Are Multiple Websites A Good Thing?
Should you have multiple websites that promote the same product?
Won’t you be competing with yourself?
In a sense, you might be competing with yourself if you build more than one website to promote the same product or service. But when you consider that Google will only allow one page from the same domain to rank for the same keyword then you might want more than one website. It increases your chances of closing a sale…that should be the main goal of your long term search engine optimization efforts, getting rankings that lead to visitors and then to sales.
Here’s what you need to do for EACH website you use to promote the same product:
- Make sure each page is optimized for the right keywords
- Build inbound links through directory submissions, articles, and viral marketing
- Promote the site through social media circles
- Develop a privacy statement and a terms of service
- Design a unique About Us page
- Ensure your website structure is navigable by search engines and humans
- Build websites you don’t have to spend hours maintaining every week
- Put each website on a separate IP block
The more websites you have, the more chances you have of attracting sales. It means more opportunities for you to earn the income you want.
8 Responses to “Are Multiple Websites A Good Thing?”
The Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Journal is Written by SEO Expert:
Nick Stamoulis
Tel - 781-999-1222
nick@brickmarketing.com
Brick Marketing - SEO Company
Hi Nick,
Very interesting piece. While I understand that multiple sites helps with SEO (and increasing sales), what do you think the effect is for companies on their branding efforts when they try to manage multiple sites at a time. Is it watering down your branding efforts if you are trying to manage multiple sites?
Thanks.
@Sachin – Thanks for reading and your comment! I hope you are doing well! I think there is a balance of brand when it comes to building growth from multiple websites. It really depends on the business and if you are targeting different audiences with multiple websites…I would say from a branding perspective it makes sense to concentrate on one big branded website and focus less on other that might conflict a prospect’s issue about a company…
A good thought might be to conduct a survey to your customers to identify their thoughts about your brand, etc…
Hope this helps!
This is definitely an effective way to claim more of the advertising landscape on a SERP. To add to your 5th point, in addition to making each ‘About Us’ page unique, you should ensure that each site is also unique in in some way. If you’re offering the same products with the exact same messaging and at the exact same price point, search engines can hit you with double serving and you would lose control over which ad shows for converting keyword. Something to consider before investing in multiple domains, development, etc.
@Tim Saccone – Great additional points!
[...] That’s an important and a worthy question. One asked by a commenter at Search Engine Optimization Journal. [...]
One way to look at it is that the Internet is ju7st the newest form of media. Do you take just one ad on TV, radio, or magazines and newspapers? Of course not. So why do you have just one ad on the Internet?
Yes, I’m calling your website an ad. it isn’t your home on the web, your online store, etc. If you are selling something, then your website and every page of your website is an ad.
You build one corporate website with everything you sell and everything you offer.
The old saying is; “You build your first website for show and the rest for dough.”
That corporate website is your brand. It is on your letterhead, your email and forum signatures, your business cards, etc.
If your website offers multiple products or services, then you probably have categories and product or service pages in each category.
Let’s say you find that category A has more traffic and sales than the rest.
Go out and get a good generic domain name related to that category and build a website that only targets people who want products that fall into that category.
You don’t have to rebuild a shopping cart or backend. Links from the microsite lead people back to the corporate website for processing.
Then take the 2nd most popular category and do the same thing for that category.
After all of your categories are also microsites, you can drill down further and build a microsite about your most popular product rather than a whole category. Then your 2nd most popular product, etc.
The reason you go by popularity is that you are building microsites about soemthing you already know has had success for you on the web. So each site starts out with an advantage.
What makes the Internet a greate advertising media is that the microsites/ads, don’t expire like TV ads, Radio ads, Newspaper ads, etc. do.
You onoly pay the cost of the domain name and the hosting. They do not need maintenance. They are ads. Some ads do well and others don’t just like in other forms of advertising.
One local newspaper ad in most markets runs between $500 and $10,000 depending on the size of the ad and the market you live in. it runs once and it’s gone forever.
A microsite runs you about $600 – $800 and it’s there forever. Not hard to figure that sooner or later that ad will pay for itself and still be out there getting you business years from now.
Yes, each one has to be totally original. Different look, different text, different graphics, etc. But you don’t design the same ad everytime in other forms of media either.
Anyway, that comment was way too long. I just like the topic. Great post.
Feel free to correct all my spelling errors. I was in a hurry and have fat fingers. Actually I just got one of those new hi-tech keyboards. It shows all my mistakes right up there on the screen.
Thanks Chris for the great additional information and the comment!