How to Use Subdomains on Your Website?
You might think you have a firm grasp on what a subdomain is. After all, the name is rather obvious and a bit of a spoiler alert. But subdomains have many intricacies that make them a unique member of the Internet ecosystem and that’s what we’re exploring in this blog post.
And while you might feel confident about what a subdomain is, you might not be aware of everything you can use a subdomain for, or the challenges that come along with having a subdomain. For example, do you know the impact subdomains can have on your website’s search engine ranking?
In this post, we’re going to dig into all things subdomains, so you feel confident in your use of them on your business website.
What is a subdomain?
A subdomain, as the name would suggest, is an additional section of your main domain name. You create subdomains to help organize and navigate to different sections of your main website. Within your main domain, you can have as many subdomains as necessary to get to all of the different pages of your website.
Here’s an example to give you a better visual.
Let’s say you sell refrigerators at your main webpage, isellrefrigerators.com. If you sell your fancy food coolers online, you need to have an e-commerce store. This should be a part of your main website, so it’ll require a subdomain. The URL for your web store then becomes store.isellrefrigerators.com
Therefore, “store” is your subdomain, while “isellrefrigerators” is your main domain. The “.com” is your top level domain (TLD). You can use any text you’d like as your subdomain, but it’s in your best interest to make it something that’s easy for users to type and relevant to the page’s purpose.
Subdomains help give structure to the Internet
You should be quite thankful for the existence of subdomains, whether you’re a web surfer or the person building a site. The DNS, or Domain Name System, exists to make our lives easier. Because of the DNS, we only need to remember the words that make up a domain, rather than a random string of numbers.
The Domain Name System (DNS) is in place to create an Internet hierarchy that regulates domains and subdomains. These rules say that the domains always build right to left. Therefore the “.com” in store.isellrefrigerators.com is the top-level domain (TLD), “Isellrefrigerators” is the second-level domain (SLD), and “store” is the subdomain.
Subdomains are monetizable
There are people and companies that have created lucrative business models by selling subdomains. To do this, they buy attractive domain names and sell the registrations to the subdomains.
Other platforms, like WordPress, use a similar business model by allowing users to create their own profiles, on their own unique subdomains, underneath the same root domain. That’s why every WordPress site has both the unique name as well as the domain in the URL.
How to use a subdomain
While a subdomain is part of the main website, it’s considered a separate entity by search engines. People recognized this and decided to use subdomains to organize their website, without allowing certain parts of the site to be indexed by Google.
Companies use subdomains for a variety of reasons. Mainly, it’s to give a webpage a separate identity in search engine results while also keeping it a part of the main website.
Test new site iterations on subdomains
One of the most common uses of subdomains is to use them as a testing ground for when you’re updating or creating a new version of your website. You can install a program like WordPress on your subdomain and use it as a separate entity from your main website. You can also test your updates and plugins on your subdomain to gauge how they perform before publishing them to your live site.
When using subdomains as a testing ground, the subdomain will typically be something that web users won’t think to type in, since you don’t want them to see the content yet. They act as “hidden” pages where you can safely test new features before it is ready to go live.
Subdomains specific to clients or customers
Let’s say you're making a pitch to a client to create their new website. You can create a subdomain that is specifically intended to them to give an idea of what their new website might look like. This is hosted on your own main domain, thereby retaining ownership of the subdomain. You can then customize the site to your client’s needs.
Another example is if a restaurant group opens a new location. They can add the new restaurant to the parent site and create a web page for the new location. This subdomain keeps the new restaurant under their overall umbrella, while still giving it a distinct online identity.
Cater to niches with subdomains
There might be times when you need your web content to appeal to different types of users. For instance, if you have a lot of international visitors, you may need to translate your website into different languages. If so, you can create subdomains of your website so users can browse in their native language. It’s often easier (and more cost-effective) to create separate pages than to have one multilingual site.
Sometimes, you may also need to cater your web content to different regions. The best example of this is Craigslist, which has separate subdomains for different regions. The websites are optimized for each specific region but are all hosted on a master domain.
Separate distinct areas of your site with subdomains
If you have sections of your site with vastly different purposes and goals, it makes sense to separate them using subdomains. By making those changes, you’re indicating the specific purpose of the pages to search engines and users alike.
