forums.guidelineproducts.com or guidelineproducts.com/forums ?

[iBlaze]

Hey guys, I was wondering, which would be better (more search engine friendly, etc.);

I'm about to add a forum to my website: guidelineproducts.com (i know the site looks like someone swirled some poop together with a stick, but i just bought it and I'm about to change that along with some other big new changes) My question is which will optimize more traffic, and overall be the best for my website in all areas (bandwidth, memorable, etc. ) ; forums.guidelineproducts.com or guidelineproducts.com/forums ??

If you guys could help me make my decision, i would greatly appreciate it and give you rep! Thanks!

[Shadab]

Using a directory vs. subdomain : This is a quite debated topic in Forums.

If your website is having or probably will have (in future, think long term) some more sections other than a Forum, like : Products, Services, Resources . Then it's good to have separate sub-domains for each of those sections...

forums.domain.tld , resources.domain.tld , services.domain.tld

Use the above setup only if you have a good amount of content to put on those subdomains.
Otherwise, use this site structure :

/ - Root. A portal displaying the latest 5 posts and threads from the forum; and some extra relevant content.
/forums/ - Your forum located here.

And other pages, related to your site can go like this :

/privacy.html
/legal.html
/about-us.html

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Note : Google may treat the subdomain as a separate domain. It has it's pros and cons.
The good thing being that if a sub-domain get's penalized by Google, it's not necessary that the parent domain will be penalized too.

[Armaan143]

If you make on subdomain then you have to get same design as main site design and as Shadab said that you can show recent/most active topics on main site.

At sub domain, its like a different independent site where you will get more freedom like Webmaster Forum - Internet Marketing & Search Engine Forums

[iBlaze]

Cool thanks guys, I appreciate the tips! (I like how if one sub-domain were to get pentalized, the parent site won't) (not that i plan on getting pentalized...i'm just saying )