Another SEO Test for you…this time we are trying to determine, do subdomains have more link juice than regular domains? This is a great question to ponder as brands setup blogs for their main site. Is it better to go get a separate domain for that blog – or use the old “blogs.” subdomain?
Here’s our test:
- Create 3 “invented” keywords – speclocalls, webblener and combolyticion.
These are used to test our theories – they will be used on both the domain and the sub-domain. To point to pages we also created. - Create 6 destination pages (3 on each site – one for each keyword per site)
- Build a backlink page (page 7) – it will be used to ensure these domains get indexed. Our test sites are new and we wanted to fast forward the test…this will do that equally.
The results.
We have conclusive evidence that it does indeed help rankings to link to your site from a subdomain. This is very interesting and gives us proof that using sub domains is likely a good thing. Notice our sub-domain pages 4, 5 & 6 all did better than the “regular” domain did in all tests.
As you can see – in all 3 examples the sub-domain won. Pretty interesting. What does it prove – it certainly seems that the best way to link to a site; or the best place to setup a site-complimenting blog is the sub-domain. If you have not got a domain name yet, learn more about free domain names and the options available.
Next Test:
Just to make sure we’re happy with these results, we’re going to see if it is a parent/sub-domain thing; or if a subdomain from another, higher ranking parent domain will win. Look for results soon.