Forums and SEO

Hi everyone, I have a quick question.

We will soon be adding a forum to our website and I was wonderering..... as far as I know we have 2 options, have it as a subdomin (forum.) or a sub folder (/forum).

Now again as I understand it, from an SEO perspective, if it’s a sub domain Google will see it as a separate website which can be a benefit because any links to the rest of our website can count as inbound links.

If it’s a sub folder then it’s seen as the same site so can also be of benefits bacause there will be 100’s of pages indexed with the search engines which can help the site in becoming an authority.

Which, in your optinion is better and why?

Thanks very much for your help.

Hazard.

This is better option because you get benefit of link juice

Don't know for sure, but look up, SEO chat is using subdomain, so you'd think...

good assumption?

Here is my believe;

If zillions of unrelated subodomain exists on a domain, I will conclude that they are all different websites. If only one or few subdomain exist on a domain, and that they are all related then I will conlude that the subdomains are part of the domain.

For website that has the advantage of sitelinks, Google populates sitelinks results usually with domain most useful links. Type SEOCHAT on Google and you will see that the sitelink will show the forum... Curiously, seochat forum is a subdomain of the main website. To make short, me thinking this: What i know and understand, Google do too.

I also intend to open up a forum. I will open it on a separate domain only for one reason: Dynamic websites are more vulnerable compared to static websites. My main website is static html. If my forum ever have any problem: viruses, link abuse, hacking etc. it will only hurt the subdomain not my static website.

But.... this is my concern and it is probably irrelevant to your question because you are looking for link juice benefit. To answer your question then, i would say go with a folder under the main website but I will use a subdomain.

U2 (late here and my english is not great... I know )

But lately google understand it is not different website I have read it this forum.