So, i had disagreements with some people.
In all my experience of about 5 to 7 years of SEO, i always went with the folder in favour of the subdomain, eg :
instead of :
Now let me tell you why i went that way.
Since the SE's see any new subdomain as a whole new website, link popularity would have to be concentrated NOT on the main website, but on the subdomains too, if you REALLy want to have a rank like i had with
this website :
Search 1
Search 2
Search 3
The above are purely 3 random positions i could think of, and search.
This website niche is VERY competitive, and altough, let's say, 80.000 results appear in Google for a search it's extremly hard to rank high.
So .. My 2 cents. On a heavily promoted website, new added content (page, news bit, forum post, anything) already assumes the earned weight of the main domain, and immediatly ranks VERY HIGH, after it has been indexed.
With a subdomain, you would have to reach the same ammount of weight, for each subdomain, for that to happen. And it rarely happens that way.
The added importance, made to the keyword in the domain, versus the keyword in the URL, is not EVEN CLOSE as important as to the weight that's been passed to any new content.
Another example, would be a website with a forum.domain, and a domain.com/forum.
I strongly suggest to use the /forum/ solution. Anyone can see the benefits in the above statements.
I want real arguments and constructive talks on this issue, because it's so important, and maybe members can learn something.
I want to clearly mention that in all my experience, i never achieved a more positive (per total) effect, by using the subdomain (and i used it several times), versus the folder.
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