When Should Site Sections Be Separate Sites Options

[kookee]

I'm just about to launch a new site. It should really be 3 site but the client talked me into making in one or the deal was off. It's for private sales of cars, property and boats. It also has a business directory for each section. The sections are in sud-directories rather than domains for easy maintenance.

I don't really have any spesific question other than is this a dumb setup?
Should I talk the client into separating this into 3 sites (It would be quite easy as I would clone it 3 times then delete 2 sections)?
Can it work as it is?
Will SEOing it be a nightmare?
Any suggestions?

[torka]

Search engines rank and list pages, not sites. There is no reason why every page on a site has to be "about" the same topic; there's nothing wrong with having pages or entire sections covering all sorts of different stuff. Amazon.com doesn't just sell one thing, and they seem to do okay.

You can SEO a three-section website just fine. In fact, it should be a little easier, since links you get pointing to a common home page can potentially help all three sections, rather than having to build out links for three separate websites.

--Torka (IMG:style_emoticons/default/mf_prop.gif)

[kookee]

Search engines rank and list pages, not sites. There is no reason why every page on a site has to be "about" the same topic; there's nothing wrong with having pages or entire sections covering all sorts of different stuff. Amazon.com doesn't just sell one thing, and they seem to do okay.

You can SEO a three-section website just fine. In fact, it should be a little easier, since links you get pointing to a common home page can potentially help all three sections, rather than having to build out links for three separate websites.

--Torka (IMG:style_emoticons/default/mf_prop.gif)

Thanks torka.

Also I hope when someone buys and sells from one section and in the future wants to buy or sell something from another section they'll remember the site.
I also imagine the domain as a whole will get a nice spreed of back links rather than just the home page.

Right time to put on the link building hat!

[Michael Martinez]

Unless each site could establish its own brand value, you're probably better off keeping the client's site to one site anyway.

My rule of thumb is that if a sub-section could really stand on its own -- I mean, draws traffic that is not interested in the rest of the site, or attracts links that don't support the rest of the site in any way -- then the sub-section has brand value that can be optimized outside of search by hosting on its own domain.

Looking forward to determine which sub-sections may develop such brand value is a challenge when you're launching a new site, but if your marketing strategy does call for building several brands, then separate sites can make a lot of sense. If your marketing strategy calls for building only one brand, I think it would be better to let nature takes its course and wait.

A single site is usually easier to promote than multiple sites. In many cases you'll have fewer maintenance issues with a single site versus multiple sites.

[nethy]

Search engines rank and list pages, not sites.

sure?

[torka]

sure?

Yes. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Longer answer:

When you click on a link in a search result, don't you go to a page within a site? At least, that's what happens when I click on a link in the search results. Which means search engines rank pages, not sites. I'm not even sure how one would click on or visit an entire website at once anyway (at least, using current browser technology) -- barring it being a one-page site, of course. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink1.gif)

If search engines ranked sites, not pages, there would never be any need for a second page from the site to be listed in the SERPs. In fact, there couldn't be a second page listed, because the second page is part of the site, and since the site would already be listed in the results, there would be nothing to show for the second listing.

And yet, we see second pages with those indented listings in the SERPs all the time. Because SEs rank and list pages, not sites.

In my experience, it seems SEs don't even really care much about "sites" per se -- or at least, not about "sites" as we humans perceive them. Domains, yes. "Sites," not so much. See, I would think before they can care about "sites" they need to be able to define what a site is... which isn't as easy a proposition as it might sound. I mean, give it a try. "Site" is like Justice Stewart said about pornography: it's hard to define, but you know it when you see it.

Seriously. Try to write a definition of a "website" that would be useful to a SE engineer trying to write an algorithm to rank sites, not pages.

Because what are you going to use as the criteria to separate "site" from "not-site"?

A site isn't necessarily pages on the same domain. A single site can be made up of multiple domains; there can be multiple sites housed on a single domain.

