<img src="https://itxdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/36978622_s-300x300.jpg" alt="Subdomains and SEO" width="300" height="300" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-10618" />Subdomains are rather popular, but you may be wondering why a company would use one. Maybe you don't understand the benefits and you're curious to know if it could help you. 

A subdomain is also known as a third-level domain. It's a part of the top-level domain and an example is domains.itxdesign.com. Here's a look at how subdomains affect SEO and some of the most common usages.

<h2>Using Subdomains for SEO</h2>

There are several ways you can boost your SEO with subdomains. They can help to create a unique authority for your website and provide benefits, such as:
<ul>
<li>Inserting Keywords - With a subdomain, you can add a keyword to your domain, which may be hard to rank for. This is a great thing for your ranking, in many cases.</li>
<li>Improve the User Experience - One of the major ranking factors for Google is the user experience your website provides. A hard to navigate site doesn't provide a good user experience. Subdomains can be used to make the site easier to navigate.</li>
<li>Help with Niche Authority - While growing authority in a general niche can be difficult, growing it through a subdomain in a smaller niche within the main niche is much easier. Plus, as you grow the smaller subdomain niche, you will create more authority for your general niche.</li>
<li>Locations for Local SEO - Adding the city/community/neighborhood name for an additional business location you serve can be very powerful. By adding in the name of the location, you will better target that area for better local SEO with your subdomain.</li>
</ul>
Subdomains provide many benefits and can certainly help with SEO. These three ways they help are the most common.

<h2>Most Common Usages of Subdomains</h2>

<img src="https://itxdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/40567458_s-300x250.jpg" alt="SEO Subdomains" width="300" height="250" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-10620" />There are several ways to use subdomains to gain better SEO, but it's not always about SEO. Sometimes, it's about organization or creating something on your top-level domain to compliment your website. Here are three of the most common uses for subdomains.

<strong>For a Company Blog</h2>

Often, companies will create the subdomain, blog.companyname.com to host their blog. This is probably the most common reason any company or website will use a subdomain. With the blog subdomain, it can easily be added to the overall website and can be found in search engines when someone searches the company name and the word "blog."

<strong>Show off Different Product Lines</strong>

Maybe you offer products for men, women and children. It would make sense to have subdomains for all three. This also works when you offer different product lines covering different niches or sub-niches of your main niche. Many companies use a subdomain for each major product, service or product line.

<strong>For Different Locations</strong>

<img src="https://itxdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/40507984_s-300x200.jpg" alt="SEO" width="300" height="200" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-10619" />Another very common use for subdomains is for different locations. Maybe you own 5 restaurants in different locations and you want each one to have its own website. With a subdomain as the location name, you can create a completely new website to fit that location.

Not only will these subdomains help separate the locations, but they will also help with SEO. Since the location name is the subdomain, it will help you gain better local SEO for that location.

There are several other uses for subdomains, such as for support, registration, members and many other things. Using subdomains provides a way to separate different sections of your website without losing the branding of the top-level domain name.

If you're not currently using subdomains, you may want to consider adding these to your website. Of course, it needs to make sense with your overall mission and needs to add value to your website.
