Can I apply SEO techniques to a forum in a subdirectory?

[asinus]

Hi! I have a forum hosted in a subdirectory of a main site, i.e. www.example.com/forum. As I don't have control over what the webmaster is doing within the main domain, I'd like to know if I can still influence my forum's SERP by applying common SEO tecnhniques within my subdirectory exclusively.

Thanks!

[edited by: tedster at 9:23 pm (utc) on Dec. 29, 2009]
[edit reason] switch to example.com - it can never be owned [/edit]

[tedster]

Hello asinus, and welcome to the forums.

Certainly there are many common "SEO" factors that can be applied - the fact that the forum is in a subdirectory does not need to be an obstacle. The main things I'd take care of fist are the crawlability issues and making sure that your forum software isn't generating lots of duplicate URLs - if it is, make sure you only let googlebot see one.

[asinus]

Thank you for your response, tedster.

I wanted the forum I'm creating in "www.example.com/forum" to help the main site ("www.example.com") improve its SERP by attracting a large number of visitors, but I've read that "www.example.com" and "www.example.com/forum" would be treated by the search engines as two separate entities. Do you think traffic directed to the latter ("www.example.com/forum") could positively affect the positioning of the former ("www.example.com")?

If there's little benefit, I'm considering moving my forum to "www.insert the name of the forum .com". Which one would you go for: www.example.com/forum or www.insert the name of the forum.com?

Thanks again!

[edited by: engine at 2:47 pm (utc) on Dec. 29, 2009]
[edit reason] please use example.com [/edit]

[tedster]

I've read that "www.example.com" and "www.example.com/forum" would be treated by the search engines as two separate entities.

You or the source you are reading may be crossing meaning between a subdirectory and a subdomain. As an example, forum.example.com is a subdomain (to be technically precise, it's a hostname) and it will often be treated a bit more like an independent website.

But as long as a subdirectory holds links to the main domain root, then link juice will flow into the rest of the website. In fact, many websites don't have any content that isn't in a subdirectory.