used for creating content categories on your website. It’s located on the same server, and it links back to the domain. Subfolders make it easy to organize sections of related content on your website. 

Web assets such as downloads or images would also exist in separate subfolders. If your site has an About Us page, then there would be a folder for About Us, and the pages for each of your team members would be a subfolder of the About Us folder.

Source: https://www.business2community.com/seo/subdomain-vs-subfolder-what-best-fits-your-seo-needs-02337148

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