I know there has been a lot written about SEO optimization on bubble. While it appears to be possible to optimize a blog system built on Bubble for SEO, it seems the general consensus is that purpose built tools like Wordpress will always be superior.
However, the general consensus also seems to be that subdirectories are better for SEO than subdomains.
This means that adding a blog at blog.yourapp.com using Wordpress is going to involve a different set of tradeoffs than using Bubble to build a blog at your app.com/blog.
Does anyone have experience with which is the better of the two options? It seems that there is no way to get the best of both worlds without introducing a lot of technical complexity to get (though, this appears to be what Bubble does with their own blog, which I believe is managed with Ghost but located at a subdirectory).
Oh yea in terms of simplicity, blog.yourapp.com is definitely far simpler.
People say that this is less ideal from an SEO perspective, but if WordPress is better from an SEO perspective than what can be achieved in bubble, I wasn’t sure if the benefits outweighed the drawbacks of having a bubble blog at a subdirectory.
It’s not just less than ideal it’s pointless, subdomains are treated as completely separate sites with individual backlinks, content, ranking, etc.
/path route is better always.
You can build quality SEO in bubble if you know what you’re doing. 2 separate bubble sites.
Given that there are still some advantages to Wordpress for blogging, I am not sure if pointless is overstating it though - especially if the main domain is pretty minimal and just used for hosting the app itself behind a paywall vs being another repository for content.
Then, I wonder if the argument could be made for a strategy of making something like the blog the initial point of contact for most potential customers, and then directing them to the main domain when they are ready to become an actual customer. It’s true the main domain won’t benefit from the SEO strength of the blog, but it might never have ranked high on its own anyway.
I also have this (admittedly old) video from google in the back of my mind which suggests that there is no difference:
Either is technically fine, however, with subdomains you have to basically train google that it’s a part of the main site to get it to co rank. This is done with heavy circular backlinks between each other and takes time. You also have to make sure the technical SEO matches up really well in this case.
Subdirectories cut this out and rank them together from the start.
They each have their use and strategy but it comes down to what your goals are. In 9 years in marketing there are rare occasions when I have used a subdomain for blogging but it’s only when the content isn’t really “needed” to be ranked organically and I’m more focusing on using the content of the blog for ads to push people through funnel. (Or an inverse like you mentioned where the blog is your primary top of funnel)
In this case my whole root site will be webflow (Wordpress), and my “tool” or “app” would be on a subdomain. However, if the subdomain app has ranking content like a marketplace with dynamic user generated records (think yelp or similar) then you would never want to split the two because technical SEO can grow that very very quickly.
Thanks, this is really really helpful. For a few simple product pages (non-dynamic), what would you say is the most important thing on the list? I’m assuming the mobile optimization is just the “Accessibility” score from Lighthouse. 44px buttons, etc. Other than that, just use Rich Snippets/Structured Data and create a bidirectional link using the link element? I already know the basics like H1/H2/etc tags.
Based on my app type, where all functionality is paywalled, I think you are right that it makes sense to move that (essentially all the bubble functionality) to the subdomain and doing everything else on the root domain. As I build out the blog, I also like that this strategy will give me more flexibility if I ever want to switch out platforms for either the blog (and homepage/landing pages/etc) or the app. This way, I can switch out one without having to replace the other (and avoiding vendor lock is a big goal of mine, generally speaking). But I also totally agree this wouldn’t make sense for many types of apps.
