Choosing a domain name is an important step for every business. Your domain name is your online platform and a key building block of your brand. The right domain creates trust and loyalty among your customers, while the wrong one could do the opposite.

But after you find your domain name, there are several important decisions about the structure of your website. After all, every page has its place in the customer journey. From your store to your support, from your blog to your ethical commitments, how do you arrange these business elements to best suit your customers and the demands of modern SEO?

That’s where domain vs subdomain vs subfolder path comes in. These are the avenues and corridors of your website, the paths your customers will walk, that lead to a strong connection with your business and, of course, a sale.

While the choice of domain name is fundamental to your business’s growth, these secondary questions can impact your reach online. 

After all, the architect’s work is only just beginning once the perfect plot of land has been acquired. So let’s find out what the difference between domain, subdomain, and subfolder path is and when to use them for your website.

Domain vs Subdomain vs Subfolder Path

This might sound a little complicated, but it’s easy if you start from then beginning. If you’re wondering “what is a domain name”, then we had better start off with some definitions.

Domain: The domain, or domain name, is the main naming portion of your online platform. All domains are made up of a root name like Atom and an extension or TLD like .com. Thus, our domain name is Atom.com. Domain is also known as root domain to distinguish it from subdomains.

Subdomains: Subdomains are used to indicate significant subsections of a website and come before the name portions of the domain, like the blog in “blog.hubspot.com” or store.google.com.

Subfolder Path: Subfolder path refers to the tail-end directions in a URL that lead to a specific page of your website. In the early days of website building, individual web pages would be stored as HTML files in folders, much like how the files on your computer are found: on your computer, a file’s location will appear as My files/Downloads/Screenshot.png.

A similar pattern guides web users to a specific page on your website, taking the fully qualified domain name https://www.Atom.com and adding a subfolder (also called a subdirectory) and path such as /blog/domain-redirection to create the full URL: https://www.atom.com/blog/domain-redirection/

The architecture of a website has moved on from HTML files in folders, but we still use this naming convention in the URLs that guide users to the individual pages of our site.

A full URL includes a protocol like HTTPS, and the subdomain, domain, and subfolder path to identify a particular web page. Both subdomains and subfolders distinguish different parts of your website, but there are some key differences in how they’re used. These impact both the experience of users of your website and how search engines crawl, index and rank your site.

What’s the Difference Between Subdomain and Subfolder Path?

Your root domain is the name of your whole website and is found in the address of every webpage. Subdomains and subfolders are different ways to organize these pages. While a subfolder like yourbusiness.com/blog/ guides users to a part of the larger website, a subdomain blog.yourbusiness.com acts like a whole new website for the blog content of your business.

Here are the key differences between subdomain and subfolder:

• URL Structure: Subdomains come before the domain name while subfolder paths follow the domain extension. This can impact user experience and site navigation.

• Set Up: To create a subdomain, you need to update your DNS settings with your domain registrar.

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Subdomains are considered new domains by search engines. This can impact the SEO of both subfolder paths and subdomains in different ways.

• Branding: Your domain name is your online platform and the main name by which your customers know you. Subdomains can dilute your branding.

• Differentiation: Subdomains differentiate a part of your website more than subfolders. For example, Wikipedia uses subdomains like .fr, .en, and .es to differentiate between the different language sections of their website, while the New York Times has a subdomain cooking.nytimes.com for recipes.

• Analytics: Subdomains may be treated as separate websites for analytic purposes, giving you more to keep track of.

• Security: Subdomains may require additional SSL certificates.

Subdomains and subfolders each organize your website in different ways, but out of all of these key differences, one matters more than most for website performance. That’s SEO, and it’s often the main consideration of website operators when they’re choosing between subdomains and subfolders.

The SEO Differences of Subdomains and Subfolders

When you’re considering domain vs subdomain vs subfolder, there’s more at stake than the aesthetics of your URLs. Subdomains and subfolder paths could have an impact on SEO, your site’s ranking, and how many customers will find your content.

• Subfolders: Impact on SEO

The traditional view among SEO experts holds that subfolders are better from an SEO perspective. This is because search engines like Google treat subdomains as whole new websites, while subfolders are treated as part of the root domain.

It follows that using subfolder paths for your website should strengthen your site’s performance, while subdomains could dilute the impact of your website content on SEO.

For example, the backlinks you gain on subfolder URLs should benefit your site overall. Backlinks on subdomain URLs may not have the same impact.

Additionally, Google also rates sites by authority, which it gauges by the strength of content across the website. Using subfolder paths for your content shows Google that you have comprehensive content on a subject. Splitting it by subdomain could hurt your authority.

