How To SEO Two WebSites

[razsports]

Hi,

I currently run and own a sports related website that consists of sports articles, sports directory and a sports forum. I rank well with MSN, Yahoo and for a few keywords with Google. In fact, my site ranks well with yahoo when searching for sports articles; my site in the top 11.

I'd like to keep my current sports site and design the site more for sports articles and directory, since both are doing well.

That being said, I'd like to open up my own sports cards trading shop. I would sell products in an auction format. Visitors would signup for a weekly newsletter that would inform them of new auctions that have been added.

Should I design this sports auction store as another domain name? It would not hurt my search engine placement, penalize or ban me if I run two sports related websites and link them together?

Again, one of the sports sites I own is just a directory, forums and articles. The other would be my very own sports store in the format of auction style.

[wrmineo]

Why not create a sub-domain on the current one? The management might be a little easier. If it has unique content from the root site, it won't hurt your rankings. As far as doing a complete new site and linking them you won't be "penalized" per se so long as each has unique content. But if they're going to be on the same IP block you may as well go with the subdomain IMO. Unless you can get a second domain that would assist in diversifying your keyword efforts ;)