Resource id #43

Topic: For better SEO by FORUM - Subdomain or Sub-directory

For getting better SEO results for the website, which is better - Making a forum on Subdomain or making the forum on subdirectory?

Re: For better SEO by FORUM - Subdomain or Sub-directory

As Google sees sub domain as a separate part of your website and counts its pages individually on the serp, and ranks the pages of that sub domain separately other than what pages link to your main website. Sub domain is used within your site when you think that the content nature is different from the main site content.

You can see examples of Google sites on different content, such as news.google.com, maps.google.com, analytics.blogspot.com, adsense.google.com and so on.

On the other hand, you should use sub directory if you think that it is the content similar to your main site content. And, the benefits of using sub directory is that link juice is distributed uniformly across the site. As Both have pros and cons that you should read. Read it what Mattcutts said - https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/subdomai … rectories/

Re: For better SEO by FORUM - Subdomain or Sub-directory

For blog or forum you should step up with a sub domain, the forum will be listed as a separate entity in the Google search results, which is good for owning the results and one’s reputation management. Sub domains do make it a little transparent for users which part of the site they're on(apart from bread crumbs).  for example compare 

forum.sagacademy.com

with

sagacademy.com/forum/

Re: For better SEO by FORUM - Subdomain or Sub-directory

Seems insightful. Thanks.
If we want better rank in google for my website, should I have more content in directories or subdomain?

Re: For better SEO by FORUM - Subdomain or Sub-directory

it's not about putting more content in the sub directory or sub domain, because putting more content is not the key to achieve rank. We're talking about sub domain or sub directory, then I'd recommend using sub domain if you want to be recognize individually on Google serp.

6 (edited by helloravijangid 2015-04-02 15:35:28)

Re: For better SEO by FORUM - Subdomain or Sub-directory

The term quality of content plays a vital role in ranking, but i have never heard about having more content in sub domain or sub directory is also a ranking factor.

Re: For better SEO by FORUM - Subdomain or Sub-directory

If I am correct then for a sub domain, SEO has to be done from scratch but the subdirectory version will get all the benefits of the SEO already done for the website. So a forum in subdirectory would get better organic views than forum in sub domain initially.

Re: For better SEO by FORUM - Subdomain or Sub-directory

And I agree that its about quality of content than quantity of content. Thanks helloravijangid and rajan.aug for correcting me. The same amount of more "Quality content" would give me better google ranks in sub domain or sub directory??

Re: For better SEO by FORUM - Subdomain or Sub-directory

We have designed a separate page for forum that totally differ from its site and now if we talk about sub directory then that always has same design, lay out and structure so there is no way we choose later one.

I agree that sub directory is also good for SEO purpose now a day that is just because Google only show 2-3 sub domains page's result on SERP on the a single query according to relevancy but we don't have more than 3 sub domains (blog, seo, and forum)  that follows the Google's guide line.

10 (edited by helloravijangid 2015-04-06 10:48:28)

Re: For better SEO by FORUM - Subdomain or Sub-directory

On reference of "more quality content" we can't achieve the rank on serp page since there are around 200 Google's ranking factors apart from content.
http://backlinko. com/google-ranking-factors