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
-
Looking to hire an SEO/Reputation manager
We are looking to hire an SEO/reputation manager or firm to complement our existing marketing efforts. The goal is to take up the front page of Google on 3 branded keywords. We will create the content but need someone to come up with the strategy on what content to create, where to post it and how to link to get it moved to the front page of Google. We went through MOZ's recommended list of service providers but would rather work with an individual freelancer than a large SEO company. Please advice where we can find such consultant or email vitaly@newpeakmedia.com to apply. Include your experience and some samples of projects you have worked on. ################## UPDATE ################# Here's the keywords' difficulty based on MOZ's serp analysis tool and top 10 ranking pages for the first term http://i.imgur.com/zqktjuU.jpg http://i.imgur.com/LB7i4yz.jpg
Branding | | vmotuz0 -
Is .com.sg or .sg a better for SEO?
Hi all, Is .com.sg or .sg a better option?
Branding | | chanel27
And also which can have a better advantage in terms of SEO ranking?0 -
Doing two Google Local Listings for the Same Business
So I have a question. I'm working on an auto dealer's website and we're trying to gear their service center toward the general public (rather than just one brand - IE Honda, GMC, Buick). We have created a subdomain for the service page, and I was wondering if we could create a unique Google Plus page for it, in an effort to help its rank. Since the auto service center is on site at the dealership, I did not know if this would hurt us. Does anyone have experience dealing with this issue? Thank you!
Branding | | OOMDODigital0 -
Marketing for a new alternative solution (general keywords) and for it to show up under specific keyword searches
Hi Moz Community! I've run into a marketing dilemma for one of our customers that we provide SEO and internet marketing services to. Therefore, I need the help of you clever people! The company is a high-tech innovative biotechnology company, so instead of using their product as an example which might be confusing, I will represent the problem with "DVDs" and a new technology similar to Netflix. Customer wants to buy 500 Days of Summer DVD online and isn't aware of the new technology called 'Netflix' where we can stream it online instead of ordering it online. Netflix marketing team wants their website to show up alongside search results so when people search for 'buy 500 Days of Summer DVD', you will see Amazon, blah blah and at some point also see 'Netflix: Stream Instantly Online!' What is the best way to approach this? Micro (macro) site? Can I target 'DVD' and make the microsite use a direct match? Do I have to create a page for every single popular DVD in order for it to effectively rank? Any other clever solutions to this problem? Thanks everyone! Sheldon
Branding | | swzhai0 -
Can anyone advice us on how we can improve on our SEO ranking?
Hi, We are the leading home cleaning and maintenance company in Singapore. We are trying our best to go online to expand our business. The thing is we are weak in internet marketing and we need to get some traffic to our website. Can expert advice us on how we can improve on our Google ranking? Our site:
Branding | | chanel27
http://www.absolutesolutions.com.sg0 -
Content Marketing for E-Commerce Sites
Let's have a real discussion about content marketing for B2B and B2C e-commerce sites. As an SEO/inbound marketer (these days, I'm not sure what to call myself other than my first name), it's part of my job to keep a pulse on what's going on in the online marketing community. My daily routine starts with checking several sites for news/discussion (Moz, Inbound.org, SearchEngineLand, etc). Anyone actively involved in the community knows the word "content" appears in more articles than any other word (ok, maybe there a few others). Want to increase brand awareness? Generate content. Want to drive more traffic to your site? Generate content. Want to build quality links? Generate content. Want to discover the Higgs particle before the physicists? Generate content (and distribute to the right audience, so not to the chemists - ok maybe to the chemists, they're a related audience). Content, content, content, we're told! Yes I did see the Rand's WBF from a couple months back about content-less marketing, but frankly his suggestions fall under the traditional model of advertising and word-of-mouth. We're online marketers baby, we're expanding and changing the traditional model - with content! Enough of content marketing about content marketing. Let's see some content marketing for the small B2C, mom n' pop client who sells gardening tools. Let's see the amazing infographic you made for your local pizzeria client that drove traffic to their site. Let's see the Q+A discussion thread you identified and contributed to as means to display 'market leadership' in your niche of home air purifiers. Look, I love the idea of content marketing to increase brand awareness and drive traffic. Displaying market leadership by answering questions and offering something beneficial to your target audience should be the way to grow business (along with having a good product/service, I guess). But it's much easier said than done. And to be clear, I never expected otherwise. The motivation for this post was to start a discussion about real-world, applied content marketing, not content marketing about content marketing. Let the conversation begin.
Branding | | b40040400 -
Do you think my simple design website reflects my product better or worse?
Its been suggested my holiday cottage letting website maybe could do with a professional polish up and maybe restructure and navigation and if it would improve bookings I wouldn't hesitate. My only thought pattern is that this particular website is certainly not high-tech (this website was designed by me in Dreamweaver) I have a great guy working for me which is much better web design than me and technically more capable of producing a professional standard website, but with this new sideline I'm presently a small home-based company currently only letting eight old cottages. My thinking was keep the website simple, personal and homely for the moment. http://www.endeavourcottage.co.uk/ The website tends to be competing against large agencies which have often hundreds of properties on their books and you have to go through their filtering system to find the small number of properties that might be of interest. I can see that if I was selling large quantities of electrical equipment or something similar you just in a very polished well-designed website. The feedback I get from customers is that like the website and they like to know they can get hold of the person behind it. Which direction would you go? polished professional company styled WordPress website or simple design website with lots of pictures and descriptions. If I ever hit the big time and have hundreds of cottages I would have to join the design and more complicated navigation of the other agencies websites but whilst I’m small maybe not? Thanks for reading Alan
Branding | | whitbycottages0 -
How do you get reviews from a local review site to show up in Places?
Does anyone have any experience with getting a local review site to show up when it is turning out tens of thousands of reviews on local companies in one specific industry (no not restaurants) (Insurance agents, etc.)? Is there a submission process for Google? Thanks mozzers
Branding | | RobertFisher0