Redirect question | new blog install on subdomain

[mikequery]

Hi,

I am running a wordpress site and our blog has grown to have a bit of a life of its own. I would like to use a more blog-oriented wordpress theme to take advantage of features that help with content discoverability, which is what the current theme I'm using doesn't really provide.

I've seen sites like Canva, Mint and Hubspot put their blog on a subdomain, so the blog is sort of a separate site within a site. Advantages I see to this approach:

1. Use a separate wordpress theme
2. Help the blog feel like its own site and increase user engagement
3. Give the blog its own name and identity

My questions are:

1. Are there any other SEO ramifications for taking this approach? For example, is a subdomain (blog.mysite.com) disadvantageous somehow, or inferior to to mysite.com/article-title?
2. Regarding redirects, I read a recent Moz article about how 301s now do not lose page rank. I would also be able to implement https when I redirect, which is a plus. Is this an ok approach? Assuming I have to create redirect rules manually for each post though

Thanks!

[Tenlo]

All three advantages only require a 2nd wordpress instance, you can put them on the same domain level as your current wordpress site. Always use 301 redirects when you are changing, however there still could be a loss of ranking that occurs when you make the switch.

[mikequery]

Thanks for the reply! Do you happen to know how to implement that 2nd wordpress instance? Would I need to create a new install, and then have it live on mysite.com/blog?

[R0bin_L0rd]

To echo MichaelAMG - it is possible to install wordpress on a subdirectory rather than subdomain so you'd be able to host your blog at mysite.com/blog  instead of blog.mysite.com. For SEO reasons, subdirectory is the recommended way to go.

On https://moz.com/learn/seo/domain, Moz explain that search engines view subdomains differently than they do subfolders, which means that it can be harder for successful content in a subdomain to benefit the site as a whole. Companies who host their blogs on subdomains have started moving them to subdirectories and have quite quickly seen positive results, for instance Salesforce moved their blog from a subdomain to a subdirectory and their traffic doubled pretty immediately.

If you are installing wordpress instances on one domain it might be a good idea to keep an eye on your permalinks because if you have url rewriting turned on then the different installs can sometimes confuse each other. Just something to watch out for.