Have you ever wondered if using subdomains can help or hurt your website’s SEO?
Subdomains can play a big role in organizing your website and reaching specific audiences, but they also come with unique challenges when ranking high on search engines.
Understanding how to perform SEO for subdomains is key to making them work for your SEO goals. Search engines often treat subdomains as separate websites, so they need just as much attention as your main domain.
In this post, we’ll break down everything you need about subdomains and SEO. We’ll discuss when to use them, how to optimize the content, and tricks to help improve SEO for subdomains.
So, let’s dive in and take the mystery out of subdomain SEO!
1 What Are Subdomains?
Subdomains are extensions of a primary domain used to organize and separate different website sections. They are placed before the main domain name, such as blog.example.com or store.example.com.
Unlike subdirectories, which are part of the main domain’s structure (e.g., example.com/blog), subdomains function as distinct entities, often treated as independent sites by search engines.
This separation allows businesses to serve specific purposes, such as hosting blogs, e-commerce platforms, or regional site versions. For example, a company can use us.example.com for its U.S. audience and fr.example.com for its French audience, creating content and services for each.
Refer to our dedicated tutorial on subdomains vs subfolders to understand subdomains in more detail.
2 Why Create Subdomains for SEO?
Let us now understand why you should create subdomains for SEO.
Subdomains often streamline website management while maintaining a clear structure, enabling you to target unique keywords and create specialized content.
By using subdomains, you can diversify your online presence, reach new user segments, and improve user experience. Wikipedia uses subdomains to deliver content in different languages or for specific regions.
- en.wikipedia.org – English version of Wikipedia
- es.wikipedia.org – Spanish version of Wikipedia
- fr.wikipedia.org – French version of Wikipedia
Subdomains are also popular among educational institutions and SaaS companies. For example, Harvard University uses online-learning.harvard.edu to manage its online courses separately from its main site, making navigation easier for users while enhancing search visibility for educational keywords.
By creating subdomains, you can ensure your content remains highly relevant to target users while avoiding overlap with the main domain.
However, balancing this strategy with proper SEO efforts is essential, as subdomains must optimize to rank effectively.
3 Strategies for Optimizing SEO for Subdomains
Let us now discuss the strategies for performing SEO for subdomains.
3.1 Content Strategy
An effective subdomain content strategy requires careful planning to ensure the content is unique, relevant, and optimized for search engines.
One of the biggest pitfalls is duplicate content, where the subdomain’s text closely matches the main domain’s content. This can negatively affect SEO as search engines struggle to determine which page to prioritize.
To avoid this, only create subdomains when you have enough unique content that serves a distinct purpose and serves a specific audience or topic not covered by the main domain.
Use tools like Google Search Console or Rank Math to audit your content and identify potential duplication issues.
Rank Math’s Content AI helps ensure your content is optimized and unique by providing keyword suggestions and helping you create SEO-friendly text.
If a subdomain features regional landing pages with similar product descriptions, you can use canonical tags (rel=”canonical”) to indicate the primary page to search engines, reducing duplication penalties.
You can easily set canonical tags in Rank Math by navigating to the Advanced tab of the Rank Math meta box. You can change the Canonical URL field to point to the main source of your content, as shown below.
When creating subdomain content, conduct thorough keyword research to target terms that the main domain isn’t focusing on. Aim to create unique, targeted content for the subdomain that aligns with its specific audience.
Interlinking between the main domain and subdomains is another essential strategy to improve the SEO for subdomains. Proper interlinking improves user navigation and helps search engines understand the relationship between your pages.
3.2 Backlink Strategy
A well-planned backlink strategy is essential for optimizing SEO for subdomains. This means each subdomain needs its own backlink profile to establish authority and improve rankings.
Unlike the main domain, where backlinks can be shared across the entire site, subdomains require targeted link-building efforts to ensure their content gains visibility.
First, focus on acquiring backlinks from high-quality, relevant websites that align with the purpose of your subdomain.
For instance, if your subdomain hosts a blog, reach out to industry publications, guest post on related blogs, or collaborate with influencers who can link to your content.
If the subdomain is an e-commerce store, work with affiliate marketers, product reviewers, or niche-specific forums to generate backlinks.
Internal linking also plays an important role in building the authority of subdomains.
Links from the main domain to the subdomain signal to search engines that they are related and can help pass some of the authority from the main domain.
For instance, linking to a blog article on your subdomain from a high-performing page on your main domain can improve its visibility. Similarly, create reciprocal links from the subdomain back to the main domain where relevant, ensuring a cohesive site structure.
Another effective tactic is using partnerships and local SEO strategies.
If your subdomain serves a regional audience, focus on local business directories, regional news outlets, and partnerships with local organizations to earn backlinks. This approach helps target location-specific audiences and improves rankings for geographically relevant searches.
3.3 Track SEO Subdomain Performance
Tracking the SEO performance of subdomains requires setting them up as separate entities in Google Search Console (GSC) and Google Analytics (GA). This approach ensures you can monitor their performance independently of the main domain.
Since search engines treat subdomains as distinct properties, you must connect them individually to Google Search Console and Google Analytics.
Start by creating a new property in Google Search Console for your subdomain and verify ownership using DNS, HTML file upload, or Google Tag Manager.
Similarly, in Google Analytics, you can either create a new property to isolate the data to maintain a cohesive user journey between the main domain and the subdomain.
To simplify the process, you can use Rank Math.
Once installed on your website, navigate to General Settings and the Analytics tab in Rank Math. If you haven’t connected your site to a Rank Math account, follow the steps to enable the Analytics module.
During setup, ensure all available checkboxes are selected to integrate Google Search Console and Google Analytics data seamlessly.
Rank Math automatically pulls data from Google Search Console and Google Analytics, storing it directly on your server for privacy and security. This eliminates any concerns about external storage or third-party data access.
Once connected, Rank Math enables you to view and analyze key performance metrics of your subdomain directly from your WordPress dashboard, providing a unified view of your SEO data.
4 Conclusion
Optimizing SEO for subdomains is essential for businesses and websites that want to organize their content effectively while targeting specific audiences.
When done right, SEO for subdomains can significantly enhance your website’s overall visibility, allowing each subdomain to contribute to your broader digital strategy.
With the right planning and consistent effort, your subdomains can thrive, delivering better search engine rankings and an amazing user experience.
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