What is Subfolders Vs Subdomains?

In the world of online marketing and site structuring, the debate between subfolders and subdomains has been a long-standing one.

Originally, when it comes to SEO, Google claimed that there was no significant preference between the two. However, over time, digital marketers observed that using subfolders seemed to yield better SEO results than subdomains.

This is primarily because Google, despite its advanced algorithms, doesn't always recognize that a subdomain is associated with a main domain. This can lead to potential loss of site traffic and domain authority - both vital aspects of driving traffic. Hence, using subfolders over subdomains emerged as a smarter choice for generating web traffic.

Examples of Subfolders Vs Subdomains

1. An ecommerce site could use subfolders to categorize their products. Instead of having shoes.yourstore.com (subdomain usage), they could have yourstore.com/shoes (subfolder usage). The latter reinforces the association of the product category with the main domain - increasing SEO effectiveness.

2. A blogger could organize their blog posts using subfolders to improve site map clarity for Google's crawling bots. For example, using yoursite.com/travel/tips instead of tips.travel.yoursite.com would ensure each blog post contributes to the authority of the main domain.

3. A business website can use subfolders for different services they offer. Rather than services.yourbusiness.com, they can format it as yourbusiness.com/services.

4. An online learning platform can divide their courses with the help of subfolders. Instead of having a structure like python.coursewebsite.com, it would be better to have coursewebsite.com/python.

5. News websites can create sections for different news categories using subfolders. So instead of using a structure like health.newswebsite.com, generating URLs like newswebsite.com/health is more SEO-friendly.

Marketing Tactics Similar to Subfolders Vs Subdomains

1. Internal Linking: This involves strategically linking your web pages together to improve site navigation and SEO indexing.

2. Site Mapping: It is creating a map of your website’s content to let search engine bots understand and index your webpages better.

3. URL Canonicalization: Is a process of selecting the best URL when there are multiple choices available; this helps to improve site ranking.

4. Keyword Mapping: A strategy where keywords are assigned to specific pages of a website which aids in organizing site content and improving SEO outcomes.

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