Hi all! I have a client who has 3 URL's, all kinda different but maybe not really... I would love to not spend 3x the time marketing all 3, but for SEO purposes, what is the most efficient and effective way to market? Here are the 3 examples, all dot coms: itemsforpromotion decalsforpromotion stickersforpromotion Obviously each one has its separate niche, but then again, they can all be combined into the first one right.... so any thoughts? Thanks!!!!!
Items for promotion has a nice chunk of searches whereas decal for promotion and stickers for promotion have little to no value in terms of people searching for those phrases. Putting your time into the term that people are searching for will pay off much better than wasting time on producing unique targeted content for the other 2 phrases that isn't getting searched for.
I agree... so then maybe I can also add a 301 redirect for the other 2 to the "items....." one as many others have suggested just to make use of his past and possibly future clientele?
I think it really depends on how different the site content is. If there are completely different items on all three sites then there could be an advantage to keeping all three domains - keyword rich domains are more likely to rank against the relevant search term, and it could be that you could get all three domains to rank for those terms with 1/3rd of the effort you'd need to put into one generic site. However if there is a good deal of overlap then I'd go with your 301 redirect suggestion. Just make sure that all of the subpages on the domains you're redirecting point to a very similar page on the target domain - so don't just point all pages on stickersforpromotion.com to itemsforpromotion.com, but stickersforpromotion.com/branded-memory-sticks.html to itemsforpromotion.com/branded-memorysticks.html.
Ok all makes sense.... but thats the dilemma, I am on the borderline with relevance/difference thing... as the names state (even tho they are not the actual URL's but very similar) they are exactly what they say..... one site is for promotional/custom stickers, the other for decals, and the other for items like pens, golf balls, etc... and btw, for the last 7 years or so, decals one pointed to stickers, and stickers was basically for decals & stickers, and items was just for that, all established working sites. I am just asking now because I have been given the freedom to redesign each 100%, so I wanna do it right. Thanks for your help btw! Any more insight after the above is much much appreciated.
Are they generating much revenue as is, or is there a clear leader that's beating the others? Also, how do they perform in the search results currently? If you've got good rankings or plenty of sales from the individual sites, don't break it - even well structured 301s can cause a temporary, serious impact in the search positions (and sometimes permanent). If they're all doing nothing right now, then it probably depends (as BossBozz suggested) whether the exact match terms for those domains get a lot of searches individually in Google insights. If they do, then stick with the current structure. If they don't, then carefully amalgamate them into one bigger site. If two of them do but one of them doesn't (for example) then redirect the poorer cousin to one of the more successful ones, but leave the other one separate. Does that help?
Well the thing is, they operate the biz as ONE biz really... so I dont even know the numbers for what has better ROI and profits/revenue, etc... although I can make some assumptions. Frankly, if I had done this from the start, I dont know if I would have made 2 different sites with 3 URL's... I think they didnt know any better and simply wanted to have like a "dept for each" without any knowledge of SEO or internet marketing. FYI, they had done ZERO real marketing/SEO for those sites... 100% of their efforts and cash went to paid ads for google... they said it did very well for a small time, but in the last year or so, nothing... makes sense. But the again these sites have been around for years so... How do I test which site is better, or best to combine? Just pagerank? I doubt they will have a difference there, prob all 1, haha... FYI, the 3 sites were active till last week, when their old hosting expired, so I am going to host and design... meaning today, all 3 sites are pretty much gone and dead. I guess I should have included this info before, or maybe its irrelevant anyways, but I rather give u more info than not, because u seem like you know what u talking about. P.S. EVERYTHING u tell me helps... I am about a 7/10 in SEO expertise, but I wanna be a guru, lol.... and even tho I know a lot of these things already, I still learn little tidbits everywhere which are useful... to me doubt is the worst thing I can have when I wanna do something right and not waste time. Nothing better than 3-4 experts telling me the same thing!
I think its probably not working out which site is better, but which domain name is better - if you use Google Insights for Search (a free tool - just search for it) you can compare terms like "items for promotion", "decals for promotion" and "stickers for promotion" etc. You can then see whether any of the domain names have particularly strong search volumes. However it does seem like you're pretty much starting from scratch, so unless one of the domains are particularly strong I'd build one good site with very good on-page SEO.
Agreed, thanks so much! Hopefully u around for a while for any followups down the road.... Just curious, what biz are u in, do u have any active web sites you run?
I run a company called ScanAlarm - it's an SEO / marketing service, mainly for agencies looking after lots of sites. It's in my sig. Best of luck with your sites!