Subdomain

Subdomain is the child domain of a larger parent domain. It is created to organize and navigate different section of a website. You can have as many subdomain as possible under your primary domain. They are treated as separated entities but linked together under the same website.

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Subdomain Structure

Subdomain is located on the left side of the root URL. Above is the example of a website that use subdomain for their blog post list. It indicated from the blog. on the left side of the parent domain, www.yourwebsite.com.

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Why Some Webmasters Are Using Subdomain?

While is not necessarily to have subdomain existed in your site, we’re going to explain why some of the webmasters are using it on their site:

1. To Target Distinct Markets

Some of the webmasters use subdomain to create distinct web pages that target different markets. For example, one of the E-commerce store Koala, are using au.koala.com for their Australian audience and use jp.koala.com for their Japanese audience.

2. To Create Separate Section of a Website

Let’s say you want to expand your current blog website to sell some merchandise. Having additional plugin and design for your new store could slow down the other blog pages. In this case, moving the shop to the subdomain could offer a better user experience. Below are the most common sections that webmaster usually separate into subdomain:

• Support section
• E-commerce or store section
• Career page
• Community Forums

3. To Create a Separate Mobile Site

A subdomain could also be an alternative if your responsive theme doesn’t work as per what you expected. In this case, you could create a subdomain that specialized in the mobile device, creating a better user experience. For example, let’s say your website.com is intended for desktop users while the mobile users will see mobile.website.com which is already optimized for mobile users.

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When to Use Subdomain?

All the example above are just the ideas of why some webmasters are using subdomain from their point of view. There is no rule that you should be using them on your site, but here is what we recommend when you should use one. If your website is large and you have staffs to handle different properties, then you can go for subdomain. In other word, subdomain is perfect for a large website that has separate and unique entities. Disney, for example, are using subdomain for it videos, parks, and other properties.

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How to Set Up Subdomain On Your Site?

• Log into your website hosting dashboard.
• Select the root domain you want to use.
• Look for an option to add a new subdomain.
• Enter a name for the subdomain, and the IP address of the server you want to point it to.
• Once the DNS record is updated, it will be ready to use once it has resolved, which can take up to a day (depending on the TTL value).

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What Does Google Say About Subdomain?

Google stated that it is perfectly safe to use subdomain and they’re generally not hurting site ranking. The search engine machine are smart enough to identify your primary domain and subdomain as one entity and prevent them to be treated as cannibalization.