Make your blog stand out with a subdomain
It can sometimes be a good idea to break your blog off from your main site onto a subdomain. Maybe your blog following has grown and is slowing down your main site, or perhaps you want to switch up your blog design. You can also use a subdomain to indicate that your blog has changed to a different CMS, or content management system.
Overall, you might want to move your blog because it serves a different purpose than your main domain.
Use subdomains for your e-commerce site
Likewise, you may want to get your e-commerce page off your main domain for the same reasons. The goal of your main site may not be to make sales, and if you have a lot of traffic, or tons of products, it can slow down your pages, thereby creating a poor user experience. Switching to a subdomain helps things move smoothly and makes your e-commerce site more accessible to your customers.
Create a mobile-first subdomain
A subdomain can also be utilized to provide a more mobile-friendly experience for your site visitors. Search engines like Google can recognize the type of device a searcher is using and serve the version of your website that gives them the best user experience. You can create separate versions of your website that cater to mobile, or even more specifically, to each screen size.
This adaptive approach gives users a unique experience, catered specifically to the type of device they’re currently using. Each of these different layouts have their own subdomain. Providing a mobile-friendly subdomain is a must in today’s world, where more users are conducting searches on smartphones than on other devices.
Subdomains vs. subdirectories
Subdirectories are a similar form of subfolders that can be used as extensions of your main root domain. While a subdomain typically comes before the main domain in your URL, a subdirectory would come after. Using our earlier example, isellrefrigerators.com, if you were to add the store as a subdirectory instead of a subdomain, it would appear as isellrefrigerators.com/store.
There is much debate over whether subdomains or subdirectories are better when it comes to organizing your website and your many subfolders, especially in regard to search engine optimization. Let’s quickly look at some of the pros and cons of each.
Hosting fees
Because subdomains are regarded as separate websites by Google, they also need to be hosted on separate plans. This distinction means you’ll need to pay a separate hosting fee for each subdomain. Hopefully, you have a web registrar that offers discounts for multiple hosting accounts, otherwise, this can grow to be costly.
Meanwhile, you only have to pay one hosting fee when you use subdirectories. The amount of your hosting fee will depend on the overall size of your website, as well as how much speed is required for loading content.
Customization
With a subdomain, you can customize your website content to cater to different regions, users, and products. If you need unique content for each of your different subdomains, this can be a valuable feature. It also helps to optimize each subdomain for local search results.
However, if you don’t really need to create such highly customized content, you may be better off using a subdirectory. This method may be easier to manage, and doesn’t include the extra hosting fees. Whether a subdomain or subdirectory is a better choice here depends on your specific website needs.
Which is better for SEO?
It used to be thought that subdomains and subdirectories were equals when it came to their impact on SEO. In fact, in 2012 Google spokesperson, Matt Cutts, said there were “roughly equivalent,” adding that Google saw them as one domain. However, this thinking appears to be shifting.
Search engines now keep different metrics for domains than they do for subdomains. For that reason, it is better for the webmaster to place their link-worthy content (ex: blogs) in subdirectories rather than in subdomains. Therefore, isellrefrigerators.com/blog would be a better option than blog.isellrefrigerators.com
An exception for this is when you require language-specific websites, in which cases using subdomains is still the better option.
Subdomains were previously preferred by webmasters because they were able to stuff subdomains with the keywords that they wanted to target in rankings. The goal was to load the search engine results pages (SERPs) with the given keyword using their main domain and subdomain pages. However, Google caught onto this loophole and began to crack down on the practice.
Now, when they make the connection, Google consolidates the search results and displays just one domain to the given search result. Stuffing subdomains with keywords to attempt this strategy can now lead to penalization by Google.
Strategically implement subdomains on your site
What are you trying to accomplish with your website? Think strategically across your site and its user experience, and you’ll determine whether a subdomain or subdirectory is right for your needs. Overall, search engine rankings are determined by quality content more than whether you’re using a subdomain vs subdirectory.
A subdomain can be an effective tool to help you organize your website more efficiently, and when used correctly, will not negatively impact your website’s SEO. Strongly consider using subdomains when you want to section off content and pages and have them be specific to users instead of accessible to the average browser.