Why Blogs on Subdomains are Basically Worthless for SEO

Deciding whether or not to integrate a company blog on your root website (a directory such as example.com/blog) or host on subdomain (such as blog.example.com) is an important decision that shouldn’t be taken lightly. For years, we’ve heard the “subdomain versus integrated blog” debate (seriously, we have talked about it a lot), and although Google says it really doesn’t matter because both will be indexed, it does matter in terms of SEO. In this post, I am going to put it out there. I am just tired of seeing people make this mistake and wasting years of blogging potential.

A company blog can generate 55 percent more website visitors (or more!), but if you host on a subdomain, you lose a huge chunk of traffic and ranking opportunities for your main site. Although some argue the benefits of a separate blog, a subdomain blog won’t rank as high or as quickly as an integrated blog. Plus, the root site will be the one to suffer the consequences of having two sites.  It will never get that full, on-site blog benefit. Don’t worry, I will flush this out more.

A subdomain basically works as the middle man for any of your SEO efforts for your main site. Any SEO power your subdomain generates may slowly trickle back to your main site, but the results won’t be as powerful as if you were to just skip the middle man.

Subdomains are Viewed as Separate Sites

Just as Google says, both your subdomain and root site will be crawled and indexed, but that’s just the problem. Your company site and your blog will be two separate sites. If Google is working to index both your blog and your website, you’re limiting the SEO power of both instead of allowing them to work together. By keeping your blog separate from your website, you decrease the SEO value of your main website and lose many visitor benefits and ranking factors.

However, with an integrated website, Google will see both your main site and your blog as one, strengthening the power of both as they work together in terms of ranking factors.

If your main goal is to build a strong customer-focused website that ranks well, a subdomain blog is pointless and doesn’t help your main domain nearly as much.

Blog Subdomains Don’t Add to Your Total Pages

With a subdomain, the posts are featured on a separate website, so the content won’t contribute as a major ranking factor for your main site. We all know that the more pages your site has to index (if they are quality pages that people read, share and link to), the higher it will rank because Google loves content-rich sites to boost authority.

With an integrated blog, Google will crawl the new posts within days, adding more value to the main site and increasing traffic by as much as 53 percent after 51 posts have been published. Not to mention, the blog posts will inherit the authority of the parent site, so both the blog and website will rank better.

Subdomain Shares Won’t Benefit the Main Domain’s Authority

With 8 out of 10 internet users spending their time online reading blogs and using social media, you have the perfect opportunity to market your posts. However, while an increase in social media shares and external links will benefit your subdomain, they won’t help your main site’s authority.

Any subdomain links shared won’t contribute to your main site’s link authority or ranking in search results because they are (basically) considered two sites, they just have a lot of links between them. But, with an integrated site, backlinks and social media shares generated from the blog content will help the other pages on the main site rank higher and build the root site’s link profile.

As companies with blogs receive 97 percent more inbound links (see look I just linked to another blog post right here 🙂 than those without, any site linking to your blog posts with a subdomain will dilute any value of the external links. But, with an integrated blog, the full power of the link juice will pass on to your main site.

You Basically have Two Websites

Hosting your blog on a subdomain not only creates more work for yourself and increases your costs, but you’ll essentially be competing with yourself because you‘ll basically have two separate websites. With two separate sites, you’ll actually be hurting your keyword focus.

What many people forget is the fact that the ranking value of links combined with the keyword benefits will actually produce substantial ranking factors for your main site. Yes, the exact match and partial match keywords will add some value to both when using a subdomain, but combining the keyword focus with a strong link profile on one site offers unmatched ranking power. If your ultimate goal is to increase your company visibility as a whole, you want your blog and main site to work together, not against each other.

Blogs Subdomains Don’t Help Internal Linking

Since subdomains are considered to be a separate entity from a root domain, links to and from the two sites are considered to be external. Any links from the subdomain to the root won’t be considered internal linking and may actually do more harm than good because they will be viewed as external links from a low quality extension of your domain. Although Google may come to see that the two sites are interrelated, that doesn’t guarantee the search engine will carry the links’ influence from the subdomain to the primary in anyway that benefits your SEO.

Subdomains Hurt More than Just SEO

SEO isn’t the only area that may suffer from blogs on a subdomain. Your brand may suffer because a well-written blog allows visitors to get to know your company by showcasing your human side and build you up as a subject matter expert. The lack of a blog on your website creates a disconnect.

Without the proper integration, having a blog on a subdomain can also hurt your conversion rate optimization. Users often get confused if there is not a clear funnel between the two that targets the websites micro and macro conversions. In addition, analytics tracking gets much more complex, as you need to set up a filter in Universal Analytics.

Blog Integration Just Makes Sense

It’s a lot easier and cost effective to establish and promote a single brand and website than it is to juggle two with a subdomain. If your main goal is to boost your root site’s authority and SEO power, you need an integrated blog. An integrated blog is the right choice in most cases for SEO, your visitors, and your leadership position. So, stop letting the middle man take a bite out of your company site’s ranking potential.

Wait, One More Thing. When to Use a Subdomain

Let me give you a couple quick pointers on when you want to use a subdomain, so this is not an entirely one sided blog post.

• When you don’t have full control over the content: If something could go totally wrong, and it is all user generated, you would consider a subdomain blog.
• When you think it could be penalized: Generally, penalties are on the subdomain level. If you are worried about a Google penalty for some reason, you can use a subdomain.
• When you don’t want it to be connected to your main site: Do you want it to look like a different website? Then maybe use a subdomain. Just don’t expect an SEO boost.
• When the content is on a completely different theme: If your site is about bikes and you are launching a blog on golf, put it on a subdomain (why you would start that blog I don’t know, but you don’t want to be connected to it.
• When it is thin content: If it is just a bunch of cruddy content you need live, but don’t need or want it to rank, put it on a subdomain.
• When you are not trying to get ranking potential for your main site: It it is not for inbound marketing and SEO, then dump it on a subdomain…

What do you think?

Sources:

• “Which is best for blog SEO: separate domain, subdomain, or subfolder?” Smart Insights
• “Subdomain or subdirectory, which is better for SEO?” Quora
• “13 Blogging Statistics You Probably Didn’t Know but Should” Social Marketing Writing
• “10 Stats on the Awesome Power of Corporate Blogging” Kapost