forum.domain.com or domain.com/forum

[Wuushu]

Which is better from a SEO perspective? Are there any known differences in pagerank, crawlability or SEO results?

Thanks for your input!

[Brandon Sheley]

I use sub domains over folders on all my sites,,

in general I've read that SE's see these are separate sites..
it's more or less a matter of personal preference..

maybe this article will give you some insight

Sub-Domains - SEO Beneficial? - vBulletin Setup

[Wuushu]

Thank you for your input, Loco.

[Brandon Sheley]

your welcome

[briansol]

IMO, the only time you should use a subdomain for a section of your site is when you wish to point said subdomain to a seperate server.

subdomain.somesite.com is treated as an ENTIRELY seperate site from somesite.com by most search engines.

[mdvaldosta]

Subdomains for separate content (ie different sites) similar to what briansol mentioned. The reasoning behind this is that search engines (especially Google) rank a single web page based, in part, by the content on other pages of the site as well. For example, if you have a site about apples, and you create a page about oranges... Google is likely not going to consider you much of an authority on oranges. Likewise, if the site is about apples and the page is about apples, then that page would be beneficial to the entire domain.

Therefore, my suggestion would be to use a subfolder if the forums are going to be an extension of the primary site's content.

[Wuushu]

I see. In my case the forum will be discussion based on what the main site/front pages are about. So I will keep the forum to a sub-folder, rather than a sub-domain. Thanks for the insight!

/ Christian

[Future]

I see. In my case the forum will be discussion based on what the main site/front pages are about. So I will keep the forum to a sub-folder, rather than a sub-domain. Thanks for the insight!

/ Christian

this is a good decision.