forum.domain.com OR domain.com/forum

sub domain

[karum]

I will add a forum to my website. Which one is better at SEO. forum.domain.com or domain.com/forum
At SEO i want to optimize for google. So any ideas about this issue?

[moltar]

A great benefit of having forum.domain.com is that if it's gets really active, you can move it to a different server, and nothing will change for the end user.

[caveman]

Yep, and conversely a great benefit of having it as domain.com/forum is that it adds to the substance and power of your existing site.

Both approaches are good, depending upon your goals and the current standing of the existing site karum.

[techrealm]

I make sure all obvious paths lead to the content expected. If you don't see traffic being very high in the immediate future and when it does become busy you can handle (read afford) the potential downtime to move to a bigger server in the future then domain.com/forum/ is fine. You can always set the 301 redirect to forum.domain.com when the time comes for the "upgrade".

Although - at the last second I realize I haven't done it that way in a while. I almost always do a redirect from domain.com/forum/ to the forum.domain.com server. I vaguely recall a nitemare of bad links one time on a domain name /server change over... Most of the time its for the user not really the search engine that I make those types of links, I may never even use the link on the page but having it helps one or two direct typers.