To come up with unique Domains for each of these sites, we first have to devise unique product brands for each line of product that we break out as a separate site - we have multiple lines of product that currently fall under a single corporate brand

From a branding standpoint, I’m concerned we may well dilute and undermine our Parent/Corporate Brand in the process (which is established and known by name).

After doing all that, the new domain names will likely be longer and harder to remember than our current site URL.

So my question is, has anyone seen this approach (splitting a larger site into smaller, interconnected sites) work? Did it hurt, help, or was it a wash?

I think that I was heading down the “doorway pages” path until I read these comments!

I have been asked to take over and promote a site relating to solar installations. The problem is that the domain name does not really have huge relevancy to the product. So I jumped in a bought a few new domains that combined the word solar and local place names.

I then set up a one page site on one of these and left it for a while to see what would happen. Sure enough, if I now type in a search that includes the word solar and the place name, that site is right up there on the front page. And from my experience many people tend to search for products in this way so I am thinking that these new domains will be far more successful than the more obscure original.

So I thought that I would just use these domains to point to the lower PR main page, but having read all the comments I am now unsure that this is the right thing to do. It is not really a case of misdirection as the search is a very specific one and leads the searcher to the very product that they were looking for, but will the likes of Google see it this way?

So now I am stuck, do I just loose the old site, maybe putting a redirect (301) on that one and focus on one of the new domains, or would it be OK to put a few pages of relevant information on each of the new domains and a link to the main site which is only traversed should the visitor wish to do so? I.E. no automatic redirection.

Any suggestions of a reasonable solution for this dilemma would be well received!

Many thanks,

Mark.

The .org.uk site is a blessing in disguise. I defintely would keep it for now, even if you have no need for it, as its higher SERP will help drive traffic to your main site via a hyperlink.

If the .org.uk site simply redirected to the main site, this is probably OK as long as the .org.uk has no PR. If it has PR, then it could lose it from just being a redirect, and thus its SERP would diminish.

The real question here is why does the secondary site have a better SERP on your main keywords than the main site? Try to look at the following:

(1) Keyword Density - should be about 3-7% for each META phrase. DO NOT OVERSTUFF YOUR CONTENT WITH META PHRASES. It is critical that your content looks natural to the GoogleBot.

(2) H1 and H2 tags - these are important, and should reflect most of your META phrases once. If you don’t like how they look (too chunky), use CSS to modify them.

(3) META Description - It should be 2-3 sentences at most, and should reflect most of your META phrases once or twice.

(4) HTML Title - This should reflect ALL of your META phrases at least once, no matter how silly it reads.

(5) HTML Comment - This should reflect most of your META phrases at least once.

Compare the .org.uk site with the main site on the above points. You may find that you inadvertently handled them better in the .org.uk site. If you can bring the main site up to the same standards, you may be able to dispense with the .org.uk site due to improvement in the main site’s SERP.

I’m a real SEO novice but have, in the past, had what I thought was decent advice that I’ve tried to put into practise.

Anyway, I have two domains. The main one is a .org, while the secondary one is .org.uk

The secondary domain is just a page of different descriptive content that then has links to the main, bigger site.

I only have this extra site because I was told that I needed an active domain with “uk” in the name so google/users knew we are uk based.

The secondary site is always listed before my main site on Google.

My questions is…

Do i really need the secondary domain and page or shoud I just use the address as a re-direct to the main site? I’d prefer to do this to avoid have two sites showing up on Google and perhaps confusing me. I’d also prefer not to make the .org.uk the main domain.

Any help would be really appreciated.

Thanks.
R

He wants a single page website built for each of the 100, with content relevant to the domain name, and have them each point to the Contact page of the main “birds.com”.

As well, each will have general info on “birds.com”, the main site, and have a link to the specific page “birds.com/white-birds” that also deals with the subject presented in “white-birds.com”.
Still with me?

Will all these 100 domains negatively affect the high ranking of “birds.com”?
(He’s not interested in achieving high rankings for the individual sites, just wants to secure the domains over his competition, provide some info, but promote his main site, and ultimately keep me bu$y for quite some time!)

Appreciate your thoughts on this.
Cheers,
Jay

I do know that Google tends to depreciate the value of pages that link in to a given page, where the content of the former are all identical or at least very similar.

Now, this does not address the issue of whether or not multiple similar destination pages are an issue. This does of course multiply the amount of work you need to do to get each of them highly ranked (i.e., it’s easier to optimize one site than many), but it may have no impact on how much work is required per site.

In short, the “similarity” issue applies to the pages linking in, not the pages being linked to.

Stu