Hello, I have a music site which has a subfolder called forum for my (you guessed it) forum. My main site is doing well in SERPS, but I am wondering if it would be a good idea to treat my forum as a seperate entity and start a new campaign targeting it. In other words, I wouldn't necessarily want my main site showing up for a "music forum" search, but would love for my forum to. If I submit the URL to my forum in directories, is it going to hose the SEO for my main site? Any thoughts? Thanks.
A forum will compliment your site and help your over-all PR and will not hurt your main site unless you allow spammers to post.
Mixposure, consider creating a subdomain as http://forum.mixposure.com (you don't need to physically move your forum -- just identify /forum as a subdomain from your site control panel). Then promote that as if it were a separate site with its own anchor text, etc. By the way, your sig link is http://www.mixposure.com/forum/index.php -- I think it's usually better to leave off the index.php in such links... most people who pick up the site and link to you will just use http://www.mixposure.com/forum/ or if you do create the subdomain http://forum.mixposure.com
Thanks guys. Minstrel, it sounds like we're on the same page, I really appreciate the response. I am currently using CpanelX and I do see the link for Subdomains. From what I can gather it looks like I would type "forum" before the "mixposure.com" and then click add. Beneath that is a setup redirection link with " . is currently being redirected to " and I assume that I should put "http://www.mixposure.com/forum/index.php". Will I need to update any internal links at that point? This is my first time around so I just want to confirm that I am doing it correctly before I move forward. I really appreciate the help, thanks.
Yes, I would suggest that you change all internal links from http://www.mixposure.com/forum/index.php to http://forum.mixposure.com -- however, once you create the subdomain, I don't think you need to do any redirection. Anyone who types in http://www.mixposure.com/forum/index.php should still find you.
Thanks again! So links such as http://www.mixposure.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=33 Won't be affected? Is it essentialy a mod_rewrite type of thing that only affects the index page? Sorry for all the q's.
No, you don't need mod_rewrite and it's not really like mod-rewrite at all. You are simply identifying the subdirectory as a separate "sub" domain as far as the search engines are concerned. Anyone who types in http://www.mixposure.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=33 will be taken to exactly the same page as someone typing in http://forum.mixposure.com/viewforum.php?f=33 so no mod_rewrite is necessary.
I take it you haven't yet set up the subdomain? I get a 502 gateway/dns error when I tried to access http://forum.mixposure.com just now...
Hahah!! Slow down man!! I'm working, I'm working!!! OK, I'm off to give 'er a whirl, the help is very much appreciated.
What a great post, This is excatly what I was looking for too. Mixposure, if you get time please come back and let us know how you got on with this.