Multiple domains vs. Single domain
-
I've been reading up on this subject, but I still can't clearly decide which is better. Your insights will help me a lot.
I work for a client with 1 powerful corporate website and many small dedicated websites to individual projects. Which strategy would I focus on? The powerful corporate or the small individual websites?
As I see it:
Which is better?
- One powerful domain with lots of pages dedicated to a single subject
- PRO: more inbound links, more pages, sometimes URL exact match
- CON: less focused on a single 'theme'
- Different domains dedicated to different subjects
- PRO: more focus per domain to a subject
- CON: less inbound links, less pages... less power
Thanks in advance.
- One powerful domain with lots of pages dedicated to a single subject
-
That's great! I'd love to see how your campaign progresses. Keep me in the loop!
-
Thanks for taking the time to respond Josh.
I think you've summed it up nicely - and therefore helped me made up my mind (at last)
-
Hi Partouter,
I prefer option #1, "a single powerful domain" for a few reasons:
- It's always easier to pass link juice from an authoritative top level domain than it is to drum it up from scratch. With good site-architecture you can achieve faster indexing results with landing pages organized by topic/category.
- Consolidating all of your content under one website helps reinforce your brand over time. It's better to be an information hub for your audience than it is to capture traffic from a bunch of fragmented mini-sites.
- Search Engines crack down on folks who own a lot of interlinked domains that all speak about the same subject matter. It can be difficult to create unique subject matter for each of your microsites, unless your client is a corporate conglomerate like GE or Johnson & Johnson
Now, personally, I have used smaller, niche sites to rank for long-tail searches. But I only took this approach when my client has a legitimate service or product that deserves this level of attention. This is more common with geo-targeted search terms (i.e. a product or service that is specific to Boston, MA; Los Angeles, CA; etc.)
Best of luck!
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
-
Image results Bing vs Google
I have a website with a number of images and I have optimized all of the images on both a file name and ALT text level, relevant to content on the page they are published on. I haven't created a separate image sitemap, but the strange thing is that Google has all of my images indexed and they can be found for the right keywords, but when I look in BING! images, there is no image indexed available at all ...
Image & Video Optimization | | ConclusionDigital0 -
Will it help/hinder our local seo by including our local adress on multiple pages?
We have a large website that targets the whole UK. It has landing pages for every town in the UK. For the towns that this particular business has a bricks and mortar hq, we have set up a local/places page. We then added the corresponding places adress to the appropriate town page on the website. This is just a handful compared to the 3,000,000 towns our site aims to rank for. Question: Would it help or hinder our SEO efforts to add the local addresses to other town pages in close proximity to the original? For instance say we have a places address for croydon in London. Would it hurt to add this address to pages that target towns near croydon, such as Mitcham. All opinions greatly appreciated. Cheers!
Image & Video Optimization | | Silkstream0 -
Places listings vs other ORGANIC listings
Not sure how to search for exactly the answer I'm looking for, because frankly my question (at least to me) is hard to describe. I will try my best, though! So I have a client who has an audiology business. They are located in Denver, CO. For search, we have them listed in the PLACES portion of the local search results (with the map, phone, address, etc). We saw this as a pretty big win, because its a fairly competitive market. HOWEVER, the client feels like those listings aren't as clicked on, or aren't as prominent as say, a regular organic listing that would have a page title, and description. I am assuming that isn't correct, that if I could only have 1 listing I'd want the PLACES one, but it occurred to me that this assumption isn't really based on any data I have personally read. So my question is two-fold. 1a. Is my assumption about being in PLACES accurate, that that listing is more desirable (even if I could pick which one to get, which i don't think is realistic) and 1b. Has anyone seen or have data that backs up my assertion one way or another. Would love your thoughts! William Smith @williamsmith
Image & Video Optimization | | AudigyGroupDigital0 -
Google + Local for client with no physical address and multiple phone nos
Hi I have a client who is service-based and goes out to his local customers' homes to conduct his business. He operates from home so does not want to show his home address, he also has a number of local telephone numbers that divert to his mobile. I was wondering which type of category to put his business into, my ideal would be local business but for that I need to add the address the question is can I still hide the address the way you used to in the old format or is there other recommendations to optimise his local placement?
Image & Video Optimization | | AllieMc0 -
Google Places in multiple languages
Hi how are you? I work with a big hostel network in South America. When i look for 'hostel (city)', some results from Google Places appear. The profile in Google Places is in english, but i searched it from google.com.ar. Is it possible to have Google Places' profile in several languages? Thanks! Best wishes, Ariel
Image & Video Optimization | | arielbortz0 -
Switching to a domain name with keywords in it, is it possible to make this happen smoothly?
Hello, We have been working on the SEO of our site for almost a year now, and we are still not really seeing the success we would like to see. I notice often we get outranked by other sites that have lower PA/DA/citations/reviews etc than us, and the only explaination i can find is that they are getting a boost for a Partial Keyword Match in the domain name. Right now our domain name is: http://www.storwell.com And we are considering switching to http://www.storwellselfstorage.com and of course 301 redirecting all the individual pages from the old domain to the new domain's pages. How much would we risk loosing out in this transition? Can we safely transfer domains, or do we risk loosing the majority of our PA & DA because the backlinks will point at redirects instead of the actual location? Has anyone successfully managed to transfer domains and keep their DA & PA?
Image & Video Optimization | | adriandg0 -
Google places - multiple clients
Is there any issue with adding multiple clients websites/locations to our Google Places account?
Image & Video Optimization | | cottamg0