SEO Best Practice for web design

[tdenning]

A company is shopping for a new web designer. They are in the property management industry with a total of eight domains. One for the corporate site and the others for the individual communities they own/manage. The question is this: What are the pros and cons with regard to SEO in having one domain for the corporate site with individual internal pages for each community vs keeping the existing structure of eight domains. Different SEO marketing groups give different answers with those known in the property management industry as leaning toward the separate domain structure while straight SEM's with no industry affiliation seem to lean toward the one domain structure. I am looking for a best practice here. All input greatly appreciated.

[mjtaylor]

You could argue the point either way. There are good reasons to do it either way.

Personally, if they have the time and $$ to develop all the individual domains, I would go that way. If not, they should use a silo style architecture for the site and treat each silo as a separate site.

They should select their SEO web designer based on the company's track record with other similar companies.

If they are using the single domain approach they should make sure they designer can fully SEO each 'property' area as though it were a single domain.

[gurucrusher]

I agree. Either way, they should make their corporate site, the "hub" and have the individual sites (whether on the same domain or not) branch off.

I personally like the individual sites model, but if money is tight, and including hosting, possibly server protection, this may get costly.

The single domain approach is easier, and a great way to keep everyone on the site. Simply make the other "sites" their own, with maybe a link or 2 back to the homepage.

The 2nd approach is probably the easiest, most cost effective of the two, and if the web designer can pull it off, then that is probably the most obvious choice.

As for the SEO side, you can do A LOT more (I think) with separate sites.

[momentum18]

One of my clients recently relaunched with three divisions. Ultimately I suggested that we go the separate site route. It's true, they paid more in upfront investments, but the dividends of separate sites far out-weigh the drawbacks. Each website has a solid, robust, and independent web presence and the main corporate site acts as an excellent central station. I also believe that they help each other's rankings, since there is minimal duplicate content. It works, if the planning is solid.

[JohnMauldin]

I feel the focus should be on the one site. I deal with this issue all of the time and I have clients that have as many as 2000 sites in a particular niche. The problem is with managing so many sites. For example, simply building backlinks to multiple sites, an ongoing task, becomes even more challenging. And when a change is necessary, it may often entail making changes on all sites. And even minor changes can take a lot of time. If I had multiple sites, I would have a limited amount of focused niche content on each site and drive the traffic to the main site for more detailed information.

[james113]

In the property management business, I believe that having seperate sites for each community is ideal to provide the best user experience for the people interested in specific communities that you manage. So, if you have the budget to develop all the domains, I would definitely go that route .

[babloodmax]

Hi Buddy!!!

Can you explain about exactly SEO and SEM friendly web design...

Thanks for sharing.. byeee...

[johnehogan]

Separate sites, Separate content and SEO. Back Links within each to the others main page gives the business considerably more flexibility in the search engines especially as they change their ranking systems.

I hate to say it as I AM an SEO person/webmaster/hostmaster (since 1993), but SEO is becoming a thing of the past quickly as new algorithyms are put into effect. Still the SEO person WILL always have a place in Content Creations for the client using the ole keyword density part of normal SEO, Proper HTML elements in place (H1 tags, Alt image tags, Title Tags on links, Weighing Page Loading times, Optimizing images for loading times, etc).

Remember when NOT long ago Google Penalized any site with the word FL, or Florida in the domain name? If your main domain HAD this in it - you were foobarred with Google. IF on the other hand you had multiple domains without the FL in the name tied into your FL domain you were still okay.

Matters not so much HOW your visitor got to your main site - As long as they get there!

No one knows just what Google, Yahoo, Ping, etc are going to do next. You can however be assured that the rule of Content Is King will always hold true and optimized content at each domain you own is your best chances of success no matter what the future holds in the SEO industry.

[bravobolt]

Like other have stated, there are pros and cons to going either way. Me personally, i would make one large website instead of several smaller ones because the more pages your website have with backlinks pointing towards them, the higher your overall domain rank will be.

[james113]

Separate sites, Separate content and SEO. Back Links within each to the others main page gives the business considerably more flexibility in the search engines especially as they change their ranking systems.

I hate to say it as I AM an SEO person/webmaster/hostmaster (since 1993), but SEO is becoming a thing of the past quickly as new algorithyms are put into effect. Still the SEO person WILL always have a place in Content Creations for the client using the ole keyword density part of normal SEO, Proper HTML elements in place (H1 tags, Alt image tags, Title Tags on links, Weighing Page Loading times, Optimizing images for loading times, etc).

Remember when NOT long ago Google Penalized any site with the word FL, or Florida in the domain name? If your main domain HAD this in it - you were foobarred with Google. IF on the other hand you had multiple domains without the FL in the name tied into your FL domain you were still okay.

Matters not so much HOW your visitor got to your main site - As long as they get there!

No one knows just what Google, Yahoo, Ping, etc are going to do next. You can however be assured that the rule of Content Is King will always hold true and optimized content at each domain you own is your best chances of success no matter what the future holds in the SEO industry.

None of my clients sites got penalised for having FL or Florida on their site. SEO will become a thing of the past when search engines no longer exist.