Blog.website.com or website.com/blog

[mystorenl]

Hello,

I have a question, in some moz guidelines you can read website.com/blog is better/more recommended than  blog.website.com. But when you look at the domain authority you see no difference. blog.website.com gets exact the same domain authority as website.com. So can somebody explain why website.com/blog is really better than blog.website.com? Or is there no difference?

Thank you verry much

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Arno,

Your sub-domains automatically gain the exact same DA as the primary domain. This is why there is so much discussion about them. I have had sub-domains rank after a few days because they are seen as the same as being a part of the main site.

I personally find it better to have them as a part of the main site (/blog) but not because I get a better guaranteed rank from doing it this way.

A lot of the decision is whatever seems to make the most sense within your own site.

-Andy

[Linda-Vassily]

Rand did a good Whiteboard Friday about this earlier this year.

An excerpt from the talk:

So let's say you've got blog.yoursite.com or you've got www.yoursite.com/blog. Now engines may indeed consider content that's on this separate subdomain to be the same as the content that's on here, and so all of the links, all of the user and usage data signals, all of the ranking signals as an entirety that point here may benefit this site as well as benefiting this subdomain. The keyword there is "may."

Another:

Bottom line is it's really dangerous to put content on a subdomain still. I believe John and I believe Matt when they say that Google has made strides in this direction. The problem is they're not good enough or perfect enough to rely on that factor, and so I'd really urge everyone to keep your content on one single sub and root domain, preferably in subfolders. That's how you're going to maximize your potential SEO benefit. This is one of those technical SEO things that just hasn't changed for many years now.

[PatrickDelehanty]

^ Linda nailed it here. I highly recommend you check out that Whiteboard Friday as it gives a lot of great pointers and tips when it comes to this issue. Good stuff in there.

[EGOL]

I would not name this folder /blog/

Instead, I would name it    /news/    /tips/     /goodies/    /stories/     anything but   /blog/

Why?   If you name it /blog/ it will attract hackers, spammers, and weasels like bugs to a Georgia porchlight.