CMS for multiple domains & SEO

[T-G]

Hi, I have multiple domains all with the same host, but all have their own hosting account. All have excellent rankings for my main keywords and I'm happy, except I spend all day manually updating everything and it's a mess

But, I have a developer looking at a custom built CMS to manage the domains, they are very good at building sites but do not understand SEO.

What concerns me is that they want to do the following;

"This project will fundamentally be a single CMS driving a number of individual websites. These individual sites will be accessed via domain aliases which will point at the appropriate content and load the necessary templates."

This sounds like a bad idea to me, although the page concerned will be located on the main domain, the URL will read another domin, what is google going to index.

What do you think, anyone got any experience with managing muliple domains via a single CMS.

Cheers, TG

[nickoran]

Google should read it as seperate domains if im understanding you correctly. We currently use a single CMS to run several sites without any problem.
the information is simply kept in a database and presented on a page when the cms calls it, generating the html for the page.
Google tries to see pages just like we would so theoretically there should be no issue.
Do explain it to whoever is doing the CMS though and make sure they do understand! - you dont want to go through all that work for nothing.

[mindnet]

There is absolutley no problem with this at all. Just so long as they know how to setup and manage the CMS, database and Apache or IIS.

You can even have one install of a CMS like for example DotNetNuke and it run loads of sites and all of them are independent even down to having different IP addresses!

I use DotNetNuke among other systems as I have both Linux and Windows servers - DotNetNuke runs on Windows servers. I prefer DNN to all of the other systems I've used, OK windows hosting can cost a little more than Linux but as I have my own servers it is not an issue and I have some great ranking sites!

CMS Choice is crytical because to a certain extent you will be locked into that CMS... Migrating to another host with the same CMS will be pretty easy, though migration to another CMS would be time consuming.

Good Luck!
Julian

[nickoran]

CMS Choice is crytical because to a certain extent you will be locked into that CMS... Migrating to another host with the same CMS will be pretty easy, though migration to another CMS would be time consuming.

Ooof tell me about it, try moving from joomla to wordpress!

[Bernd]

Ooof tell me about it, try moving from joomla to wordpress!

You thougt of Wordpress MU?

[T-G]

Thanks allfor your replies, in addition to the above, it'l be OK' responses I've so had 2 people who work in SEO tell me it will be a disaster? Although they didn' fully understand the technique, as soon as I mention the word 'alias' alarm bells began to ring.

There is absolutley no problem with this at all. Just so long as they know how to setup and manage the CMS, database and Apache or IIS.

Not sure they know how, this is the problem.

I'm very nervous about makeing a huge change so I think I'm going to keep it simple and build multiple CMS's with an open source CMS, and maybe get the develope rto just build the booking system.

I'm considering Joomla (which has been recommended to me), also wordpress metioned above, unless anyone can tell me not to, I'll probably go with Joomla, only because I know a bloke who can help me if I get stuck. Is Joomla a good one?

Thanks again

[full house]

If you're not sure in wordpress go to Joomla where you know you won't get lost. You can still optimize your keywords whenever there are changes in the SERP.

[T-G]

Great, thanks for the advice.

Cheers, TG