Getting mixed signals regarding how Google treats subdomains

[titleist]

All the posts I've read here and elsewhere regarding subdomains come to a similar conclusion, avoid using them because they are treated as a separate site -- and everything that goes along with that.

But on my site we have a subdomain on a separate server and it's treated as internal. Also this from Hubspot -

"**Use a subdomain of your website like Blog.HubSpot.com. **This is a great idea and this is what we do currently at HubSpot. Many companies have their blog on a subdomain, and it seems to be starting to be somewhat of a standard. The search engines are treating subdomains more and more as just portions of the main website, so the SEO value for your blog is going to add to your main website domain."

Any help clarifying this would be greatly appreciated!

[EGOL]

I don't know.   I have been making websites for a long time.  I've seen google treat subdomains like gold and stack them in the SERPs so that subdomains on a single domain will fill the top ten and push all competitors down.  Then I've seen google treat subdomains like crap, then like gold again.

So, don't bet on today's flavor.  Keep in mind that lots of domains have subdomains managed by other people.  Do you think that the actions of those "other people" should make the rest of the domain stink if they are crappy?   If you think that your subdomain should not stink if the rest of the domain is populated by idiots then go ahead and place your big  bet on subdomains being treated equally.  I'm not going to do it.  Do you think that blogspot blogs are treated like a single site?  I vote NO on that.  Do you agree?

If you want your collection of content to be guaranteed support for your main site then you better put it in a folder.  I am putting my good content in a folder and staying away from hosts, shopping carts, software, platforms and any service that can't handle putting my content in a folder.

Google changes their mind on this type of stuff all of the time.  So bet on what you think is long-term certain and not on what you hear people sayin' even if Matt Cutts is the one who is sayin'.  I remember him posting right here on moz (SEOmoz then) that you could sculpt pagerank with nofollow.  Then Google changed their mind on that and didn't tell anybody.

Do what makes long term sense, not what people are sayin'.  I think that smart people are still saying put your  content in a folder.

[DougRoberts]

Here's a video from Matt Cutts on the topic. He says that subdomains and subdirectories are "roughly equivalent".

SEE: Should I structure my site using subdomains or subdirectories? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MswMYk05tk

"Roughly equivalent" is a big woolly, but what matters more is how you use these subdomains (or subdirectories)

If you're talking about a blog, then what really matters is the value of the content that you create on your blog and how you interlink your blog content with the rest of your site - both in your main navigation and and relevant on-page links.

If your blog articles earn links and social shares then you want to make sure that your linking on to your relevant "money pages" on your site to pass authority and relevance to the target pages.

The main thing you want to do is give your readers, the ones that are interested and engaged, somewhere to go to find out more about your products and services. A nice juicy compelling call to action or a useful next step...

Where subdomains can be useful is where you want part of your site to be hosted on a particular third-party tool. Sub directories are a lot easier to set up and maintain.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

This is correct. There is more and more use of subdomains and I make great use of these myself. I use just a single page design for my site, so have 8 other subdomains, each with a unique site and content on them. I find that I am able to get the sites ranked well within about a week to 10 days.

Look at www.inetseo.co.uk and then at linkbuilding.inetseo.co.uk.

Google certainly don't treat a subdomain like a new site any more.

-Andy