It has become popular for companies to create corporate blogs for promotional purposes. Blogging, for various reasons, just seems to facilitate "buzz." Strictly from a "mechanical" SEO perspective, though, does it make sense to house the blog in a subdomain -- that is, blog.yourcompany.com, or a subdirectory -- yourcompany.com/blog?
To be honest, I believe that if your primary focus is to harness the "juice" from links, a subdirectory just plain makes more sense. On the other hand, many SEOs who I have respect for have gone the subdomain route. Maybe nobody really thinks about it. But the way I see it, all that link-equity is effectively pointing to a new (sub)domain. Sure, pointing lots of links from the subdomain blog to the corporate site will also have a positive effect, but I doubt it is as powerful as the links directly pointed at the corporate site in the first place (as it would be with a subdirectory).
Historically, some have argued that subdomains pose some advantages. That may have been true then, and may even be true to a certain degree now. My evaluation is that this is subject to change over time, whereas links directly to the corporate site are less subject to the whims of search engine algorithm changes.
So ...
Unless you are already an authority-site and want to create new equity in another domain, I'd probably suggest using a subdirectory. Doing so will more directly harness the link-equity garnered by your blog.
September 5th, 2006 at 2:55 pm
I had a client come to me with the same issue. I recommended the same thing -- unless you're trying to create additional properties, then there's no reason to create subdomains. This client also thought that having links from all of the individual subdomained blogs to the parent site would help their parent domain, but as most of us know, Google is much smarter than that.
September 6th, 2006 at 5:40 pm
I have to agree.A subdirectory is the way to go. It will be faster to index, already has related links and adds value to the domain with related pages and content.
September 7th, 2006 at 10:33 am
Jaimie,
My vote is for Subdirectory. Here is why;
1. There is advantage to it from the SEO stand point.
2. People get more knowledgeable about the web and URLs. They try to see where the link would take them and seeing a URL they recognize and then just a directory "/Blog" looks easy and safe. Pretty much you're not confusing people by breaking your URL.
As you can see I am all for /Blog. That's the way I had my blog set up and when I post a link to it, I don't have to explain that it's a BLOG ... not a different website.
September 12th, 2006 at 10:00 am
I'm afraid I have to disagree with this one
blog.yourdomain.com is seen as a separate domain by both Google and MSN (for the time being), therefore, the advantages are obvious.
MrSEO, I think you'll find that the subdomain gets indexed faster as, at present, Google will index "index.html" (the home page) on all domains (or subdomains). Do a search on "billion page spammer" for more information on this.
Just my 0.02c
September 12th, 2006 at 10:17 am
Peter,
Are you disagreeing with his assessment only, or the entire assertion that unless you want to build up a new property, you should stick with a directory? What you say seems to agree with my assertion ...
September 25th, 2006 at 5:51 pm
One extra reason to use company.com/blog is to keep people within site when they make mistake in address. If you add blog or blogs to the domain name and somebody types it with mistake (or simply use singular or plural incorrectly) they will not get to your site but rather get domain error within browser. If you add blog/blogs as directory they may get friendly error message from your site poinsint to some valid choices.
More on this in my post some time ago:
http://rightweb.wordpress.com/2006/08/09/the-right-way-to-present-the-link-to-your-site-in-your-off-line-materials/
March 18th, 2007 at 4:16 am
I had some thoughts on a similar SEO / Search Engine Optimization related topic, maybe i'll start a new thread