One site or five sites for geo targeted industry
-
OK I'm looking to try and generate traffic for people looking for accommodation. I'm a big believer in the quality of the domain being used for SEO both in terms of the direct benefit of it having KW in it but also the effect on CTR a good domain can have.
So I'm considering these options:
- Build a single site using the best, broad KW-rich domain I can get within my budget. This might be something like CheapestHotelsOnline.com
Advantages:
- Just one site to manage/design
- One site to SEO/market
- Better potential to resell the site for a few million bucks
- Build 5 sites, each catering to a different region using 5 matching domains within my budget. These might be domains like CheapHotelsEurope.com, CheapHotelsAsia.com etc
Advantages:
- Can use domains that are many times 'better' by adding a geo-qualifier. This should help with CTR and search
- Can be more targeted with SEO & Marketing
So hopefully you see the point. Is it worth the dilution of SEO & marketing activities to get the better domain names?
I'm chasing the longtail searchs whetever I do. So I'll be creating 5K+ pages each targeting a specific area. These would be pages like CheapestHotelsOnline.com/Europe/France/Paris or CheapHoteslEurope.com/France/Paris to target search terms targeting hotels in Paris
So with that thought, is SEO even 100% diluted?
Say, a link to the homepage of the first option would end up passing 1/5000th of value through to the Paris page. However a link to the second option would pass 1/1000th of the link juice through to the Paris page. So by thet logic, one only needs to do 1/5th of the work for each of the 5 sites ... that implies total SEO work would be the same?
Thanks as always for any help!
David
-
Any other thoughts - I'm leaning towards the 5 sites idea but perhaps I'm overestimating the importance of the domain?
Thanks!
-
Thank you Alan, I appreciate your kind words.
One valuable reason to answer questions is that whenever I have a question of my own folks like you and Steve O always put a little extra into answering.
-
"I shouldn't be telling this stuff."
LOL EGOL you know damn well that if weren't telling it, me or someone else would. Sure, we're fools for giving this info out for free when we could be charging thousands.
Yet you also know how enriching it is to give back what was freely given to us, or that we earned the hard way and now have within us to want to help just for its own sake.
And please - don't discount the true appreciation the rest of us who help out when we can here have for your contributions. You carry a lot of the burden in the Pro Q&A system.
-
Yes you should!
Thanks I appreciate it.
-
Lots of people think that they should build 25 sites to kickass on their competitor. Following that temptation will cause you to divide your time on a lot of projects that each will be puny against the competition.
Remember, SEO is like war and great generals know to divide the forces of their competitor and kickass on them one unit at a time with overwhelming force. Don't divide your forces for the enemy.
The best route is usually to put ALL of your effort into a single site in one niche. Then when that site becomes the #1 ranking dominant site in that niche you can think about a second site that will rule the SERPs in one of your most profitable subniches - powered by links from your main site.
When you have that job done then move to another subniche. Save your KW domains for this effort.
Lots of people think that they should build 25 satellite sites to give links back to their main site... but I believe that the really successful strategy is to do the reverse.
I shouldn't be telling this stuff.
-
Thanks for the reply, EGOL!
Yes that's a good way to look at it and I agree - the big domain. That's why I said 'is the SEO 100% diluted' - I wanted to push the point that the off-page SEO would not be 5 x the SEO with 5 sites.
Say it's 50% diluted, then the overall question becomes:
Does it make sense to opt for 5 better quality domains if it means you'll have to put in double the off-page SEO work?
-
Say, a link to the homepage of the first option would end up passing 1/5000th of value through to the Paris page. However a link to the second option would pass 1/1000th of the link juice through to the Paris page. So by thet logic, one only needs to do 1/5th of the work for each of the 5 sites ... that implies total SEO work would be the same?
Let's reverse the math.
Which do you think will win in a head to head battle for "cheap hotel in paris" ?
- One big domain with 5000 backlinks
- One small domain with 1000 backlinks
Whichever you think will win is where you should place your bets.
All of my money is on the big domain.
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
-
Ranking Issue for New Site
Hi all, I have got a specific SEO challenge. 6 months ago, we started to build an eCommerce site (located in the UK). In order to speed up the site launch, we copied the entire site over from an existing site based in Ireland. Now, the new UK site has been running for 5 months. Google has indexed many pages, which is good, but we can't rank high (position: between 20-30 for most pages). We thought it was because of content duplication in spite of different regions. So we tried to optimize the pages for the UK site to make them more UK-related and avoid content duplication. I've also used schema to tell google it's a UK-based site and set up Google my business and got more local citations. Besides, If you could give me any suggestions, it'd be perfect.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Insightful_Media
Thank you so much for your time and advice.1 -
Our new site will be using static site generator which is supposed to be better for SEO?
Hi folks, Our dev team is planning on building our new marketing webpages on SSG or Static Site Generator(we are stepping away from SSR). Based on my research this is something that can help our SEO in particular for site speed (our site has a poor score).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TyEl
Are there any challenges or concerns I should be aware regarding this direction? If so what are they and how can this be addressed? Thanks0 -
Site Structure - Is it ok to Keep current flat architecture of existing site pages and use silo structure on two new categories only?
Hi there, I have a site structure flat like this it ranks quite well for its niche site.com/red-apples.html site.com/blue-apples.html The site is branching out into a new but related lines of business is it ok to keep existing site architecture as above while using a silo structure just for the two new different but related business? site.com/meat/red-meat.html site.com/fish/oceant-trout.html Thanks for any advice!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | servetea0 -
SEO site Review
Does anyone have suggestions on places that provide in depth site / analytics reviews for SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gordian0 -
Sitemap for SmartPhone site
Hello I have a smartphone site (e.g.m.abc.com). To my understanding we do not need a mobile sitemap as its not a traditional mobile site. Shall I add those mobile site links in my regular www XML sitemap or not bother to add the links as we already have rel = canonical (on m.abc.com ) and rel= alternate in place (on www site) to respective pages. Please suggests a solution. I really look forward to an answer as I haven't found the "official" answer to this question anywhere.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdobeVAS0 -
Site wide links removal
A website of mine has about 4,000 backlinks of which 2,500 of them are coming from one website to the homepage and about 6 internal pages. These have been built up over about 5 years, mainly via article posts. The site was recently hit via penguin 2.0 but has only had natural links built so i'm wondering if the sitewide links are in fact the issue? The website linking to mine is an authority source within its niche but the concern is the amount of backlinks coming from this one site and if it may now be seen as having a negative impact. When ive reviewed the links from this one site via a backlink removal tool about 80% seem fine and suggestions are to remove about 20% of the backlinks. Would you keep all the sitewide backlinks or remove them?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jazavide
Have you come across a similar situation and how did it affect ranking/traffic?0 -
Mobile Site Outranking Main Site
Hi, We have recently been hit with a problem regarding our mobile site, where it is outranking our main site. This is causing a drop in orders and ranknings for our main site. It would appear that google has indexed our mobile site and so the two are now competing against each other. Our main site is on a .co.uk and our mobile site on a .mobi, but we have now taken down the mobile site until we get this sorted. Does anyone else have any experience of this happening and how to stop it happening again? Thanks Steve
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Steve251 -
Because Goolge chose this link to my site?
I'm better ranked in Google for that link (http://www.vipgoldrj.com/paginas/ensaios.html) and not in (http://www.vipgoldrj.com/), you know you explain why? In all keywords, except that (luxury escorts in Rio de Janeiro) Sorry my english, I'm from Brazil and I'm using Google translator.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebMaster0210