• Subdomains: Impact on SEO

While subfolder paths or subdirectories are generally considered the best option from an SEO perspective, there might be times when subdomains make sense.  For example, if you have a lot of content that’s unrelated to the content of your main site, a subdomain keeps this content separate and allows it to rank by its own authority, rather than that of the main site.

This explains why the New York Times uses a subdomain for its recipe content. While undoubtedly a strong source of traffic, this content is far removed from the main news-oriented content of the root domain

As subdomains are treated as new websites, they may also offer benefits for interlinking. 

Lastly, subdomains also offer the possibility of appearing not once but twice in SERP (search engine results page). Yourdomain.com and blog.yourdomain.com could both rank highly for keywords if you get the SEO right.

Google’s View

While there are compelling SEO reasons to prefer subfolder paths over subdomains except in particular cases, it ultimately might not matter too much. According to webmaster trends analyst John Mueller, Google is fine with both subdomains and subfolders.

According to Mueller, the only major point of difference is that Google crawls subdomains separately, a process that takes a few days. After that, subdomain content should rank as well as subfolder path content.

However, Google’s algorithm has been through multiple updates since this explainer from Mueller. Given that subdomains pose SEO challenges, using subfolder paths should be considered the safe option for your content.

When to Use Subdomains and Subfolders

Subfolders keep your website easily organized, provide consistent branding and a straightforward user experience, and in general, a subdomain poses larger SEO challenges than a subfolder path. Without a compelling reason to use a subdomain, subfolders are the best choice for your website.

Remember, when a returning user wants to search for your website in the browser search bar, they’ll generally start with the root domain name. Since a subdomain comes before the root domain, subdomains won’t always be prompted from the browser search history.

You should go with subfolders unless you have a specific reason to use a subdomain. Let’s take a look at when to consider a subdomain and when to stick with subfolder paths.

When you should use a subdomain

Subfolder paths are the best way to organize your website’s content, unless there’s a strong reason to use a subdomain. These might be:

For distinctive functionality: If a particular section of your website is distinct from your overall branding project, a subdomain keeps it separate. This allows you to differentiate your main brand from the subdomain’s content, and even use a new UI (user interface) if it will help your customers navigate that content.

For example, clothing brand Patagonia uses the subdomain wornwear.patagonia.com for its used gear exchange. Patagonia’s business model is built on an ethical, climate-conscious approach, so this element of its business is on-brand, but it’s also distinct enough from the main site that it merits a subdomain.

On Patagonia’s root domain patagonia.com, they’re selling new products, and integrating Worn Wear under a subfolder path could confuse customers about whether they’re buying new, or used.

Patagonia’s use of the subdomain differentiates this part of their business, provides clarity to customers, and bolsters their overall brand.

For SEO independence: As we’ve seen, there are SEO pitfalls to subdomains but if a substantial portion of your website’s content is on a distinct topic, then a subdomain allows it to rank independently on its own authority, unaffected by the rest of your site.

This is the reasoning behind the subdomain cooking.nytimes.com. The cooking content is distinct, and also evergreen — it’s static and unchanging — compared to the rest of the site’s dynamic news content. A subdomain carves this content out as a separate entity and allows it to flourish independently.

For technical reasons: Subdomains are also often used to create separate web spaces for testing new features and designs. Dev.domain.com or staging.domain.com allow you to test new features before rolling them out to your users.

When you should use subfolder paths

Subfolders are an easier choice all around and should be your go-to in the absence of one of the reasons listed above. Here’s when you should use prioritize subfolder paths:

For consistent branding: Subfolder paths will share the same design as your other pages on your website, allowing for a coherent branding experience for your customers.

For easy navigation: The structure of domain -> subfolder -> path is easy to follow. Customers can navigate forwards and backwards along this linear architecture, and find the pages they’re looking for.

For straightforward SEO: Because subfolder paths are treated as pages of your root domain, the backlinks you receive to a subfolder path page will always benefit your site as a whole, and the content will contribute to a comprehensive authority on a given topic.

Wrapping Up

Both subdomains and subfolder paths can be great for your SEO, as long as you’re choosing them for the right reasons. You should think about the experience users are having across your website — is the content or business arm distinct enough for a subdomain? Would it benefit from distinctive branding, or would your overall brand be strengthened by consistency and coherence?

Before you get there, you’ll need a strong domain name, because when it’s domain vs subdomain, the domain name comes first. Choose a premium domain name that emphasizes your business’s brand positioning, connects with customers, and reassures them with an elite TLD.

And to find it, check out Atom’s Premium Domain Marketplace. Every domain has been selected by branding experts for its overall strength, giving you a strong root domain for all your future subdomains and subfolder paths.