One big site or lots of little sites? Which is better for SEO and my business in general?
-
I realize there are some aspects of what I'm asking that only I can answer. With that said, I'm looking for some discussion about the pros / cons of each, and what are the most important factors that will push me one way or another.
Let's say I have a company that has three products. One big brand, three little brands. Each of the little brands is focused on a particular sub-niche, all of which are in the general health & wellness niche.
-
Either, I could create a large site for the big brand, with subsections for each product, and work hard on turning that domain into a goto site, with lots of articles, etc. The domain name for this one would be a made up word so I can fully control the search results.
-
Or, another strategy would be to create smaller, "sniper" sites for each product, maybe even sites for each major search term that is interested in that product. These sites would have fewer articles. Descriptive, exact match domain names.
Which is the best strategy? #1, #2, or a mixture of both? #1 seems legitimate, #2 seems a bit spammy. What are the pros and cons to each? Can anyone speak from experience about both these practices?
-
-
Keywords in the domain name are not carrying as much value as they once did. (See the Matt Cutts video below).
The value you that you would get from having your keyword in the domain of a microniche is pretty small.
I think, if you had these two options:
MyMainSite/bodybuildingfortheelderly
...you could still rank the second one really well. And, any links you build to the second one would help the entire domain.
-
Hey.... what's wrong with body-building for the elderly?
I agree that in the long term a big kickass site will defeat a flock of hotdog stand websites.
-
The supposed advantage of different sites (I think) is that you can game the system to rank quickly for niche terms.
So, let's say I have a product that targets people searching for bodybuilding for the elderly (hypothetical, lol). I could register and quickly create a microsite at www.bodybuildingfortheelderly.com. Which is different, say, than claiming a unique brand name, say jubilados.com, and then pointing people to the bodybuilding for the elderly section on that site. I imagine doing the former would be quicker in the short term, and that doing the latter would be better long term.
Thoughts?
-
One big site ... what's the advantage of different sites? if you want to make "microsites" or special promotions, you can go with directories, but keep your backlinks together on one single site. Optimize different pages for different terms, keep your internal linking straight, and if you can constantly do something for your linkbuilding, you're all set.
-
I definitely vote for one big site as well. I think every person has this idea that multiple sites will help because you will be able to crosslink them. But the juice you get from those cross links is less than the juice you would get from having all of your links pointing to one site.
I would have one main site and then have 3 folders within the site each with their own focus.
-
I vote for the one big site.
Which will rank better? One big site with 300 links or three little sites with 100 links each? My money is on the big site.
Which will be more linkable? One big site with a cluster of products or three hotdog stands with one product each?
Which will give you the opportunity of cross-selling and larger, more profitable sales? A big site with multiple products or three tiny sites with one product each?
Which will be more work and expense to run?
I used to have a cluster of little sites and then combined them into one big site... and that big site beat all of the smaller sites and all of their competitors.
-
#1 definitely, one big site is easier to optimise, promote and manage than a series of smaller sites.
with lots of smaller sites link building is a huge job where each link will only benefit the site it links too, where as 1 big site all links to it are going to benefit the domain as a whole.
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
-
Nofollow on Client Site
Hi, On our client sites we have a link in the footer that says the site is maintained and developed by my company. That link takes you to a page that has outbound links to our site. Should these links be nofollow, since in a way they are almost like sponsored links? I feel like I read that somewhere but I can't remember where. Any advice is appreciated! Thanks!
Branding | | AliMac260 -
Do review sites like consumer affairs negatively affect SERPs?
Hey all, So when googling the name of our site we see consumer affairs pop up around 5th with a 1 star rating. These negative reviews are mostly spammy (competitors, etc.) since we have an awesome support team that deals with all unhappy members very effectively. We reached out to CA and they came back asking for $10k+ (highway robbery) to "help us improve our rating." My question is: do poor ratings on review sites like these negatively affect your SERPs? And if so, how can we work to combat their effect? Thanks in advance, Roman
Branding | | Dynata_panel_marketing1 -
Outdated Videos and SEO
I was trying to find some helpful resources online on this topic and haven't really found anything substantial. What do people recommend to do with old, outdated videos on sites like YouTube and Vimeo. They show up in search, but some mention outdated products. However, is it best practice to remove everything older and outdated from Youtube, etc. or is it better to have these in your library (quantity over quality). If you add new ones and they get more views, in the long run people will focus on the newer content and probably not watch something 6 years old, but should we be removing them, too? I''m under pressure to remove them and I wanted to do some research before committing. We also started Google Plus after Youtube, so we now have two YouTubes (one empty one attached to our new G+ and one that's been established with a lot of videos - new and old). Would this be a good time to consolidate to one Youtube, migrating only the new stuff to the new YouTube and then slowly start removing the old YouTube channel? Thanks!
Branding | | QAD_ERP0 -
Shopping Experience Review Sites UK Market
Hi Have any UK members have experience of the various shopping review sites. I have an ecommerce site I would like to build trust in. I am aware of shopzilla, trustpilot, pricegrabber, Are there any more? Is any one recommended over oters? I checked out Trustpilot and it looks like it costs about £1600 per year basic which I thought was a bit pricey. Curious what experience promotors think and would recommend Thanks Steve
Branding | | StephenCallaghan0 -
1 Website, 2 Business Names, 2 Locations
I took on a dentist office as an SEO client. They have 1 website, 2 business names and 2 locations. Each location has it's own business name. They are both within the same city as well. I'm not exactly sure where to start with them since they have 2 different business names. If it were 1 name with multiple locations I would just create a Contact Us page for each one, but is that the best thing to do when the location names are different? Should I create a different website for each location or is that smart because then they are competing against each other? Any help from the community on the direction I should take would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!
Branding | | SilhouetteBS0 -
Will new site have any effect on main site ?
Hi, We have a successful ecommerce site at www.printerbase.co.uk but we are now branching out and will soon be offering services which we are going to do through a different website with a possible URL of something like www.printerbasesolutions.co.uk so my question is, will having two websites containing the word printerbase have any negative effect on the ranking of www.printerbase.co.uk or would we be better having a completely different URL? The new site is not going to have any ecommerce functionality it is going to be more about offering the services we can give to clients and encouraging them to get in contact with us. Thanks BigJoe
Branding | | BigJoe0 -
Do non-spammy authoritative press release sites exist?
Hi there, To help get news out about our business and increase brand awareness, I am considering doing the occasional press release. However doing research on new SEO client backlinks there seem to be a lot of poor quality, spammy press release sites. So I would appreciate some opinions on decent sites please. Obviously we wouldn't be 'article marketing' so only new unique posts would be put out there and not in duplicates either - so one press release to one site etc. Also just curious as to whether this still works for SEO? But this is a secondary concern, because the activity would be for brand awareness - so avoiding rubbish sites will save us time, effort and potential damage. Thanks in advance!
Branding | | Nobody15609869897230