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We launched a discussion boara a few months back. It is in the cgi bin directory of our site (UNIX shared server - discussion board is a modified Ikonboard (Perl based)) and the cgi bin is robot txt'd out. That seemed OK with us as we didnt really want a whole heap of discussion threads interfering with our finely crafted keyword/theming etc!
However we have been rethinking..
If we made the cgi-bin sub dir that is the discussion facility a sub domain, would that make it a different "site" to the search engines. such as h**p://discuss.oursite.com Would it would then be spiderable and not affect rankings in our main 7 year old site?
We do have most pages on our main site linking to the discussion board, as the idea is to let people have a way to discuss our columns and articles, and the discussion board has links back to the home page. Would that cause a problem with cross linking?
chiyo, is it only the homepage of the main site that's linked back to from the message boards, or do the boards also link back to any of the main site's interior pages??
And does it or will it have any distinct directory listings?
would that make it a different "site" to the search engines. Such as h**p://discuss.oursite.com Would it would then be spiderable and not affect rankings in our main 7 year old site?
This can be looked at in several ways. I would consider the use of canonicals as to how it could most benefit the site. Canonicals are confusing. I see them treated with the respect of a separate domain while at the same time inheriting the PR of the main index on the www page. That seems to tell me that they are considered both separate yet connected.
How I get around this is to work it. I use canonicals to tie in related information or themes, then I link them with the main site where it’s appropriate. In my experience this tends to support the themes. So, would it be spiderable – yes I believe so and second part, not affect rankings – my thought is no, it will affect rankings so if I were to select this approach then I would work it to get the most bang from my buck.
We do have most pages on our main site linking to the discussion board, as the idea is to let people have a way to discuss our columns and articles, and the discussion board has links back to the home page. Would that cause a problem with crosslinking
In my opinion from experience with it no, this should not create a problem. This is actually I believe is the best way to work it.
Marcia, there are links back to it (or will be) from most pages on our site - but each link will go to a separate topic forums of the main forum - for example travel articles will go to the travel discussion, articles on branding will go to the branding sub forum, articles on Thailand will go to the Thailand sub forum etc.
They'll be no penalties. Either from automated spam checkers or even by hand if you play it clean.
