Social Media Domination

This is a follow-up to my first post on Why host on a subdomain versus a subdirectory.

Matt Cutts of Google has some interesting feedback on this, and promotes the use of a subdirectory due to the complexities involved in subdomain configuration. I believe that when you're blogging for business and tracking conversions, the advantages of a subdomain become a bit clearer.

Organizing subdomains used to be difficult but is now pretty mainstream in hosting administration panels.
Utilizing subdomains opens you up to utilize third party Software as a Service applications that are best suited to do the job. Delegating your email subdomain to an email service provider, for example, is a great way to monitor and maintain your email reputation.
A subdomain can be pointed anywhere, internally or externally, providing you a lot more flexibility in moving your blog between providers or changing your website's content management system, etc. without impacting each.
Most importantly, utilization of a subdomain allows you to control, monitor and adjust your corporate blogging strategy seperate than your other marketing initiatives.

If you start a business blog, I still believe that hosting the blog on a subdomain is a best practice.

Comments for Subdomain vs Subdirectory: Which is better for SEO?

Wednesday, December 17, 2008 by derek:: agree wholeheartedly. You also get a double branding opportunity by association eg: starblog.starbucks.com
Wednesday, December 17, 2008 by Ryan Crozier:: Great Stuff! Thanks for the tip!
Sunday, January 4, 2009 by Raquel Richardson:: We have taken this approach from the beginning and I agree it is more clearn when you use your blog to drive traffic to your main site, which for our clients, has been one of the biggest drivers we have seen to date. It's a cost effective way to stay fresh and monitor results.
Friday, January 30, 2009 by saching:: Thanks for your article but i had very different experience while switching from subdomains to subdirectories. Can you/anyone please analyse and help me in choosing correct approach. I started with www.idlefolks.com and had multiple subdirectories like uk.idlefolks.com or bangalore.idlefolks.com. I can see that google was relaxed while indexing the URLs. I thought that i am not getting that recognition to my root domain even though i am getting noticeable traffic on root as well as on subdomains. Later i changed my subdomains to subfolders (i.e. www.idlefolks.com/uk) so that google can see traffic and give me higher ranking in search. To my amazement, google has stopped doing indexes of my old/new URLs from my sitemaps (may be old URLs/duplicate URLs are still active in its indices). I am not able to figure out if i go back to subdomains or have patience now with subdirectories. Please help. Thanks Saching
Friday, January 30, 2009 by Douglas Karr:: Hi Saching, Switching can definitely introduce some issues. If you switched, one thing you might want to do is utilize 301 redirects to let the search engines know the old URL versus the new URL so the pages can be properly reindexed. I would also recommend registering with Google Webmasters to see how they are indexing the pages and what errors may have been introduced in the move. Higher ranking is dependent upon many things, so simply putting the content in a subdirectory doesn't guarantee any increased results - especially if a bunch of folks are backlinked to your previous pages.