As internet users, we all go to many sites daily. For many users, the content of the site is important and they do not pay attention to its domain address. They simply open the site and close the site after reading the desired content.

But the domain has a world full of small tips, knowing each of them will help you to walk more easily in the process of your business success.

Domains are made up of different parts. Subdomain (or subdomain, or subdomain), subfolder, domain name, etc. In this article, we want to talk about subdomain or subdomain.

What is a subdomain?

Are you familiar with the domain?

The domain is the site address that you have to either click on or enter in your browser to enter the site. For example, softhost.ca is a domain. This domain itself is divided into 2 parts:

Domain name: softhost and domain extension: .ca

What is a subdomain and how is it different from a domain?

A subdomain is a part of the site’s main domain and comes before the domain name. We use SubDomain whenever we want to add another section to our site or have another site containing the main domain name.

Remember that in any case, to have a subdomain, you must first get the main domain. Each main domain can have up to 500 subdomains. What is more interesting here is that each subdomain can have other subdomains.

When to use subdomain?

Subdomains are used for various reasons. In the following, we will read some of the most frequent uses of subdomain. If you think of something else, be sure to tell us.

1) Creation of support and documentation department

If your business is such that you need to write a lot of support descriptions and also, you need to put some documentation and technical training on your site, it is better to think about creating a subdomain. For example, in the image below, you can see the Google subdomain, which is dedicated to the support section and answering users’ questions.

2) Create an independent section for the blog

Some companies prefer to dedicate an independent section of their site to blog and publish various articles. This usually happens when the blog is structurally very different from the main site; Or that you need special tools and plugins to manage your blog. In such cases, a blog is created in the subdomain with an independent design.

For example, suppose that your site has a unique design, but for better SEO, you want to upload the blog to the WordPress content management system. In such a case, instead of moving the entire site from scratch to WordPress, you can create a subdomain with WordPress.

3) Creating a separate section in the portal for users

If you offer a special tool on your site that users must register to use and get access by paying a fee, it is better to have a subdomain for the user panel. This subdomain is your tool and can be designed independently of your site.

For example, the Grammarly site – which is a grammar correcting application – in the main domain, is a site that provides you with the information you need about the app, and in the subdomain, it is a tool that you must log in to use. See the two pictures below to better understand what I mean.

 4) Website redesign

When you want to make changes to the site (so-called redesign your site), you can see the changes live by creating a subdomain. In this way, you no longer need to buy a new host and upload the site on it. After the design is finished and you have done the necessary tests, you can transfer the site from the subdomain to the main domain.

5) Adding an online store to the site

There are times when we have a website and want to add an online store to it. The format of this online store is completely different from the website format, and on the other hand, it requires stricter regulations for security; In this situation, it is better to use a subdomain to upgrade the site and add the online store section.

Okay; You have probably seen the address of a blog or online store in another form, and you may wonder how it is different from a subdomain. We will examine this point in the next section.

What is the difference between subdomain and subfolder?

A subfolder is a part of the site that is created as a folder in the main domain subfolder. The subfolder is considered as part of the main domain and comes after the domain extension. For example, at https://www.Sample.com/Blog/, the blog is placed in a subfolder, not a subdomain.

Note that you can create the subdomain on a separate server or host, but the subfolder will only run on the same host as the main domain.

When should we use a subdomain?

Let’s get to the point of when to use each of these two. There are two scenarios where it makes more sense to use a subdomain than a subfolder:

• To set up an e-commerce store to complement the main website.
• Starting a blog for an existing company or business website.

These two situations have one thing in common, which is that both are running as parallel sites with special features. Although you can get the exact same results using subdomains, the SEO benefits often make subdomains a better option.

Famous examples of subdomains

Yahoo and Gmail

For email services, you can consider a different subdomain called mail.yourdoamin.com, the most important of which are the Yahoo and Gmail subdomains with mail.yahoo.com and mail.google.com URLs.

Hubspot

One of the most famous types of subdomains is blog. If you have a company website or an online store, by setting up the blog section of your website under the title blog.yourdomain.com, you can separate your store website and your blog and get better results.

Google and Play Store

Google search engine uses different subdomains to provide its different services. For example, to search in Google Play, you refer to the subdomain https://play.google.com/ or to benefit from the benefits of SEO, it has provided the subdomain https://developers.google.com/

university

For example, a university website (eg university.edu) may have a subdomain for each of its faculties (eg law.university.edu, faculty-of-history.university.edu, etc.).

The store section of corporate websites

Also, a corporate website may have a number of subdomains dedicated to each section. sales.companyname.com, marketing.companyname.com, and support.companyname.com.

Identification of personal computers

Another popular use of subdomains is to identify individual computers with their own IP addresses. For example, a company can have two separate servers named sales.companyname.com and marketing.companyname.com, each containing information related to a specific department of the company.

subdomain or subfolder; Which is better for SEO?

Subdomains are viewed by Google and other search engines as a different website. This means that search engines index each subdomain separately.

It should be noted that link juice generated from backlinks to your main site is not shared between your domain and subdomains. It’s just as difficult to build PageRank for specific keywords on a subdomain as it is on a completely separate website.

With this in mind, you should only use subdomains if you have a good reason for doing so. For example, you can use subdomains to rank for different keywords, target a specific market or other specific purpose, or serve subscribers in a language other than your main website.

Subdirectories, on the other hand, are files found in your main domain. Google and other search engines don’t see subdomains as separate sites, so link juice and SEO are shared between your domain and subdomains.

As a result, it is suggested that bloggers, startups or small businesses with limited time and resources use subfolders because using subfolders will help them rank their website faster.

Conclusion

I think that now you have different ideas about using subdomain and subfolder. Now that you are familiar with subdomain and subfolder, you can decide which one is better for your site’s SEO based on your business conditions. If you need guidance in this field, count on us; We will try to answer your questions as soon as possible.