And a site isn't pages that share the same page layout. There are plenty of template-driven pages out there that use a common template but have nothing to do with each other. And there are plenty of sites out there where individual pages have very different layouts from each other.

The pages of a site don't even have to use any common coding, or reside on the same server, or have the same IP address, or use the same back-end technology.

You can try to use linking patterns to identify "site" versus "not-site." But it isn't as easy as just looking at the links on a page. Just because two pages link to each other, this doesn't mean they're part of the same site. And just because two pages don't link to each other, it doesn't mean they're on separate sites.

If you get sophisticated enough with your link analysis, you could probably get it right about 90% of the time, but it would take a lot of computing resources and wouldn't gain the SEs much in terms of ranking accuracy that they don't already get simply by analyzing links on a page-by-page basis. My gut feel is that the cost-benefit analysis doesn't come out in favor of trying to sort out what a "site" is, so they work with "domains" and "pages," both of which are much easier and more concrete concepts.

And I know this because I've worked every day for nearly five years now with a "site" that's made up of pages on four different domains (used to be three, but we recently added a fourth -- long story, business & technical reasons) -- plus a standalone "mini site" that interlinks extensively with the "mega site" but is a distinct and separate entity. The four domains are housed on two different servers, one IIS, one Apache, physically located in two different states, and have four different IP addresses. (The mini site resides on the Apache server and has its own IP address.) The pages themselves are written in asp.NET, "regular" ASP, PHP and plain-old HTML/Javascript using at least five different templates (that all result in an identical look and feel when rendered by a browser).

On the back end, looking at the code and the IP addresses and the underlying technology, there's very little to tell a search engine that what you're dealing with is a single site. And in five years, the SEs haven't apparently managed to figure it out, because they still treat the four different domains as, well, different domains, not as parts of a larger site. And yet, to a human visitor, all together they're obviously a "site."

It's a pretty neat laboratory/playground. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

--Torka (IMG:style_emoticons/default/mf_prop.gif)

[benc007]

Hi Torka

How to you do analyze linking patterns? Are there link analysis tools that you can recommend?

[torka]

Personally? I generally don't. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) I don't have a need to do in-depth analysis of linking patterns across broad areas of the web. The search engines do, but I'm not a search engine. I suspect each of them have written their own proprietary application to handle the task, taking into account whatever factors they have decided are important.

The closest I generally get to link pattern analysis is when I review a single site's navigational architecture for a usability analysis. And then the main tools I use are my own eyes and brain. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smartass.gif)

--Torka (IMG:style_emoticons/default/mf_prop.gif)

[ellenthompson]

I'm not sure about the SEO answer and without doing A/B testing I wouldn't dare venture to guess...but I wonder how conversions are affected by having one site. To the end user, it doesn't look like there is a specialization. I would want to buy my boat from a boat guy, not a person who sells vehicles.

[johnsantangelo]

I personally hate the niche site or micro site unless for very specific reasons (social media, guerilla media reasons most likely). A strong domain is better than three separate domains fragmenting inbound links.

There was a great article on marketing sherpa called Microsites Unite! How to combine sites while boosting search traffic.. something like that, although I think you have to be paid member to get access to it now.

Anyway, that's just my (strongly held) opinion.

[torka]

I'm not sure about the SEO answer and without doing A/B testing I wouldn't dare venture to guess...but I wonder how conversions are affected by having one site. To the end user, it doesn't look like there is a specialization.

I dunno... lack of "specialization" doesn't seem to have hurt Amazon, eBay or Wal*Mart all that much. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

There are a lot of factors that affect conversions and about the only way you can know for sure what would/could make the difference for your market would be to test it for yourself. But I think in general it's not so much being a specialist as it is being perceived as being authoritative and credible, although that will vary depending on what specifically you sell and to whom you're selling it.

--Torka (IMG:style_emoticons/default/mf_prop.gif)