Mulitple domain names

Hi

Is it worthwhile having multiple domains linking to one main website? I realise the answer is no in the respect of page ranking, but what about purely from a content/relevance point of view?

My rationale is that our main website has many different sub-sections and I wonder if it is worth buying domain names relevant to each section and then pointing the domain names to these sections? eg.

say you have a main website that sells computer training, hardware and software and the URI is www.computers.com.

then you buy some more domain names such as-
computer-hardware.com
computer-training.com
computer-software.com

and then point the domains to the relevant sections, such as computer-hardware.com's homepage would be the homepage for the hardware section.

The domain name and the homepage would then show a high relevancy for anyone searching for computer hardware, or may draw in surfers who casually type that URI into their browser.

Can anyone tell me if this is a viable option or if there are better alternative strategies?

I want to give our website better exposure on the search engines whilst promoting many of the sub-sections of our site. I also don't want to just create doorway/gateway pages or have multiple domain names just pointing to the homepage of our main website - practices that are frowned upon be search engines as I understand it.

BTW - I will be working on optimizing our main site and improving its search engine rankings anyway - the multiple domains will be in addition to this.

Many thanks

A bit of a judgement call.

Multiple domain strategies do have advantages - in that the owner controls all content development, all links, including the fact that a visitor clicking on an outgoing is of no concern, since the visitor is simply going from one web property to another web property own by the company.

Since you control the gamut things seem really easy.

Multiple domain strategies also have disadvanatges - banned or penalized for going too far, not to mention - the visitor rarely has any idea why the company is using multiple web properties - different designs, look, appeal, and a gamut of usability issues.

Entering a website (for the first time) is always disorienting, enter many websites of the same company can be a nightmare.

Duplicate content is the single greatest concern though:

1. it takes time to develop, as such many short this and 2 - 4 months down the road all but the first "original" site in left.

2. Having the control - is great - using that control "unwisely" in bad for business.

So what to do?

Here is the reality - even if you develop a multiple domain strategy and care less about duplicate content - you can create enormous returns in a short period of time.

Setup fast - duplicate if you must to get it up there, crosslink to death and get the ball rolling. With anything Google must recongize the pattern - and this takes time - it is near a given that returns will be quick and google in this respect is slow.

Thus take a reasonable amount of your revenue / outsource copywriters, editiors, designers, programmers month 2 - 6 and develop the uniqueness.

Once you are really flying slowly redevelop back to a single (or maybe two sites (brand name - not keyword based) and you won't lose a stride.

Oh BTW... if you don't know what you are doing "precisely" hire a professional. Multiple domain name strategies can be tricky.

here's a site that integrates multiple domains into the navigation.. (the navigation tabs across the top of the page link to different domains) it's not my site but it is interesting how they are doing it...

I would be afraid to try it myself becuase i would worry about getting banned

http://www.huntgifts.com/

Also, I have found that if i put lots of pages on my own site it seems to get more and more powerful, perhaps splitting your content across several domans has a disadvantage there.

EGOL - just developed a similar design - took six month of detailed planning - uploading it this morning.

I now HATE psychology stuff but the multiple domain design will be very effect.

The users interface in all sites (domains) are identical so not to disorient the visitor.

How would this work with sub domains, for e.g I have a travel centre .. I was thinking of setting up a sub domain called travel.mydomain.com

Firstly will google pick this up?

Secondly, because it has links back to my main domain will this be seen as breaking any SEO rules?

Cheers

Im must say i like that design, should do well good luck with that fathom I'm currently developing the same thing for rx related sites. All using a similar graphical frame but each optimized for different high traffic drugnames, phentermine, adipex etc I'll keep you posted on how it turns out

I've read about a stragegy called the "mini web" and how it is effective at generating PR.

However, I worry that google could view this as a scheme designed simply to create an artificial link popularity. And as a result your work on multiple domains getting banned.

What do you guys think of that?

One thing that I will say about this collection of sites is that they are not trying to hide their association or their linking.

The use of sub-domains is much the same as multiple domain names. There is one significant advantage with sub-domains though - the relationship with the main site is embedded, which provides the visitor the knowledge that "it is the same site/owner".

Once we got the bugs out (a few) I'll post - the multi-name site. Unless you are a URL watcher - you really have no idea that you went from one .domain to another

Thanks Fathom.. you helpful as usual

I think a good strategy would be to either:

(1) first create many sub sites and then create one big site and link them all together

(2) first create a big site and then many sub sites and link them all together.

Change certain words dynamically and you can reuse the content and just throw up different templates for your big main site.

You must be careful that you dont cross over the spam line.

This is probably going to be a stupid question rustyb .. but say I have a subdomain called mytravel.mydomain.com and they is a link to my main website at www.mydomain.com is this the best way to link them all together?

Or do you suggest having the same navigation on mytravel.mydomain.com

Which is the best way to go? The subdomain will look EXACTLY like my main website, just different content relating to a specific subject area.

Look at sub-domains as an alternative form of directories within your website - they really are just sub-directories of a website.

rustybrick brings up a good point though. In order for this to work "well" you really need a clearly thought out plan. Taking existing directories and repurposing as "sub-domains" may actually reduce your websites overall ranking effectiveness.

A site needs breadth of topic to rank well, and although you gain link pop (PageRank) from the external sub-damain linkage; link pop (and PageRank) is but 1 of 100 considerations to good ranking.

A diverse website can benefit signifcantly from sub-domains e.g. if you are travel related information, accomodation (hotels, motels, cottages) and local activities (dining, sightseeing, attractions, events) could be two exceptional sub-domains.

However, if either is limited in content "breadth" you may end up ranking "less" on all because your linking construct is now inferior. A big site has topic breadth - and ranking breadth across thousands of "once in a while terms" - a bunch of small sites (sub-domains) loses this ability.

Thus the best strategy is "developing new content" for the sub-domains (mini-sites) leaving the existing site "as is".

Many thanks for the thoughts - this certainly seems to have provoked a small debate!

With regards to spamming - is it really a crime to have, say, 10 domain names pointing to your website that all bear a direct relevance?

The reason why I am looking at multiple domains is that there are a large number which I feel we should be using, and am concerned that we are missing out on web traffic by not having them.

Our company website currently has three domain names pointing to it (I use host headers BTW rather than duplicating content) - does this mean that we are violating SE rules?