Subdomains play a part in the way that the internet is organized. They are part of the overall domain name of a website’s address, and are hierarchical. For example, the name “order.example.com” has three parts, each separated by a period. The first part is “.com”, the second is “example” and the third part is “order”. The third part is a subdomain of the second part, and the second part is a subdomain of the first. It’s a bit like a Matryoshka doll. For more on how domains are structured, see the topic “What should you know about domains?”.

Subdomains are useful for dividing your website into different categories. Here is a quick overview of some of the possible categories and advantages:

Target geographical areas, or language groups.

For example, if your website is in English and Spanish, a subdomain may be used to indicate that this section of your website will be in Spanish, and not English – instead of just domainname.com, es.domainname.com is used. Product-oriented sectionIf your website offers a variety of different services or products, you can create a subdomain for each one, for example: smartphone.domainname.com, or blog.domainname.com.

Gated content

Having a separate subdomain for logins or account pages on your website is a useful way of organizing your site, both for your clients as well as for yourself.

Better tracking

By using a subdomain, you’ll be able to track the success of your website more specifically, by being able to see which exact area is doing well and where there’s room for improvement.

Importance for SEO

Subdomains are quite a useful tool for SEO, and although subdirectory and subdomain optimization is not as significant for successful SEO as it was a few years ago, it’s still worth doing. For example, you can insert keywords into your subdomain URL where they don’t make sense in your main one. Furthermore, you can build up your website’s authority in a smaller, niche market because subdomains are seen as their own entity. This will help boost the authority of your main domain too. It’s helpful to have the option for several subdomains, because several subdomains also increase your chances of being visible in search engine results. IONOS offers 10,000 free subdomains with any domain name registration — a good number to get your website kicked off!