Fellow webmasters:

I am transitioning from one blog platform to another (WordPress). This means I will be creating a new URL (as I need the old one to stay active until the new is completely ready). My question is: should I do a subdomain or a directory on the domain. In other words:

blog.domain.com

or

www.domain.com/blog

? What is the common wisdom? One of the considerations I have is that every post on the blog will have a link to the website (www.domain.com). Is it not true that most search engines would count that as a one-way inbound link (for PageRank) when the URL is a subdomain, and not if it is a subdirectory? However, if it is a subdirectory, and I get more traffic to the blog, that might count as traffic to the whole site, upping its popularity rating.

I am not sure the latter argument really holds water, though I have been advised to go that route. If I don't get high enough in page rank, and they are not coming to my blog through the search engine, the fact that they go from the blog to the main website is invisible to the engines, right? In other words, the traffic has to be seen to count, where as the link is an easy, clear win in page rank. Am I wrong?

Glen West

From what I remember when I set mine up, it's better to do www.yoursite.com/blog - the reasoning is that every post will be seen as an internal page of your main website - increasing it's size and weight with the search engines. It will count that content as content of your actual site. Using a subdomain, the search engines treat it almost like a completely different website - so you are building content for a second site really. Also, the one-way links you get from your own subdomains aren't likely going to count for as much as one-ways from another root domain.

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Eric Rogers - REALTOR
Century 21 Pro-Team
Aurora IL Real Estate | Batavia Real Estate
Yorkville Real Estate

I agree, search engines treat sub-domains as completely new sites
a directory will get listed faster, and you wont have to seo each on its own, all you have to do is seo the main domain and the directory blog will go up in rankings on its own

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UAE Real Estate

So there is no value in the idea that engines "treat it almost like a completely different website?" The fact that it throws links back to the main site from the subdomain does not add pagerank?

I do understand that being a subdirectory adds weight and 'gravitas' to my website, and that certainly has value. But I don't understand the argument that the popularity of the blog adds to the popularity of the site - unless the entry to the blog was via the search engine to begin with. The engine can't count what didn't go through it, so it would have no way of knowing 'popularity' unless it resulted from a search on that engine. Seems a catch 22. Am I missing something?

Using a subdomain for your blog isn't useless - just different. In some ways it's easier to SEO on a subdomain because it's easier to get one-way external links to a subdomain than to an interior page.

I think links from subdomains have been largely discredited because that's a trick spammers use - make an aggregated RSS page on thousands of subdomains and link them all to a main site etc.

Adding additional pages of fresh content to your website is the value of placing your blog inside your site instead of on a subdomain. Each page grows your main site and that lends authority by the fact that your site has fresh content and is constantly growing.

__________________
Eric Rogers - REALTOR
Century 21 Pro-Team
Aurora IL Real Estate | Batavia Real Estate
Yorkville Real Estate