Hi!, I'm going to be setting up a blog for my site... I was thinking to put it at blog.mysite.com, would it be better to put it at mysite.com/blog ? I also have forums currently at forums.mysite.com, would it be beneficial for me to move them to mysite.com/forums ? I'm just unsure if SEO wise having things on a subdomain is a bad choice. Thanks for the input. -Corey
Well, it may be superstition on my part but I would rather it be sub domains... Im not exactly sure why but the idea of the extension being in front doesn't seem like it would catch on with consumers to me.
go with the "folder" , there will be a lot of trouble with the sub domain, first of all it will be a pain to get it indexed because it will be treated as a new standalone site, nobody is 100% sure about this but matt cuts did recommend using the folders once in his blog, having the blog on the main site is probably seen as more important by google than having it a as a subdomain.. good luck.
Thanks for the replies... I think I'll definitely make the blog a "folder" instead of a subdomain now. What I really need to figure out is if it's worth moving my forums, I have 500,000 posts currently at forums.mysite.com. I wish there was an easy way to see the impact it would have on the root domain by moving it to a folder. Do you happen to know around the time frame he made that blog post? I took a look at the blog but there are a lot of posts spanning years.
Spot on funkymario amazing we agree! LOL Use some keywords rather than /blog OP > http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=76329
we tried both approaches and /subfolders work better since the link juice is passed on in a more natural way, also mini site maps take less time to build if you use subfolders instead of subdomains is what we found
Folders are better than sub-domains. Sub-domains are counted as completely separate sites. They don't inherit ranking factors like domain trust, domain authority, domain age, etc. So the subdomain is basically starting from scratch like a brand new site would have to. Folders on the other hand are on the SAME site. So they DO get credit for your domain trust, domain authority, domain age, etc. Having a blog ON your site (not as a subdomain) can help your site become more of an authority. Sites with LOTS of links to LOTS of pages are seen as an authority. Sites with few links OR sites with lots of links pointing primarily to your home page are NOT seen as an authority. Having your blog be part of the site gives you much more content (URLs) and generally attracts lots of inbound links to inner pages (which means more authority). Where you might want to make it a sub-domain is... if your site already has lots of content and a lot of inbound links to inner pages and your main priority is to get a 3rd and possibly 4th listing in the SERPs for branded searches. Typically Google will only show 2 listing (main and indent) out of 10 for your domain for any SERP. But since the sub-domain is seen as a separate site, you can often get MANY listings (6-10) on page 1 for branded searches if you have several sub-domains... Search Google for "u-haul" if you want to see an example.