Link juice from subdomain

[ZakD]

Does having a blog on a subdomain as opposed to an extension of the root domain add or subtract to improving SEO on the root domain? For eg : what's better, HTTP://blog.durbansouthtoyota.co.za Or HTTP://www.durbansouthtoyota.co.za/blog When the www is the actual main site. Thanks!

[StreamlineMetrics]

I prefer putting the blog in a subdirectory rather than a subdomain for SEO. The search engines treat subdomains as a completely separate site so any backlinks you get pointed to blog.domain.com will not benefit www.domain.com's SEO whereas links pointing to www.domain.com/blog will.

Here is a great blog post for more details - http://www.agent-seo.com/blogging/seo-subdomain-vs-subdirectory/,

I've pasted a few highlights below -

**Subdirectory **

This situation for me is the most ideal from an SEO standpoint. I prefer to use a subdirectory (or “subfolder”) over a subdomain or external site any day.

Matt Cutts agrees with me:

“My personal preference on subdomains vs. subdirectories is that I usually prefer the convenience of subdirectories for most of my content. A subdomain can be useful to separate out content that is completely different. Google uses subdomains for distinct products such news.google.com or maps.google.com, for example. If you’re a newer webmaster or SEO, I’d recommend using subdirectories until you start to feel pretty confident with the architecture of your site. At that point, you’ll be better equipped to make the right decision for your own site.”

Rand Fishkin agrees with me too, but does go on to detail compelling usage examples for subdomains:

“Starting a blog? I almost always recommend yoursite.com/blog over blog.yoursite.com.”

**Subdomain **

This is the second best option in my opinion for SEO. A subdomain is basically a separate or third-tier website that just so happens to be residing off of the root domain. Search engines typically view them as wholly separate entities. I would only use this if the blog was completely separate to your services (or if your site infrastructure does not allow you to add blogging software to the root domain).

[ZakD]

Hey,

Thanks for the reply. My bad. After posting that question, I noticed from the related posts, that this has been dealt with previously, and basically most people lean towards the sub-folder method.

I have a problem since we have already launched our blog on the subdomain.

blog.durbansouthtoyota.co.za

I am talking to our developers to consider moving it to the sub-folder setup. Is there a recommended method, to take care of all links to the old sub-domain - blog.durbansouthtoyota.co.za? I'm guessing some sort of re-direct right? I need to pass this info to our developers.

Thanks!

[ThompsonPaul]

You'll absolutely want to get the blog moved to the subdirectory. Tell your developers they must use 301 redirects to point the traffic from the old subdomain pages to the new location. As long as the blog's site structure and URLs remain the same, that will be a pretty straightforward redirect to write.

Once they've done the redirect, test by going to a bunch of the old page addresses and making sure you end on the new pages.

Also use a header-checking tool on the new pages to confirm that it's actually showing that 301 redirect was used (not a 302, for example)

The sooner you do this the better, so that new incoming links will be pointing directly to the new location instead of being redirectd through the old location.

if you want best bang for the buck, check for the strongest links that currently point to the old site and see if you can get their webmasters to update them to point to the new URLs. Even pages that are redirected don't pass 100% of their authority through the 301 to the new page, and there is evidence to indicate that the 301s pass less authority as they age.

All good reasons to get the move done as soon as practical.

Good luck!

Paul

P.S. If your blog has a name that people may begin to recognize & remember  (ie that is different from the site name) strongly consider naming the folder /the-blog-name instead of just /blog. Every bit of distinctiveness helps!