Subdomains are neat. If you ask me, blog.bobtopia.com is more appealing than bobtopia.com/blog. But if we want to make an informed decision about the best strategy, where do we look? If we're interested in SEO, we ought to consult the Google Bot. Subdomains and subdirectories are equal in the eyes of the Google Bot, according to Google itself. This means that Alice and Bob have the same chance at ranking in search results. This is because Alice's root domain and Bob's subdomain build their own sets of keywords. Relevant keywords help your audience find your site in a search. There is one important caveat to point out for Bob: A subdomain is equal and distinct from a root domain. This means that a subdomain's keywords are treated separately from the root domain. What does this mean for Bob? Let us imagine bobtopia.com is already a popular online platform for folks named Bob to seek kinship with other Bobs. In this peculiar world, searches that rank for bobtopia.com would not automatically rank for blog.bobtopia.com because each domain has its own separate keywords. The lesson here is that keywords are diluted across subdomains. Each additional subdomain decreases the likelihood that any domain ranks in each search. A high-ranking subdomain does not imply your root domain ranks well. Subdomains also suffer from backlink dilution. A backlink is simply a hyperlink that points back to your site. Alice's attribution to a post on the etymology of Bob from blog.bobtopia.com does not help bobtopia.com because the subdomain is treated separate but equal from the root domain. If Bob used subdirectories instead, Bob's blog posts would feed the authority of bobtopia.com and Bobs everywhere would rejoice. Although search engines have improved at identifying subdomains and attributing keywords back to the root domain, they still have a long way to go. A prudent marketer would avoid risk by assuming search engines will always be bad at cataloguing subdomains. So, when would you want to use subdomains? A good use case is for companies who are interested in expanding into foreign markets. Pretend bobtopia.com is an American company whose website is in English. Their English keywords will not rank well in German searches, so they translate their site into German to begin building new keywords on deutsch.bobtopia.com. Other use cases for subdomains include product stratification (think global brands with presence across many markets) and corporate internal tools (think productivity and organization tools that are not user facing). But unless you are a huge corporation or just finished your Series C round of funding, sub domaining your site into many silos is not helping your SEO.
If you are a start-up or small business looking to optimize your SEO, consider subdirectories over subdomains. Boosting the authority of your root domain should be a universal goal of any organization. The subdirectory strategy concentrates your keywords onto a single domain while the subdomain strategy spreads your keywords across multiple distinct domains. In a word, the subdirectory strategy results in better root domain authority. Higher domain authority leads to better search rankings which translates to more engagement.
Besides if you do have any questions give me a call: https://clarity.fm/joy-brotonath