16 replies to this topic

[wguttrid]

Hi everyone, hope the holidays treated everyone well.

Have a question I am curious on.

Is it better to break a niche site into smaller niche sites themself? Example, if you have a site selling widgets that sells blue widgets and green widgets is it better to keep the main site or to set up two different sites? one that would concentrate on blue widgets and the other green widgets?

Or to futher explain, if someone wanted to sell garden supplies and at first starts off selling garden hoses and then after some time starts selling shovels, and then even futher down the road starts selling rakes and so on so forth as there inventory builds up.

Is it better to start with the a garden hose site and as you learn and grow just to open up additional online stores? Or would it be best to start with a main store and add inventory to that one site as you grow???

[chrishirst]

One main store, add inventory as available


One site to maintain, one site to promote

[nethy]

No answer to this question. It's all in the details.

Here is an analogy:

Your local supermarket owner decided to go into 'garden supplies'.

- Should she put it in the normal supermarket as a dedicated isle?
- Should she build it as a seperate 'store' with its own entrance, exit & checkout?
- Should she start it nearby as a wholly owned, jointly branded subsidiary?
- Should she convert a part of her parking lot on off-peak days to a bazaar style garden supplies market?
- .........see where I'm going with this?

The best approach:

Unfortunately, this is not (IMO) the type of question you can hope to get a coherent answer for in a forum. There is no 'right way of going into an online business,' even right in terms of seo. So noone can tell you what it is. The best option depends on the effect these desicions have on your site's conversion rates, the likelihood of aquiring natural links, customer loyalty and many other things that we cannot predict or even begin to speculate about. These desicions all indirectly affect these things depending on the micro-details of their implementation.

The advice you can (and is good to) get

You may be able to get input on important aspects & issues relating to a specific strategies that you are taking. You may get a sobering flood of responses advising against a strategy which is reliant on a false, mythical or overestimated premises. (this latter is something of a specialty around here and it can be very valuable. But you cannot get an answer to this question any more then your supermarket owner can get an answer to his question

[ronfrank]

I would like to add a dimension to this question that I was thinking about. Wouldn't it be best to build a website that offers all your products, and also build the mini sites around individual products that linked to the main site? It seems like that would solve the problem of deciding either / or and also help with niche focusing and linking.

That said, I don't really know what I am doing and just trying to make sense of this seo stuff while building a website.

Ron

[Randy]

I would like to add a dimension to this question that I was thinking about. Wouldn't it be best to build a website that offers all your products, and also build the mini sites around individual products that linked to the main site? It seems like that would solve the problem of deciding either / or and also help with niche focusing and linking.

Not really much help Ron. The engines have gotten quite good at sorting out these types of things from analyzing linking structure as well as other things. So you'd end up having to spend the time and expend the effort to maintain multiple sites when a single site would often do just as well in the SERPs. Not to mention confusing the heck out of potential customers!

As nethy said, there's no single answer that works across the board. As a general rule I'd encourage going with one site, or as few as one can, when the driving force behind having multiple sites is some notion of what the search engines might do. It's simply a lot easier to handle from the site administration side of things, while also holding down real costs.

However there are times when multiple domains make more sense. Or to put it correctly, there are times when multiple domains make more sense from the user's perspective. In those somewhat rarer cases it's not only okay, but is necessary to bite the bullet and cause yourself some additional grief on the design and maintenance side of the equation.

The moral being if the main reason behind doing the multiple domain thing is anything to do with the search engines, drop that idea and do it all on one domain. If there are overriding business reasons to have the multiple domains, then figure out if it's worth the additional hassle to do so.

[wguttrid]

Hey guys thanks for the information. Think for myself I will stick with one site and add inventory as I go. As I am new to this think I will have an easier time managing one site as well as doing all the SEO for one site. Also hoping that a customer might see something else on the one site and make an additional purchase that he would not have been able to make if I had multiple sites!

Thanks again, seems for every question I have I think of a couple more. lol.... Another item I can add to my plan and close off though about the mulitple versus one site.

[Jill]

Wouldn't it be best to build a website that offers all your products, and also build the mini sites around individual products that linked to the main site?

Mini sites

[piskie]

One site unless there are unnusual and compelling reasons to do otherwise.

With all the wide ranging products they do, just magine how many sites Amazon would have evolved into.

[nethy]

Mini sites

That is not very nce Jill.

Mini sites, sub-sites etc. can be very useful. They can be better for users. They can be better for rankings. Generally speaking, mini websites can be good for particular products which arereally of interst to different people.

On the conversion rate side of things, mini-sites can be excellent at simplifying and achieving decent conversion rates without working too hard at it (a compromise you sometimes have to make).

