(Entry was posted by Rob Maas on this post in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 12/17/2020).

What is the preferred use, subdomain or folder?

Need some help for a friend of ours. "We have a website website . se and we wanted to add a shop to our website. During the process of building the shop we asked the builder to locate the shop on: website . se/shopping/ . We were told this was not possible due o the nature of the shop and CMS they were building for us. It could only be located on shopping/website . se. Although Google consistently tells us domain or subfolder doesn`t matter for indexing and ranking I would like your second opinion on what is the preferred use ; subdomain or folder. And what kind of surprises we can expect in Search Console when we use a shopping.website . se instead of website . se/shopping/. An additional question would be ; could we perhaps locate the entrance of the shop on website . se/shopping/ and have the rest of the shop on shopping.website . se. ( we feel website . se/shopping/ is easier to communicate and has more marketing vallue." Would be nice to hear your opinions. Kind regards

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YOUR ANSWERS

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

Michael Martinez: If the developer cannot put it into their CMS, you appear to have no choice but to put it on a subdomain.Google`s algorithms do treat subdomains exactly the same way they treat folders on root domains - as long as you link to them the same way. I have worked with subdomains for over 20 years. All the despair and paranoia over subdomains is based on flawed reasoning and analysis.If you control the hosting then you should be able to install a second CMS in the folder you want to use. The developer doesn`t have to worry about it - unless their CMS intercepts requests for all subfolders under the root domain.If that`s the case, you need to go with a subdomain.You may have to authenticate the subdomain separately in GSC. Depends on how you authenticated the root domain.You could always redirect .se/shopping to shopping.domain.tld and just market the redirected URL in your advertising and social media shares. You`ll still have to rank the subdomain in the search engines.
Rob Maas: Thanks for your comprehensive answer Michael, I ll pass it on.
Rob Maas: Also doubting it would be an idea to go for a complete new domain, like Website-Shop.cctld instead of shop.website.cctld

View original question in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 12/17/2020).

What is the preferred use, subdomain or folder?

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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