Author Site And Book Site - Multiple Sites Bad Idea?
-
The question:
I've been doing work for authors lately and a common question is if they should have a site for their book and a site for themselves. Separate sites with different domain names.
At first I thought this would be a bad idea. Why spread information across two sites if they can be related and used together in one?
But I see a lot of authors doing this and some with marketing companies. One site for the author with information about them, their books, their social media presence.
Then another site for their book, with new social media accounts, other info, etc.
What do you guys think? Has anyone tried both and seen any pros and cons? Is there a perfect answer?
-
In SEO there's no perfect answer since the environment always changes.
I think that you should bet on one site and build there the whole value. Give to your authors a page where they can build their profile and link them to their g+ page (if they don't have it recommend them to build one) in that way you'll achieve extra exposure in serps with the tiny image of the author.
Then for the book try to rank both for their name a ISBN code which is more long tail always useful. You may also try to boost the traffic to those pages using some tiny adwords budget, so more authors may join your community and enlarge the authority of your site.
-
I think one site would make sense.
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
-
Backlinks in PDF's created on my site causing algo demotion.
I have a few questions. My website allows people to create custom 'puzzle' and education (i.e. "math") worksheets - enter your 'school spelling list' - I can make a crossword or many other puzzles (PDF form) from it. I recently realized that I was being penalized for the backlink I placed in each one. I placed in each PDF ("Created with mydomain.com Crossword maker") - I was linking the "crossword maker" back to my site. BAD! I am now aware of this. I have recently disavowed several hundred backlinks where people have posted those PDF's online - and have started to see a big recovery in ranking and traffic. My questions about my citation: "Created with mydomain.com Crossword maker":
Branding | | Addict
1. Moving forward, can I leave the same citation on each PDF - but just link 'mydomain.com' back to my domain (not the keywords, just the domain)
2. If not, can I just leave the unlinked text on the PDF: i.e. "Created with mydomain.com Crossword maker" -no embeded links at all.
3. Is it OK to assert that they must leave the "citation" (linked/unlinked?) to post them on their website as a part of my terms of use? If not, is there an acceptable way to get credit for giving away free custom content - other than asking for an 'optional' link back? I have thousands more of these that I would need to end up disavowing so knowing exactly what is permissible is extremely important to me moving forward. I have watched this whiteboard Friday: https://moz.com/blog/backlinks-maximize-benefits-avoid-problems-whiteboard-friday (I am looking for clarification on what I can put in the original content I essentially syndicate - the content is different on each and every PDF, except for the citation). Thank you so much for your time and help!0 -
Niche sites migration into one authority site
I have multiple websites within the health niche. All 3 sites are about different topics: protein powder, superfoods, and sustainable products. I am thinking about migrating those 3 sites into 1 big site, to establish more authority and for branding purposes. But since those domains are exact match domains, and those exact keywords are pretty high volume, I'm not sure if it's a good idea. Will this be a good idea from a traffic/conversion/seo standpoint? Or should I make a header on top where people can 'switch' between those 3 sites? Or just leave them seperate?
Branding | | mrdjdevil0 -
Ideas for highly specific digital marketing?
I have a client that wants to get highly specific with their digital marketing (SEO, Paid, and Social). In their business each sale is big enough that we've even been talked about creating specific targeting campaigns around one decision maker within a company. I can't share too much more information, so I'm hoping that makes sense. My question is this: What are some ideas for getting hyper focused with digital marketing? Most of my ideas for this utilize paid advertising but we've come up with a few social and organic ideas as well. I just wanted to open a discussion to see what my Moz friends thought on the topic. Thanks in advance.
Branding | | HashtagJeff0 -
Renaming of Link within Site Links - Brand Issues
Hi, We welcome your thoughts on the current problem we are experiencing: When searching for our client's brand name, their previous sponsors name is shown within the Site Links to a very important page. We are keen to change this reference within the Site Link but keep the link itself. We have untaken the following without any change to the words used within this particular Site Link: 1) Removal of previous-sponsors name sitewide: Title tags Alt attribute Anchors Page names Image names 2) Removal of sponsors name from 200+ sister sites: Title tags Alt attribute Anchors Page names Image names 3) Modification of [previous-sponsor + client] within Wikipedia:
Branding | | PhilYarrow
There were 250+ mentions of the sponsor + client within Wikipedia. References have either been deleted or changed to past tense. (Google has been extremely slow at indexing these changes.) 4) Removal of off-site mentions:
After using Advanced Filters within OSE, we extracted all links that included the previous-sponsors name. We filtered these by DA and approached these sites and requested they update their links/on-site content to include the up-to-date name. This included large news organisations and reference sources. We also used Google operators (inurl, inanchor, intitle) to search for references mentions of [previous-sponsor + client]. We used Buzzstream to collate this data and contacted hundreds of sites sorted by DA. 5) We have twice requested demotion of the Site Link via GWT without success. Google clearly see's the Site Link as too important to remove it. The following is useful background information:
The [client + previous-sponsor] worked together for 5+ years. Our client is known by it's own brand, but it was also called in certain arenas as [client + previous-sponsor].