Would you refuse to consider a 'HR training' mini site in with checklists, guide-sheets (the 10 dos & 1000 don't of SEO), tools, an e-learning system, trainer booking system and whatever else you are going to need when you are trying to manage 18 month SEO training programs specifically tailored to th 600 (20-50 employees each) new clients you are going to be involved with in 2008.

It's not really mini - but I guess you get my drift. HRtraining.com or training.highrankings.com is likely to rank higher then HR for seo training stuff.

On the conversion side (stick to the mantra- only conversions matter), you don't think that the mini-site might do a good job of selling Madam Whalen's school of SEO (for criminal brittish boys)?

[kjonas]

Hi everyone, hope the holidays treated everyone well.

Have a question I am curious on.

Is it better to break a niche site into smaller niche sites themself? Example, if you have a site selling widgets that sells blue widgets and green widgets is it better to keep the main site or to set up two different sites? one that would concentrate on blue widgets and the other green widgets?

Or to futher explain, if someone wanted to sell garden supplies and at first starts off selling garden hoses and then after some time starts selling shovels, and then even futher down the road starts selling rakes and so on so forth as there inventory builds up.

Is it better to start with the a garden hose site and as you learn and grow just to open up additional online stores? Or would it be best to start with a main store and add inventory to that one site as you grow???

I had the same Idea about my site as you are having with yours.
I thought about splitting up my site up into mini nitch sites but I noticed something. People were purchasing across product categories and if I split up my site into mini categories I would loose those extra sales.
I am now looking at my profitable categories and adding products that those customers are likely to purchase also.

[Jill]

HRtraining.com or training.highrankings.com is likely to rank higher then HR for seo training stuff.

What makes you say that?

IMO, it would have exactly the same chance of ranking...actually it would have less chance because the domain has no authority or age.

[nethy]

You would need to build up the 'mini-site's authority over time. That's true. But in a couple of years...

But the fact that it is a site. With a 'home page' & links to it carries some weight. It would also be more relevant.

HRtraining.com is not the best example because it's not really an independant sub-category. You need the HR main site & forum to demonstrate credibility to sell corporate training (or atr the least, I'm sure it helps).

But in many circumstances a sub site is more relevant & focused. it does better in rankings & in conversions because of that. Often its not. I have no problem with super-sites. But I have no problem with minis either. Each has its uses.

[Jill]

Nethy, what you're saying presupposes that the search engines do some sort of "theming." Personally, I don't believe they do, although Ask may to a certain extent.

[Kelly]

I had basically the same question a few years back, and it is better to put both sites under one domain. When I added the second site/domain, I went through the aging delay and it took quite a while for the site to bring the top listings. I thought that having another site linking to my site (cross linking) would be of benefit, not sure that helped at all.

I had already put up the site before I checked here, and they told me one site would be best... after having gone through it, I have to agree. Not sure how much revenue I lost waiting for better listings, but I am sure it substantial!

If I had to do it all over again, or have the need again, it will go under the main site, not a new site.

Take my advice for what it is worth... keep it on the same domain if it is related, do not make the same mistake as I did.

Kelly

[nethy]

Nethy, what you're saying presupposes that the search engines do some sort of "theming." Personally, I don't believe they do, although Ask may to a certain extent.

That's true. I believe that SEs do not view pages as entirely independant. I think that their definition of a 'site' or a 'web' is probably quite complex. But identifying sites as a component of the net is, I believe, something the engines have all done. At the least, they use this knowledge to exclude pages (indented, sitelinks, ommission of multiple results from one site in a way that does not identify the pages as part of a unit...)

To some extent though, increased relevance/popuylarity of main page(s) of a sub-site occurs 'naturally'. Listings (directories, blogroles, resource lists, bibliographies etc.) of sites/resources often list a site's main page. Often this is in context (anchor text juice 2.0). Also, the site's internal navigation will place a few pages and the home page prominantly.

You could say that these are not direct or required consequences of a 'sub-site' but... they are likely eventual consequences for conventional sites.

I want to note that this is not 'gaming' the engines. I think that a searcher searching for 'SEO corporate training' or 'seo training' etc. (if many such searchers exist - I am not in that business) they will find a HRtraining.com more relevant (if it is a real site with Real Content, context & rlevance to their needs- needless to say) than a site containing an archive of general articles, a forum and some bits & pieces.

As I mentioned. this being such a problematic industry (sorry to say it but there it is, There are a lot of snake oil and call-you-at-home salesmen in this game), its not a good example because at the moment you proabably need highrankings.com for positioning & validation of claims.

But say you were a large general consultancy (like pwc or something) selling OH&S training or fire safety to similar clients.