Breaking 1 site into 3 for SEO.. good idea?

[Putnam]

I have a community drive site that currently does not contain a blog or a forums. Members have been asking for both, so I developed both but have not launched them. Initially, I was going to launch them as blog.mydomain.com and forums.mydomain.com. However, it has occurred to me that I could see an SER increase if I host the blog and forums as independent websites that simply refer and link back to content on the main website... for instance,

Original site: whatever.com
Blog: whateverblog.com
Forusm: whatevertalk.com

Or something of the sort. Three independently hosted websites.... anyone see any cons to this approach other than the hosting fees for the independent accounts?

[bhartzer]

It used to be (a few years ago) that having a lot of links from the same site would be a good thing--that's not the case any more. So, it makes more sense to keep all the content on your own site like this:

www.domain.com/blog
www.domain.com/forum

or
blog.domain.com
forum.domain.com

If you went to separate domains you'd have to re-establish all the links to those sites and start over. And links from those new domains would be reciprocal (not as powerful) and they would only "count" as 2 additional links (one from the blog domain and one from the forum domain).

[edhan]

Yes, I do agree with bhartzer that it is more practical and useful to have it in the same domain as blog.domain.com or domain.com/blog. This method will also boost your search engine ranking faster.

[schmeetz]

that's a third for me.

Keeping it under 1 roof Pros:

1) It'll add pages to your site - growth...Google likes growth.

2) More content = more traffic if SE friendly.

3) Blog, Forum and Site traffic will intertwine

Be careful, introduce it gradually. People dont like change, baby step'em in.

sitename.com/blog or sitename.com/forums has become the standard. nike.com/futbol ;-)

[Orion]

BINGO!

Separating them, can be advantageous. Usually only from a marketing perspective for taking two totallydifferent IDEAS apart to focus keywords. eg. having a site that sells realestate and and listing your wife's quilts for sale on the same site. Those two should have totally separate rules.

If you are just adding a blog / forum add it to the current site, it'll make a HUGE difference to the site's rankings in the long run.

Post some feed back as you see some results in the next few weeks / months.

[Conficio]

Originally Posted by bhartzer

It used to be (a few years ago) that having a lot of links from the same site would be a good thing--that's not the case any more. So, it makes more sense to keep all the content on your own site like this:

www.domain.com/blog
www.domain.com/forum

or
blog.domain.com
forum.domain.com

If you went to separate domains you'd have to re-establish all the links to those sites and start over. And links from those new domains would be reciprocal (not as powerful) and they would only "count" as 2 additional links (one from the blog domain and one from the forum domain).

BHarzer,
I'd agree with your recommendation, but I wonder if the reasoning is correct.

As much as I have studied Google's guidelines, original thesis and later filings for patents. It all revolves around pages and not domains. Each page is ranked on its own, because that is where the information is and that is what is relevant regarding inbound and outbound links. In general, a domain is not proof of a single web-site. It used to be that many "free" web-sites where hosted as subdirectories of the same web-server and domain. These share the same domain but Google would be foolish to treat them as one website or URL destination.

I see this confusion all the time, domain = website = page = what Google ranks. That is not true, as I know from my own experience (and experiments) and from the Google writing mentioned above. It might look like the same, if you are pointing all links to the home page of your domain, as most people do. Then as far as Google's page rank is concerned, the only relevant page is your home page. At least its relevancy is much, much greater than any other page on your site.

However, I have successfully attempted

• to make a page deep in a domain get a higher page rank than the home page.
• to shift mass amounts of links from a few websites to a different page/domain and it had a serious impact on the page rank as well as the rank for desired keywords.

The first bullet point strongly indicates that Google looks at pages, and not websites or domains.

The second bullet point strongly suggests that many links from a large site do matter as many links, not just one link. Again, it might be easily misinterpreted, if the various pages deep in the large site, such as a forum, have only low page rank. Then their link impact is small and it does look like they do not matter. However, if you can make these pages PR 4+ you will see the difference between one link and many links from the same site.

That said I'd conclude that one domain with subdirectories or three independent domains or three sub-domains doesn't really matter to the search engines. In this case the convenience for your own maintenance and the convenience for your users outweighs all other considerations. I'd suggest that most non technical user would look at "www.domain.com/blog" as belonging to the same website as "www.domain.com". Many non technical users are even confused by not having a "www" in a domain. For that reason I'd agree go with the solution in the same domain.

Kind regards,
K<o>

[Conficio]

May I add one more advantage to my own reasoning. Not that I habitually talk to myself, but it just occurred to me.

The single domain variant might actually have the advantage of inducing more people to link to your home page. As mentioned, most organic links are made to the home page of a site. This way you'll get more links concentrated to your home page as opposed to people splitting their links among the blog and the forum.

Just a thought,
K<o>

[Gert Leroy]

more sites is more headaches.

[Webnauts]

To my experience, a good option would be, if you would use sub-folders for languages (if web site is multi-language), and subdomains for forums, blogs, directories.

[CreditFN]

Keep the information all on one site. This way you grow your current content and adding a blog will add content that is refreshing frequently.

The only benefit to running multiple site is if you are marketing niche products that you can't market through your main site. Meaning the site does not have the same primary search goal as the niche market sites. Good luck, and at the end of the day keep it to one site unless you are marketing multiple products.

[Duncan Pollock]

I agree with the one site idea.
Breaking it up will, in my view, gain you nothing and it could end up losing you something. I don't quite mean a duplicate penalty possibility, but you are going to run some risk of saying the same thing twice, if only in the form of an introductory page.
Besides, I think many people -- and I'm one of them -- reckon that the bigger the site the better. Adding a blog segment and a forum segment will increase the notice the search engines are likely to take of you than if there are three separate sites.
In turn, the age of your existing site won't extend to two newly created domains -- which could mean some time in the (non-existent?) sandbox.

Duncan

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by Conficio

As much as I have studied Google's guidelines, original thesis and later filings for patents. It all revolves around pages and not domains. Each page is ranked on its own, because that is where the information is and that is what is relevant regarding inbound and outbound links. In general, a domain is not proof of a single web-site. It used to be that many "free" web-sites where hosted as...

This is true, but they fail to warn you how it will take them (9-12 months) to judge those "separate" pages or domains. Building off an existing websites can avoid this lag time.

[cyanide]

I have a client with 3 websites. They do rank very well, and for some terms all 3 show up on the first page together.

However, they do have distinct and unique content.

It is a rarity and can be dangerous.
I was lucky to pull it off and don't generally recommend it.

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by cyanide

However, they do have distinct and unique content.

Ah ha! That is key!

[bhartzer]

To my experience, a good option would be, if you would use sub-folders for languages (if web site is multi-language),

Actually, that's not a good option. I never ever ever recommend that you mix languages on domains. (Keep it one language per domain.)

[Webnauts]

We are implementing this week already our german version web site, and we have chosen in concerns of usability, the option "Selective Replication" which about you can read here (Option 3): http://www.indiawebdevelopers.com/te...ge_support.asp