Which is better? If I install it on a subdirectory how do I go about doing that? Create a subfolder named blog and install a new copy of wordpress to that? My site currently uses wordpress, so I am not sure how this would work out.
3 Answers
You could do either pretty easily or you could create a custom post type within your current installation and then you wouldn't have to do either and you would only have one installation to manage.
TL;DR: From the SEO perspective, subdirectory is better.
Google says it does not matter if blog is on subdomain or subdirectory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJGDyAN9g-g&ab_channel=GoogleSearchCentral
On the other hand, there are multiple people claiming otherwise:
- https://sherpablog.marketingsherpa.com/search-marketing/subfolders-subdirectories-subdomains-url-difference-increase-organic-traffic/
- https://pi-datametrics.com/blog/identify-seo-sub-domain-conflict-cannibalisation/
- https://www.sistrix.com/blog/subdomains-vs-subdirectories/
- https://www.sistrix.com/blog/case-study-monsters-monster-growth-on-google/
- http://www.bloggingflail.com/subdomains-vs-subdirectories-seo/
Back in the day, it was kinda hard to serve a blog on /blog
so people cheered for blog.domain.tld. But today there are many free and paid services/approaches that make it easier: nginx reverse proxy, cloudflare workers, etc.
I would install it as a subdomain. You can then access it by either going to subdomain.mysite.com or mysite.com/subdomain Installation will be the same as installing in the root folder. You would create the subdomain/folder and copy the wordpress files to that.