Forum structure considering usability and SEO

[Zagis]

Well, lets say that you have a forums about dogs and you are going to have 3 main categories (except members area chit chat forums etc) with 5-6 forums each one of them. What would be the best structure of the forum home, regarding usability and SEO?

Do you prefer:

Small dogs
-- General
-- Food
-- Health
-- Training
-- Breeds

Medium dogs
-- General
-- Food
-- Health
-- Training
-- Breeds

Big dogs
-- General
-- Food
-- Health
-- Training
-- Breeds

or

Dogs
-- Small dogs
--- General
--- Food
--- Health
--- Training
--- Breeds
-- Medium dogs
--- General
--- Food
--- Health
--- Training
--- Breeds
-- Big dogs
--- General
--- Food
--- Health
--- Training
--- Breeds

[briansol]

if it's a brand new forum, i would have simply:

Dogs
- General
- Food & Health
- Training
- Breeds



Split out when it becomes necessary. always start small so your board doesn't look empty with nothing in it.

[Zagis]

if it's a brand new forum...

Sorry, I forgot to mention that it's a 2 years old forum and I have directory type URLs using IDs, since I installed vBSEO 18 months ago.

We already have about 130.000 posts and 5.500 members.

[Mert Gökçeimam]

I would go with the same structure Brian suggested.