Calling the Gurus - For SEO, what is the ideal URL for specific forums or all of VB?

[caliber]

Hello all,

Assuming all other things being equal, what would you say would be the optimal URL for a forum on a particular subject in a general interest site from an SEO perspective.

For example, say that you have a cooking site and you want to have a forum on Chinese food. Which URL would be optimal:

http://chinese-food.mysite.com
http://chinesefood.mysite.com
http://www.mysite.com/forum
http://www.mysite.com/chinese-food
http://www.mysite.com/chinesefood

Alternately, let's say that the whole site was about chinese food. In that case, what would be the ideal URL for the VB installation:

http://chinese-food.mysite.com
http://chinesefood.mysite.com
http://www.mysite.com/forum
http://www.mysite.com/chinese-food
http://www.mysite.com/chinesefood

Any comments are appreciated.

[Keith Cohen]

(Moved to General vBulletin SEO forum.)

[Joe Ward]

For the first scenario, I like:

chinese-food.mygeneralsite.com or
chinesefood.mygeneralsite.com

It's cleaner and you don't need to add a sub-directory.

For the second scenario, I like:

forum.chinesefoodsite.com

[caliber]

For the first scenario, I like:

chinese-food.mygeneralsite.com or
chinesefood.mygeneralsite.com

It's cleaner and you don't need to add a sub-directory.

For the second scenario, I like:

forum.chinesefoodsite.com

Thanks Joe,

Have you read anything about URLs with the word "forum" in them being penalized? Seems like I read that a while back.

Also, I understand that it is impossible to set up your suggestion for scenario one with VBSEO - is that correct? For example, you could not have different forums like:

chinesefood.mygeneralsite.com
frenchfood.mygeneralsite.com
italianfood.mygeneralsite.com

Lastly, would you care to venture which of your two URLs would be preferred:

chinese-food.mygeneralsite.com or
chinesefood.mygeneralsite.com

In other words, is the "-" good or bad? All other things being equal.

[briansol]

Personally, I wouldn't use subdomains.

Not only are they a pain to keep track of, they count on almost everything as 'seperate sites'

blah.foo.com will hold different rankings in everything then bar.foo.com

IMO, the only purposeful use of such things, are for using a different server for sections of your site.

web.site.com vs forum.site.com vs mail.site.com


google themseleves are a perfect example.

https://checkout.google.com/
Google

their checkout system has next to nothing to do with their search engine...

If you're building a site, where your forums are a SECTION of the main site, keep it all together.
If you're building a site where your forums are a SEPERATE ENTITY from the main site, use a subdomain.