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Subfolder vs Subdomain for a hosted solution

Hello Everyone,

​

I run into this issue every once in a while because I sell a SaaS cloud-based software. The client's that use our product get a site created at companyname.mycompany.com. They then use a CNAME record to create a custom domain on a subdomain i.e something.company.com. This is the industry standard in our market. All of our competitors suggest the same and it's overall easily accepted by our clients. Every once in a while we get someone who will aggressively argue with us that it has to be in a subfolder and not a subdomain for SEO.

Now I do get the impression from browsing this subreddit that people generally assume subfolder is superior to a subdomain for your main site's SEO. We find this argument odd given that GWT has tools to declare subdomains as officials parts of your primary web presence. However, I'd be willing to concede maybe subfolder is better than subdomain at face value (let's say 55-45).

That said, with a hosted solution, there's also a number of technical reasons why we consider it a bad idea because the only reliable way to do it is through a 'reverse proxy'. The nature of a reverse proxy makes requests slower (bad for SEO), the uptime is now dependant on your main site (eliminating a benefit of a cloud service) and a bunch of other issues related to security and technical debt on our side of the equation.

I am curious what the SEO professionals in this community have to say about how they deal with hosted solutions, which from my understanding, require to be on a subdomain and not a subfolder when it comes to SEO. Is it a deal breaker for you? Do you really think it makes THAT much of difference i.e if subfolder was 5-10% better is that really worth all the other headaches? What do you typically suggest to your clients using hosted solutions?

Basically, I am continually running into this debate and to be quite honest, I've had the (dis)pleasure of dealing with some SEO gurus in my line of work that want this to be their Hamburger Hill. I would really like to hear from your side of things how you tend to manage the subfolder vs subdomain thing for hosted solutions in a constructive way.

submitted by /u/JayLoveJapan
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from Search Engine Optimization: The Latest SEO News http://bit.ly/2G1oRkz
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