one domain vs. several?

[legendsofamerica]

My website - Legends of America - www.legendsofamerica.com - I promote as a travel site for the nostalgic and historic minded. The site focuses on destinations in the American West. When I research historic destinations, I'm constantly running into other interesting items such as ghost stories, lost treasures, outlaws, and most recently I have been asked to write a book on Route 66, so that's being added too. We currently have sections for all of these.

Though less than a year old, the site is growing fast and is becoming quite large. Is there an advantage to breaking this site up into several website domains? e.g. travel destinations, old west, etc. I see several domains as an additional promotion burden but wonder if there are advantages to having multiple sites.

I got great feedback when I submitted my site for review and it really helped alot!! Can you help me on this too?

Thanks so much!!

Kathy Weiser
Owner/Editor
Legends of America
http://legendsofamerica.com

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Kathy,

I think there are both pros and cons to your question. Having some good keyword domains with a good optimized content that drives extra traffic to some of your categories could help with traffic, but don't know if it would be worth the extra effort. Then you could link them all to increase your link pop since they are related. If you are good at optimization you can probably get the same benefit from pages on your existing site though.

Whatever you do be very careful about duplicate content if you add domains so you don't get banned for mirror sites.

[legendsofamerica]

Thank you so much for your feedback. Sounds as though I'm best off with the one domain, which is a relief, actually. My subcategories don't seem to be suffering in the search engines as I get more hits to my ghostly legends, and legendary treasure tales than I do to my main page.

Thanks again,

Kathy
www.legendsofamerica.com

[TLDTrader.com]

Looks like your site is doing good as it is. Besides, it would be easier to concentrate on one site.

[jhusband]

I just have a quick 50 cents to add. My first question to you would be "why?" Why do you have the website in the first place? What do you hope to accomplish? And more questions along those lines.

The purpose of a site is not ever to do well in the search engines (unless you've entered an SEO contest.) The purpose might be to bring personal happiness or to develop a site that generates unmanaged income. Or something similar.

When you have a good understanding of what you want, some of the questions become "fill in the blank." But then again sometimes we're still just guessing...

My two bits,

-John