SEO Site Structure: Subdirectories or Subdomains?
In this week’s show we performed a site review for Build.com.au and uncovered a few issues with their site that may be harming their rankings. In the video above you’ll find the full list but there’s one in particular we wanted to highlight that we haven’t gone over in some time, which is the use of subdomains over subdirectories to structure a website.
That means rather than using a URL like our blog:
/blog
Using instead a URL that looks like this:
http://blog.stewartmedia.com.au
The Issue With Subdomains
When structuring a site with subdomains, Google treats each of your subdomains as an entirely separate site. This means that not only will you have to optimise it as such, but you’ll also be diluting your SEO efforts and spreading all the work you could be doing on one subdirected site across multiple subdomains that Google recognises as separate sites. Having each of your subdomains linking to one another (navigation bars on sites with this type of site architecture often do this) can often look like a spammy link exchange considering they’re viewed as different sites.
So When Should I Use Subdomains For My Site?
If you’ve got entirely different audiences that require different websites then a subdomain may be the answer. For example an internal corporate site for employees and a consumer-facing site for your audience could sit on separate subdomains and still make a lot more sense than subdirectories. Subdomains are also a great way to serve mobile users a mobile-optimised site.
As a general rule, unless you have entirely separate parts to your site, subdomains aren’t the answer. A good way to look at it is to see Google’s own site architecture. Google’s separate products sit under subdomains like news.google.com or mail.google.com because they are distinct services that would usually require their own site. Having them sit on a subdomain means they are treated as separate sites, but still have ties back to Google’s primary URL for branding and consistency purposes. The same goes for your website’s e-commerce store, which many prefer to place on a subdomain in order to keep it separate from your main site but still retain the branding.
Unsure about how your site should be structured? Drop us a line on our Facebook page and we’ll analyse your site for any structural issues!
Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.
