Blog.yoursite.com or yoursite.com/blog/?

[JorgeUmana]

Rand made the following post in 2009.  In July of 2013 I question whether this is still best practice.  Obviously, much has changed in our industry in four-and-a-half years!

"...if you're seeking to maximize your ranking ability for a given piece of content, it's my personal belief that you should, most of the time, keep it on 1 subdomain under 1 root domain (but feel free to use subfolders as it makes sense). Starting a blog? I almost always recommend yoursite.com/blog over blog.yoursite.com. Want to launch a new section of content? Use yoursite.com/newstuff rather than newstuff.yoursite.com."

Source: http://moz.com/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites

[Leury]

From what I gathered on the same topic, that still stands. I have read here and in many other places , that blog.yoursite.com would need to get Optimized as it were a brand new site. This is why I always stick to subfolders instead of subdomains for my personal sites.

[Chris.Menke]

With all other things being equal, I'd say it still stands true and Rand makes it clear that that's his personal opinion. It is rarely if ever possible to look at a situation in the wild where all things are equal but one. Content on your site is an important way to get deep links to your domain, yet hosting content off site is important for networking.  Your best ranking sites are always a combination of both.

[Francisco_Meza]

This is a very typical question that has been answered many times. Go with subfolders. Unless for some security reasons, it's better to go with subfolders.