i need to put a forum on my site , i wanted to know if putting it as a suddomain will be better than site.com/forums . thx
You'll get mixed responses. Some prefer subdomains some prefer subfolder. No one has presented evidence one is better than the other. I only run one content + forum site and the forum is in a subfolder. I considered changing to a subdomain because most of the seo sites do that, but after my research I found no benefits unless maybe the forums were alittle offtopic from the rest of the site.
They are both the same when it comes to a search engine. However when it comes for a person to call up your forum, I guess subdomain would be better for those who have used a computer before!
I don't think it matters. I like either. Just make sure you stick with one. forums.url .com makes a little more sense to me, but as long as your visitors know where to look, I don't think it's that big of a deal. Skinny
I'd focus on easy navigation on your index page of your site than on the URL. I don't think too many new visitors to your site are going to be typing "forum" anywhere on the toolbar anyway. They'll type in www.domain.com and follow some links. Brandon
I chose to make my forums a subdirectory of the main sites. One thing I found useful was to make a mini menu on the forum itself for the most relevant pages on the main site. In my case alot of forum traffic was coming directly into the forum side, and I needed a way to encourage them to visit the main site. Adding the menu on the forum seemed to be the boost I needed.