Fresh mentions of [client + previous-sponsor] are frequent. Examples of this are from collectors merchandise and videos that are posted frequently. The page being shown within the Site Links is essential. It cannot be moved. With a PA of mid-70's.
We have changed the Title of the page multiple times, without any change to the Site Link. Thanks
Phil0 -
Can i use the same keyword or similar keyword on title tag of multiple page ?
Greetings support, I would like to know if i can use similar keywords into my index title tag and than the similar keyword into the title tag of another page from the same site. Example:The site selling ''Dubai Apartments'' ''Dubai Vacation Rentals'' ''Dubai Holiday Apartments'' and ''Dubai Accommodation'' and would like to rank the index page for ''Dubai City Apartments'' and ''Dubai Accommodation'' and the category page /apartments/ for ''Dubai Apartments'' Is this ok ? because I do not want to lose the rank for the index page because it's already higher for ''Dubai City Apartments'' and ''Dubai Apartments'' I also have use this title tag on the home page: Dubai City Apartments | Dubai Accommodation | sitename brand and than i have category page such: /apartments/ title Dubai Apartments | Dubai Apartment Rentals | brandname /vacation-rentals/ title Dubai Vacation Rentals | Holiday Rentals Dubai | brandname /holiday-apartments/ Dubai Holiday Apartments | Dubai Vacation Apartments | brandname P.S. My index page is already rank for keyword such: dubai apartments, dubai holiday apartments, dubai vacation rentals and dubai accommodation but i want to know rank the category page. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Best, Giuseppe
Branding | | WorldEscape0 -
Drop In Rankings / Traffic... Can you find any technical issues with my site?
I haven't spammed the engines, if anything I haven't done enough link building. So let me start here: I split my old domain www.STbands.com into two separate domains - www.Suddora.com and www.CustomOnIt.com . The main site now goes to Custom On It and each page directly 301 as it was relevant. I knew there was going to be a little blow back... The first month went fairly well but last week we noticed a dip in organic search traffic and sure enough some of our main keywords are now suffering. I am wondering if this is because we haven't been building enough links to the new domains or if our new eCommerce CMS (magento enterprise) has technical SEO issues that is giving Google trouble. Nothing on GWT looks terribly wrong, should i be searching for something specific? Anything helps at this point, we are in dire need of some direction on what could be wrong. Any suggestions?
Branding | | Hyrule0 -
Is Google having trouble determining between two of my brand sites
I have a couple brand sites that our company uses and a couple of weeks ago one started to suddenly show up in the #1 position while searching for the other site via its brand. If I search for "collegexpress" our other site careersandcolleges.com is in the #1 possition. If I search for "collegexpress.com" it shows carrersandcolleges.com's title and description but links to www.collegexpress.com Could I have something messed up or is google confused with our two sites? In the past I am told that CollegeXpress referred to the careersandcolleges.com page but that has been there for many many years and this SERP change only started to show the first week in march of this year. I looked and there are a handfull of anchor text links from external sites using some form of the "CollegeXpress" brand linking to www.careersandcolleges.com but not that many, and they are not new. If I do a search the other way for "careersandcolleges" I see it correctly return is own site #1 but www.collegexpress.com is shown to me as #3. I checked and we dont have any redirects or mod rewrites between the two sites. They are on two different IPs Any help that can point me in the right direction would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Branding | | GeorgeLaRochelle0 -
New Social Media Site + META Tags for User Profiles
I'm currently in the process of building a social media site and was deciding whether or not to add META descriptions/keywords for individual user profiles. After reviewing Facebook, I noticed that in the META Description field, user profile pages just inherited the values for Facebook (there were no META keywords); and, when I reviewed LinkedIn, there was no META description/keywords at all. After this investigation, I figured it might be a question best addressed to the SEO community. With that, what do you guys think? If you were building a social media site, would you have META description + META keywords for each user's profile? If so, what would be the best way to optimize the individual profiles so they rank highly within the search engines?
Branding | | NiallSmith0