Niche vs One massive site
-
In the past I've done fairly well building niche sites for automotive accessories. The problem is, it's hard paying attention to 50+ sites after a while, and the quality ends up going down.
Because of this, I've decided to focus on one large site for trucks and their accessories. I have a site called truckprofile.com where people can create profile pages for their various trucks. It gets fair traffic for not doing much with it. I recently threw a blog on the site: truckprofile.com/blog. This will be my area for posting articles on niche, commonly searched, easy to rank for phrases.
So my questions are:
- Is building one massive site better?
- If so, how should I structure the blog area so that each article ranks well? Would it be better if they were well categorized pages in wordpress instead of blog posts?
- By posting all the articles on a single site, does that mean it will be harder to rank for any single thing since the topic is so broad?
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
-
I appreciate your help. I saw the SEOmoz article this morning, thought it was appropriate
Andy
-
Well, what do you know? SEOmoz just put out a blog post today that could be exactly what you need! http://www.seomoz.org/blog/setup-wordpress-for-seo-success
-
I'd suggest a combination of B and C. If you have to compromise, don't compromise B for the sake of C. C could be compromised for the sake of B a little bit, but better to find the perfect balance of the two, of course.
As far as tags go, two basic things to remember is to only give something a certain tag if your post is about that tag/word or mentions it in great detail. If it only mentions it once in passing, maybe don't give it that tag.
Another practice that a lot of people use with tags is to keep them at one word each unless they're proper names or brands. For example, if you post is about truck brakes, add the tags "truck" and "brakes" rather than "truck breaks." Most people say don't go over 10 tags per post. I don't know how much that actually matters, but I usually abide by that and it works for me.
Side point: I'd strongly recommend installing a plugin like Yoast and noindexing all tag pages.
-
I appreciate your help : )
So for instance, if I write an article about a brand of truck bed liner, would I:
A: Create as many niche categories as I can to add that article, all relating to the topic of bed liners?
B: Pick a single, easy to rank for category for that article?
Pick a single category that readers will most likely recognize for that article?
Lastly, is there a good strategy I should be using for tags? Or should I leave tags alone?
Thanks again!
-
- Is building one massive site better?
For SEO and for your own peace of mind, yes. You'll only have one site to keep track of and to do SEO on. That site will build up authority over time, thereby getting better traffic and rankings.
- If so, how should I structure the blog area so that each article ranks well? Would it be better if they were well categorized pages in wordpress instead of blog posts?
The blog area should be a blog instead of Wordpress pages. Otherwise, why wouldn't you just make them regular pages the main part of your website? All you have to do is make a category for each niche.
- By posting all the articles on a single site, does that mean it will be harder to rank for any single thing since the topic is so broad?
Not necessarily. Google likes to rank authority sites. If you are maintaining 50+ sites, it would be safe to assume they do not get a lot of traffic and don't have a lot of authority. But with one site, you are getting all the traffic of the 50+ sites on a single site. The more you put into a SINGLE site the more it will gain authority. An internal page of a site with a DA of say 60, could easily outrank the homepage of a DA20 site.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Why is my site ranking well on google but not on Yahoo and Bing?
For our site Boynton Law, we added it to be indexed on Yahoo and Bing but none of the keywords are showing up in the top 50 rankings. Why are our keywords not working on Yahoo and Bing, but on Google our keyword rankings for Boytnon are really strong?
Keyword Research | | netprodjb0 -
One page for each keyword?
Hi guys Im little lost here and someone may help me. I want to top rank for these 3 keywords bellow: medical practice solution
Keyword Research | | phlcastro
medical practice software
medical practice system For instance, if I put all of them on the main page title it will become weird. If I try to use all of them sometimes inside the page content it also be weird. So, in cases like this, I should create one landing page for each keyword to be sure that I'll use it enough and be better ranked? Thanks in advance. Best regards.0 -
Amazon Item Title VS Item keywords
I am a new seller on amazon. People told me that i shouldn't put the same anchor texts on the item title and the item keywords. I am trying to sell an very competitive item: HDMI cable, which it doesn't have much different than what everyone is selling. Any suggestions of what i should put?
