A subfolder is a folder nested inside another folder within a site's structure, and a path is the full sequence of subfolders a URL travels through to reach a specific resource. In a URL, subfolders follow the domain and are separated by slashes: in https://zeo.org/blog/seo-guide, "blog" is the subfolder and /blog/seo-guide is the path.
Subfolders can look similar to subdomains at a glance, but they're structurally different: a subdomain (blog.zeo.org) is treated more like its own distinct site sharing the parent domain's name, while a subfolder (zeo.org/blog) stays part of the main domain's single structure. For SEO, that distinction matters: content under a subfolder generally inherits and contributes to the main domain's overall authority directly, while a subdomain's SEO performance can behave somewhat more independently. That's part of why most SEO guidance leans toward subfolders over subdomains for content meant to reinforce a site's core authority, reserving subdomains for genuinely separate properties, like a help center or a distinct app, that make sense as their own thing.
