Wildly different topics on one domain? (hobby blogger)
-
Hello Mozzers,
Let's say I have a lot of knowledge about a range of different subjects, for example:
-
bicycle maintenance
-
wildlife photography
-
tennis racket re-stringing
-
brewing beer
-
windsurfing holidays
I would like to share all of my knowledge in blog format with lots of good content, instructions, videos etc.
What is the best way to set up my blogging empire?!...
a) Use separate domains for each subject:
www.BRANDbicyclemaintenance.com, www.BRANDbrewingbeer.com
b) Use one brand domain with sub directories:
www.BRAND.com/bicycle-maintenance/, www.BRAND.com/brewing-beer/
b) Use sub-domains:
bicyclemaintenance.BRAND.com, brewingbeer.BRAND.com
(I would like to achieve good rankings & traffic in order to generate a small income from these sites)
-
-
Reading your list of possible topics.....
-
bicycle maintenance
-
wildlife photography
-
tennis racket re-stringing
-
brewing beer
-
windsurfing holidays
I would register a domain like FunHog.com and attack.
-
-
I was thinking about this a bit myself recently.. I can see a few advantages to both options.
Advantages of the all in one approach:
Inbound links you get will benefit all your blogs.
If you get a link to a post about brewing beer, then a certain amount of the juice will be passed around the domain which will contribute towards ranking the rest of your content. Over time, as links amass, the DA of this all-in-one blog will be higher than that of the individual blog sites.
I'm not sure how you do it, but I would also find one site far easier to manage than juggling 5 or so of them.
Advantages of having separate domains:
All other things equal, then right off the bat **www.BRANDbicyclemaintenance.com will outrank **www.BRAND.com/bicycle-maintenance. ****The exact match domain and consistency of hyperlink anchor text within the site is likely to give you a headstart in the SERPs over the all-in-one domain.
If it was me I'd go with the all-in-one, on the basis that inbound links are harder to get than exact-match-domains - which you can always buy later. That said, I'd be really interested to hear from anyone with more experience doing this.
-
A couple of questions first:
You mention "BRAND" in all the examples. What is this Brand, how does it relate to the topics covered and what's it meant to mean to people? Why should they care? What's going to tie it together across all these disparate topics? Is there a common theme/view across all of these subject.
While they may all be very different, if the blogs are about your insights, you experience then maybe they deserve to be under one banner.
Do any of the topics you want to cover share the same audience?
If you want to achieve good rankings, then the key really is to write good quality content that people are going to want to read/share/link to. Creating this content takes time. Seriously think about how much time you have available, not just for writing, but research and promotion (guest blogging etc.)
Can you afford to spend the time required across all of these topics? Would it be better to focus on one and build that first. It's easier to write about something you absolutely love. To which topics can you bring new insights, unique point of view etc?
Think also about your return on investment - what's likely to give you a better return? One totally kick-ass, blog or lots of weaker ones.
What do you want to mean to the world. Do you want to be known as the go-to guy for "cycle maintenance?"
My suggestion again is to think about how you want to be perceived and then do whatever you need to do to be that person - but clearly set out your goals first. (Don't stop at "write blogs, make money")
You don't say what your background is, or if you've been blogging before or how much success you've had in the past, so I hope this helps.
Obviously there's a lot to consider, by my guy feeling would be to go with separate blogs on separate domains and give them each an appropriate/unique personality/look. The more blogs you create - the more you're diluting your attention.
Good luck!
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
-
Domain Change
What is the average organic traffic loss one can expect after switching to a new domain? We went from .com to .org and are seeing 50% decline in organic traffic and 25% in Google news traffic. 301s were implemented from site.com/some-page to site.org/some-page and change site was completed in WMT. This traffic drop seems excessive...
Technical SEO | | SoulSurfer80 -
Sub Domain Redirect
Hey Everyone, Here is the situation : Currently, a website's sub domain is being redirected to the main website home page. We're having issues getting the sub domain pages indexed. Just want to confirm that it is because of the redirect on the sub domain URL. Should we kill the sub domain redirect and set it up as it's own page? Will that solve the indexing issue for the sub domain pages. More explanation below: subdomain.domain.com currently redirects to domain.com We're having issues indexing pages belonging to the sub domain ( subdomain.url.com/page1 or subdomain.url.com/page2) Appreciate your input in advance. Cheers,
Technical SEO | | SEO5Team0 -
Parked domain is first in search results
We have several brand related domains which are parked and pointing to our main website. Some of these websites are redirecting using a 302 (don't ask, that's a whole other story), but these are being changed. But it shouldn't matter what type of redirect they are no? Since there has never been any traffic and they are not indexed? But it seems that one of them was indexed: exotravel.vn. A search for our brand name or the previous brand name (exotravel and exotissimo) brings up this parked domain first! How can that be? The domain has never been used and has no backlinks. exotravel.vn is redirecting and I submitted a change of address weeks ago to Google, but its still coming up first in all brand name searches for exotissimo or exotravel.
Technical SEO | | Exotissimo0 -
Registering expired domains
Hi there, I've found a good domain that is available for a new project. It has been expired for about 4 months or so. It has a couple of links, with the domain name as an anchor, nothing horrible. Will buying a domain like this be safe from an seo perspective? I'm guessing it would be treated the same as buying a new domain that has never been registered before, Would I be right? Peter
Technical SEO | | PeterM220 -
One Keyword Penalty
Hi There, Quick question for everyone. Is it possible to get penalized a keyword level not page level. I have a site that only seems to be penalized on one keyword which is currently at page 22, whilst the rest are on page 1 or page 2. I came to the site late so I have no idea when the site lost its ranking for this keyword after a site redesign but the onpage is almost the same. Kind Regards Neil
Technical SEO | | nezona0 -
Campaigns Domain and Subdomain... ?
I made two separate campaigns before I understood the meaning of "subdomain". I make one campaign for my www.com and another for my .com. I now realize I should have made the .com the domain and the www. the subdomain in the same campaign. Is there a way to edit this? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | musicforkids0 -
Issue with .uk.com domain
hi i have rockshore.uk.com which is not indexing properly. the internal pages do not show up for the text they have on them, or the title tags. the site is on aekmps shops platform. I understand that a .uk.com is not a proper TLD but i think i have a subdomain of .uk.com Can anyone help? thanks
Technical SEO | | Turkey0 -
When should you turn off redirects to your new domain?
Our website moved to a new domain a year ago, and we have our original domain to redirect to our new domain. We're working on contacting people who still link to our old domain to ask them to update, but 7% of our traffic is still coming as a redirect from our old domain. My question is, when should we just shut the old domain down entirely and stop redirecting people to our new domain? Or should we just keep it up indefinitely? What would be the positive or negative impact on our new domain's SEO if we shut the old domain down? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | UWPCE0