2 replies to this topic

[KingOEPL]

Hi @Jill, @Michael Martinez, anyone:

My company has 15 domain names. 5 of them primarily used and make up the greater number of transactions. The multiple domain strategy began as a niche marketing strategy. Recently, we've been deciding on keeping this strategy or moving all products under one banner (website).

I have a 2 questions:

1) From a branding/business perspective, it makes sense to me that having all products under one banner will increase authority, loyalty, etc to the single brand. So, is it better to keep things the way they are or should we consolidate? The reason for this question is because some of our sites products overlap and therefore we rank more than once for several products on the first page. (All have unique IPs)

2) If we do consolidate all these products under one site, is 301 Redirects the way to go? or should we implement a URL rewriting strategy that keeps the old & legacy URLs and simply serves up the new site's content?*

* The second question is more important to me.

Thank you to anyone who doesn't mind taking the time to answer my questions. I really appreciate it.

[Jill]

This is not something that you can get a definitive answer to with the limited information available and on a free forum.

There are many factors that you need to look at and decide upon before any of us could just say, "sure, consolidate all your domains" or "it's fine to keep them all as is."

It's primarily a business decision on your part which will depend on many things, some search engine related and some perhaps not.


Regarding this:

2) If we do consolidate all these products under one site, is 301 Redirects the way to go? or should we implement a URL rewriting strategy that keeps the old & legacy URLs and simply serves up the new site's content?*

301's is always the way to go, imo.

[Schevikhoven]

Like Jill said, it's impossible to make a decision for you, but here is something you might want to consider:

Having many domains dedicated to a very small group of products keeps the page small and simple. I would call this a speciality webshop. In my opinion, having such a page is a good thing, as when someone is looking for that product you can offer him very relevant content without anything cluttering up the page.

Advertising offpage can be done effectively, in social medias like forums & facebook. When you write on a forum for drink reciepts compare advertising a general grocery offerin alcohol to a speciality shop offering just what the readers want.

For main purposes i would also make one big webshop / official webshop. This way when you buy expensive ads where you dont control what kind of people react to the advertisement, they are more likely to find what they want on your main store.

For business image i would just politely state the website is "a webshop from Give Me Money ECommerce Coroporation". Kind of let the customer know that the small website they visit is a part of a bigger company which happens to be tailored for their needs.

With more websites you can also do cross site advertising on your own sites and who knows what else.

The google rankings are also a good point. If you occupy 4 out of 10 rankings on the first page, then it must be better than 1 out of 10, eh?

So to sum up my opinion: Keep the niche sites, but make one big site which can be used as a main site and a general store for everything you sell.

-Willem