Sub directory vs sub domain for company blog

[theLotter]

My company's blog is currently a sub directory - www.site/blog.com but for technical ease we are considering changing it to a sub domain - www.blog.site.com.

What are the SEO ramifications of each?

Thank you!

Best,

Sara

[theLotter]

Before writing the question on SEO Moz I leaning towards a subdomain for the exact same reasons you listed here.  However, based on the input below it seems as if links and PR can be passed from both a subdomain and subdirectory.

Do you disagree?

[AlanMosley]

i am not saying the change included search, but only that it leads me to think that this is how google already handles things in search. i find it hard to believe that they wiould give subdomain site stats to the owner of the root domain, but considered them seperate in search. You could argue ownership and ranking relevance are not the same thing, but it does remove the border of ownership.

I have never seen anything that shows that subdomains and subdirectories are handeld different, in fact MattCutts has stated they are the same, this and the sitelinks showing links in subdomains just goes to confirm it IMO.

[KeriMorgret]

Actually, Google has explicitly commented on this. See this post at http://www.seroundtable.com/google-subdomains-webmaster-tools-13968.html where they say:

Dear webmasters: A lot of people have seen the recent announcement about the recent reorganization of backlinks in Webmaster Tools and are saying it's a reflection of a new way that Google handles links for ranking purposes.

Wrong.

This change is only for how Webmaster Tools displays link data to help webmasters understand their links a bit better. The most common use case is for links to both www and non-www versions of the same site, even if these two different hostnames are canonicalized correctly. Previously, Webmaster Tools considered the links to each separately even though webmasters (and everyone else) considered them to be the same site. That situation was not ideal and so this change helps simplify things quite a bit.

[AlanMosley]

Yes I agree they did not say that, but to allow someone stats of a web site simply because it is a subdomain of the root you conrol, leads me to thing that they also think this way in search, this with the site links showing sub domain data and what Matt Cutts has said I have no reson to think that there is any difference between subdomains and subdirectories.

Rather than suggesting it indicates a change, i think it goes to comfirm how they already think. I doubt if the webmaster people have the ability to comment of search or even know, so i would not expecet them to confirm anything, although i asked.

[KeriMorgret]

Google has also said that the GWT change does not reflect in any way how they value subdomain vs subfolders; that this change doesn't indicate that they have changed their way of thinking, just their way of presenting.

[AlanMosley]

I know that many have said that over time, but i dont think it is true, recently GWMT has started to show links comming from subdomains as internal. As long as no one else has verified the sub domain it is assumed to be owned by the root domain owner.
Also site links in google contain sub domain links. so i believe that SE's see them as the same site.

Also Matt Cutts has said there is no difference, only to say that you should have enouth content to warrent it

[irvingw]

The extra effort required to create a blog under the domain rather than the subdomain is worth it. subdomains are created by the web team when they are looking for the easiest solution and not taking SEO into account.

Creating a blog on the main domains is widely agreed in the SEO community as being the best option. You are creating additional content and interlinking on your site  plus if the blog is link worthy you are getting good PR passed to your main site instead of off to a subdomain.

[AlanMosley]

In general I agree i like subdomains, as a developer the seperation is nice and tidy.
but virtual directories is a gret solutiosn when platforms must be mixed, I develop in ASP.MVC and sometimes have to load a web forms application intro a directory.

[qurve]

It's certainly possible in some cases to do that depending on the web server and underlying application, however with others it is not, or it is difficult.

Ultimately it is up to each individual person to evaluate their technology vs what they want, in our company we have decided that there is little to no cost to our business to put the blogs on their own subdomain and alleviate all technical considerations.

[AlanMosley]

IOf you man because they are different platforms, It is posibble, at least on windows servers, you can make a virtual directory, it willact as anouther site in a sub directory.

[qurve]

For all the sites we run that have a blog we generally use a subdomain for one reason: It is much easier to mix and match technologies or move the blog to different providers with a subdomain.

For example, one of the sites we run uses a custom-built Ruby-on-Rails application for the main website (www.site.com) and we use Tumblr with a custom hostname (blog.site.com) to host our blog. Such a setup would be impossible using a sub-directory, and if we decided we wanted to switch the blog to a custom WordPress installation it would be possible (not taking into account possible 301 issues)

[AlanMosley]

No I dont believe there is, only the usual 301 issues, if you have any links pointing to the old location you will need to 301 redirect to new location this will also prevent duplicate content issues.

but I agree i like subdomains, as a developer the seperation is noce and tidy