Keyword Research | | ringochan0 -
Categories in anAdd Classifieds site
Hi Everybody, We are adding a new feature to my site, and it is a add classifieds section. I spend the whole weekend making a research for keywords that could fit the category names. What I did, is to search for the exact phrases that people use related to the different categories that a classified site has. For example, if the category is to sell and buy cars, I search for the most popular query, in my language: cars second hand. So far so good, but the problem is that if I do so, I will have far too many categories, because those would be too specific. Any of my future competitors use the most search keywords, they are more pragmatic and use general wording. They also do not have more that one level subcategories, for the sake of usability and probably SEO. Today I entered all the almost 100 categories on the system, and it looks horrible. Also, too many links in the main page, the categories are difficult to find in the drop box list, users would need to scroll down to find what they are looking for: even in the main page! Other unwanted consequence is that too many categories will lead to too many empty categories in the first months, giving a bad impression of inactivity to the site, and making it even more difficult to create momentum. My question is: would be there any SEO benefit for using a long list of keyword categories, that compensate the problems generated for being too specific? Since any of our future competitors use many categories, I would answer myself as: keep it simple and short. But probably somebody with experience can give me some ideas. Many thanks in advance for your help, Daniel
Keyword Research | | te_c0 -
Changing on-site SEO without interrupting repeat customers
Hi, We have a site with lots of repeat customers. Now that Google Analytics has been gathering keywords for years, I want to do an overhaul on the site incorporating keywords we're not incorporating presently. But I'm afraid that repeat customers are going to search for their term that they find us with and we wouldn't be in the same spot so they'd go somewhere else. How do we refine the on-site SEO without jolting return customers? Thanks!
Keyword Research | | BobGW0 -
Logging out of Google vs. &PWS=0 ?
I typically append &pws=0 to my Google queries when I'm gathering results to share with a client. I recently sat in on another digital marketing firms presentation to the client, and they made a big deal about how their search engineers had conducted all the searched by "painstaking logging out of google, using a fresh browser, etc..." In my mind I was thinking that it was either a search engineer wasting time, or some hyperbole to impress the client. But I didn't really know for sure. Is &pws=0 actually equivellent to using a completely annonymous browser. For fun, I ran some queries under incognito on chrome running off a thumbdrive, and compared them to &PWS=0 results from my everday browswer while logged into google. I couldn't see any difference, but in my quick informal test, I also didn't find any difference between a personal SERP and a &PWS=0 SERP, so maybe I just didn't try the right query. Any thoughts?
Keyword Research | | crvw0 -
Keyword cannibalization in ecommerce sites
I'm assuming this is a common problem in ecommerce sites. Lets say we have a "sleeping bags" which has all types of sleeping bags on it. Then build a brand page "The North Face" with a subpage for The North Face sleeping bags. Is it possible to target the sleeping bags page for "sleeping bags" while targeting the branded sleeping bag page for "The North Face sleeping bag"? how would you suggest doing this while avoiding keyword cannibalization?
Keyword Research | | Hakkasan0 -
Should we change our site domain name to include our keyword?
Our niche has one keyword phrase that is much, much more active than any other comparable phrase. Let's call that phrase "math problems". Within this phrase, the "math" is absolutely the most important keyword, as it is also used in every spin-off search phrase, like "math answers", "math practice", etc. We've had our domain since 1996, and is currently the company name - "Rocketproblems.com". Over the last year (2010-2011) our SERPs have steadily dropped to the point where we're not getting a sustainable level of business from organic search, whereas in 2009 we were doing fantastic. However, we've also had "Rocketmathproblems.com" since about 2000, just gathering dust. What I've noticed from the top search results is that nearly every domain has either "math" or "math problems" in its URL. Do you think it's worth it to switch to the keyword-rich URL? It is a bit more verbose, and the "Rocketmathproblems.com" v.s. "Rocketproblems.com" example perfectly captures the different feeling. My inclination is that SEO is only becoming more competitive, and if we aren't getting worthwhile business from organic search at the moment then we should bite the bullet and make the switch for the future, along with ramping up our content generation. However, I also noticed that in late 2009 a previous webmaster switched to "Rogermath.com" but switched back within a month when our SERP for the key phrase was a page lower - I gleaned this from a Moz Juicy Keywords Report :). Thoughts?
Keyword Research | | ACann0