For example, if i owned a dog review website, yet the domain www .dogreview.com was taken and i thought the most appropriate was mydog.com, would it be better seo to go for: mydog.com/review or review.mydog.com (looking for the keyword "dog review") The root address of mydog.com won't actually be used, just forwarded to the one of the above. Which is better?
I prefer not to use subdomains as they confuse users, however if you have an authoritative site you can dominate rankings using subdomains. Intel owns 5 of the top 6 positions.
Gotta agree with that ... additionally subdomains will probably require more maintenance & setup time as your site expands
Ye, im a little bit confused aswell... then again i don't subdomains. The only trouble i can see is when setting up sites, if it doesn't configure properly you just gotta change one of two links in the configuration, but then again it will be the same when using subfolders
subdomains are completely new domains for the search engines. because of this, it will be difficult to get good serp position with subdomains. using folders is a better option for seo
I would use folders based on what has been said. Also, its "dog review", not "review my dog". So unless it will be a web 2.0 site where users upload their dog for you to review, go with the folder naming.