What is Subdomain and the ways it impact SEO?

What is a subdomain?

Simply put, a subdomain is another part of your website. If you feel like you want to add another section to your website that enhances your brand, then you may want to use a subdomain. This subdomain allows you to provide further information to users, and can even direct them to your ecommerce shop.

Take Google, for example. There’s Google’s main search engine “google.com”, as well as “maps.google.com” and “earth.google.com”. Both are still part of the main Google domain, but each has its own purpose away from the Google site. If Google is the main umbrella, then subdomains are sub-categories underneath it.

They were created for various reasons, including to:

• Better organize the website’s content

• Provide more in-depth information on a certain topic

• Boost SEO and domain authority

• Maximize geo-targeted pages

• Create a separate ecommerce store

It’s important to note that not every site needs subdomains, and they should only be utilized if it’s relevant to your website and what you’re offering. Subdomains are not to be confused with a subdirectory. A subdirectory is part of your main website. It looks like this:

thechicflorist.com/blog

Whereas, a subdirectory would be:

blog.thechicflorist.com.

How is a subdomain different from a domain?

When you look at the URL of a website you’ll see https://apple.com. The second part, apple.com, is the domain name. That’s often the name of your company or a name used to describe exactly what the website is intended for.

The top-level domain is the “.com”, “.org”, or “.net” part of the URL. The second-level domain is the brand name itself, i.e. “apple”.

Now you have your top-level domain and second-level domain, you can create a subdomain. A subdomain is like a prefix to your domain. Examples include putting “blog” or “payment” in front of the domain to indicate exactly what the subdomain is for.

Ways subdomains impact SEO

One of the main reasons a business may choose to create a subdomain is to try to positively impact their SEO performance. Here are six ways that can happen:

1. Better on-site experience

Using a subdomain means you can provide a different user experience to your main website. Your subdomain is usually an expansion of your main website, when you want to explore a certain topic further but don’t want this information on your main website.

This way of organizing your website content makes it easier for your users to find the information they want. This gives a better on-site experience, meaning you’ll appear higher on the search engine results page (SERP).

Given that 90% of users complain about a site having incorrect display/being difficult to navigate (see below), creating a specialized subdomain could help you gain favor in keyword rankings. This is because it makes the site easier to navigate as it streamlines your site’s hierarchy. Difficulty navigating a site is one of users’ most common complaints.

Other common complaints about on-site experience is the The longer a user spends on your site, the better it is for your SEO. This is referred to as “Dwell Time” – the time a user spends on your site after finding it through a Google search. Google’s algorithm documents how long users spend on a page, and it uses this to determine how valuable the content on that page is. This can affect page rankings.

So, the longer a user spends navigating their way around your site, including subdomains, the more chance you have of ranking higher. You can find out how long a customer spends on your website by viewing your ecommerce analytics.

2. Targets international markets

As we’ve discussed, a subdomain can be used to create specialized content. So, what about when this content applies to a certain target demographic? You can steer your subdomain content towards certain countries and continents. This is ideal if you have a global business and what to target international markets. This means that your SEO ranking in certain countries can be higher, when you have a specific subdomain dedicated to targeting that area.

The content and language on your site need to be reflective of the country you are targeting. Utilizing a subdomain, along with free marketing collaboration tools makes it easier for you to hit the markets you want to target.

3. Inserts keywords into your URL

Keywords go hand-in-hand with SEO. By affiliating your site with relevant keywords to your product or service, potential clients will be able to find you more easily when they search those keywords. This is like SEO 101.

When your business’s name doesn’t necessarily match your products, like Apple, for example, it’s difficult to include keywords in your website’s main URL. A subdomain URL will allow you to tie in keywords relevant to your site, which is a great opportunity for you to improve SEO rankings based on those keywords.

4. Helps to grow authority in niche markets

Your subdomain can be as broad or niche as you like. However, the majority of the time, subdomains are created to be more niche, in order to target markets the main website may miss. This can be a great SEO tactic for businesses who want to grow authority in—and traffic from—those more niche markets.

For instance, if a bakery sells baked goods via a physical store and their website also wants to start selling their own coffee beans, they may find a subdomain to be useful. It doesn’t distract from the main purpose of the site which is to draw customers to their baked goods, but it does allow them to sell coffee beans as well.

Although both are related to food, trying to rank for coffee-related keywords on the main site may have been difficult as it’s so geared towards baking. Therefore, a subdomain can also help with targeting those niche keywords.

5. Boosts site domain authority

What is domain authority? Domain authority refers to how your website is perceived. It’s a search engine ranking score developed by the Software as a Service (SaaS) company, Moz. A site’s DA (domain authority) is ranked from 1-100. Generally speaking, the higher the DA, the more trusted the site is and the higher it typically ranks in search engines.

Although subdomains are often treated as separate entities to the main website, they can positively impact the ranking of the main domain. Moreover, because of the additional keywords, they may also rank for terms that the original domain doesn’t rank highly for.