Sub domains or micro sites

[danielparry]

Hi All

I am setting up a series of affiliate sites; each site will focus on 1 category of product and there will be no cross over (i.e. no 2 sites will promote the same type of product). I'm setting up approximately 40 and they will all share the same domain: product followed by brand name.co.uk.

Because of the numbers I intend to get a dedicated server and create a 'parent' website which I was going to use as a blog to promote the individual sites.

My question is: should I set them up as micro sites, or should I set them up as sub domains? Wanted to know which is the best method from an SEO point of view as all sites will be hosted and owned collectively so I appreciate that the link building between each site will be limited.

Thanks!

[danielparry]

Thanks EGOL...much appreciated.

[EGOL]

I used to have lots of little sites.  Lots of them.

Then I built a big site and it beat all of the little sites and almost every one of their competitors. Traffic went up.  Sales went up.  Average shopping cart size went up.  Profits were higher.

When people land on a little site that sells brass widgets they might like what you have.  But if they land on a big site that has that same information about 50 different widget it is a lot more impressive.  They really know that you are in the business.  They don't get that with a hotdog stand site.

Lots of people believe that they should have a large number of sites because they believe that it will produce a "linking scheme" that will give them an advantage.  It doesn't.  If you can get 500 links it is better to have all 500 pointing at a big site than 10 pointing to each of fifty sites.

That's my two cents.

[danielparry]

Hi

Thanks for that - a very interesting idea indeed. Sometimes it requires a fresh perspective to see the wood for the trees. My only concern is that with our proposed structure we were planning on using the primary search term in the domain name of each site. It might not have much of an impact but we were working on the assumption that every little bit helps. So for example we might create a site talking about keyword and the domain would be keyword(our company).co.uk. In that respect we were thinking that with it talking specifically about a keyword / product and having that in the url would help.

Once again thanks for your thoughts.

Daniel

[EGOL]

If I had a project like this I would make one big asskicking site.

In my opinion, that will be better for SEO, better for cross-selling and better for efficient use of your time.