One site with SEO'd pages, or a network of sites?

I'm working on a concept and some content, and am wondering what the SEOchat illuminati would think would be preferable in terms of ease of SERP ranking:

1) A network of sites, all in different IP blocks, cross-linked to eachother, covering musical instruments (for example), with:

1 site about drums
1 site about trumpets
1 site about pianos


2) A single site about musical instruments, with:

1 subsection about drums
1 subsection about trumpets
1 subsection about pianos


Thanks

From what I've learnt on these forums, I'd suggest that one site with folders for each section, all SEO'd well would be the best idea. The reasoning behind this is that search engines prefer larger sites, so the more content, the better you'll be. By breaking the site up into many smaller sites you're diluting the content level by spreading it across many sites rather then having it centralised. As far as your example with musical instruemnts, I'd suggest something like

domain.com/saxophones/
domain.com/drums/
etc...

This would allow you to do good SEO for each individual instrument, as well as allowing you to get links to each section if you so desired. This should keep everything together nicely.

Personally I would go with choice 2 for a few reasons:

1.) Too much crosslinking in number 1 can flag you as a link farm in my opinion. If you were to go with number one, I would only have one way links to your main site rather than heavy crosslinking, regardless of the seperate IP addresses.

2.) By splitting up your sites in number 1, you are essentially splitting your link popularity. I think you will find that in situation 2 if you have a LOT of music links, when you add pages or start targeting new keywords, your job will be much easier.

When you first start a site the first targeted keyword is usually the hardest. On my long established sites, I need a very small amount of links with the targeted anchor text to get a high ranking for a new keyword. That is because I have the strength of 10's of thousands of links already so with a few with my new anchor text, I can do what would have taken months.

Hope that helps.

Speaking of link popularity, I'm just now becoming aware of the possibility that having a good deal of internal links could make the site look spammy. Is there a good example out there somewhere of a good internal linking structure? I'm afraid I wouldn't know one if it bit me on the arse.

I used to focus on lots of sites. Now I am concentrating on a much smaller number. I used to have several sites in each theme area. Now no more then two - and usually just one.

This allows me to put all content and merchandise on one site, making it authoritative instead of one in a collection of hotdog stands. One site is also more economical to run, check keywords, arrange partnerships.

But, perhaps the most important thing is the impression of the visitor. When they land on one big site with everything there.. that makes a much better impression. And your sales will be larger because they can buy all of their needs at one time instead of having the merchandise divided into supspecialties.

It took me a couple days to swallow this one, but I think you guys are right. I had a vision of this network of sites, each garnering top spots in their respective serps...have the domains registered an d everything....The approach you suggest seems more practical, and link popularity will be aggregated instead of fragmented.

Thanks for the input.

If you want a network, make the network related THEMES.

Also, if you have a bunch of small sites you will always be fighting Goliath. BE Goliath... or at least a small Goliath.

The network-in-progress is very thematic - each portion a specialty of the general whole.