Add blogging functionality into an existing Laravel site vs a separate WordPress blogging site in a sub domain

Question

We have an Internet marketplace project written in Laravel 5. We need to add a blog for this project. Which option is better from SEO perspective?:

1. Extend the existing Laravel site by adding a blogging module or programming one from scratch. I haven't managed to find a decent blogging module for Laravel by the moment. I am afraid writing one from scratch ca take too much resources. We could place such blog into the site into a subfolder like example.com/blog, which is rather effective from SEO perspective, as far as I understand.

2. Create a separate blogging site using WordPress and put it into a sub domain blog.example.com.

Could you advise what is more competetive from SEO perspective?

Answer 1

Wordpress is highly optimized for SEO. Those sites rank very well. It's also pretty easy to get up and running.

If you were to code a blogging platform from scratch, there's a good chance that it won't be as well made as Wordpress unless you have a lot of confidence that it could be done well. It might also take a lot of time and coding resources to build such a thing. This is why a lot of webmasters just end up reverting to Wordpress.

I like to code my own projects and have confidence in being able to get all of the intricacies done properly in creating a blogging site/platform. But even I know how powerful Wordpress is. So from a perspective of running a straight up blog, Wordpress really probably wins.

I would prefer it if the blog were in a subdirectory rather than a subdomain if you want the articles to rank. I don't think there's any guarantee that your root domain's trust/authority will fully pass to the subdomain.

If you can code a blog from scratch that is really well made, then you can go that route for sure. If you want to put up something that you know has a strong chance to succeed without investing a lot of time, Wordpress is good for that.