Ask HN: Blog on blog.domain.com or domain.com/blog

by dawie on 5/19/2009, 12:04 AM with 10 comments

I know this has been asked before, but I can't find it. Which is better for SEO: blog.domain.com or domain.com/blog? Also, is it ok to host my blog on wordpress.com and not loose out on the SEO?

  • by drp on 5/19/2009, 1:00 AM

    Short answer: it depends. /blog is better if you just want more pagerank for your main domain, subdomain is better if you want to build your blog into something important on its own.

    A subdomain blog with good pagerank also gives you the ability to add heavyweight links to content on your main domain when you'd like to drive traffic to specific areas.

  • by sneakums on 5/19/2009, 1:47 AM

    I'd use a subdomain, because I like flexibility and because I don't give a shit about the SEO tricks du jour.

  • by treitnauer on 5/19/2009, 12:58 AM

    It's better to use domain.com/blog for SEO reasons. You should also have a look at other hosted blog services. There are plenty of options around with TypePad, Blogger or even Tumblr. Squarespace is a good solution too because they let you import your data from Wordpress, Typepad etc.

    Check out http://iwantmy.name/a for an overview of blog services that offer a custom domain option.

  • by motherwell on 5/19/2009, 1:13 AM

    The only reason to use blog.subdomain is if you plan to host it seperately, e.g. on another platform (PHP or windows or whatever), another server (Wordpress has security issues some might worry about) etc.

    Otherwise, subfolder is either better (SEO) or a no score draw (everything else).

  • by maw on 5/19/2009, 2:37 AM

    This is easily the single most important question a nascent organization faces. Get it wrong and every bad thing ever mentioned in a chain letter will happen to you and each of your collaborators, many times over.

    (Honestly, I doubt it matters much, but blog. is my [slight] preference. In any event, it isn't difficult to make one redirect to the other, and it's wise to do so, whether the Google juice the other answerers mention is important to you or not.)

  • by mattyb on 5/19/2009, 12:34 AM

    http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=503079

    My searchyc.com query was '.com/blog'

  • by quellhorst on 5/19/2009, 1:17 AM

    Whichever is easiest for you. My site is just a collection of interlinking subdomains anyway, so blog.domain.com is best for me. Then I use a simple one click wordpress install on hostgator.

  • by on 5/19/2009, 12:36 AM

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  • by bcx on 5/19/2009, 6:56 AM

    You can always proxy the /blog on your primary domain, so that BOTH URLs point to the same place. So you end up with both /blog and blog. With the same content.