more websites or more category pages?

Hi all folks!

We have a b2b website, that we use to promote our products for export, at present we have divided the products in 10 different categories groups (such as cleaning equipment, food equipment, etc etc...) we would like to know if it makes a difference for SEO (search engine optimization) having a specific website for each product category or it is possible to reach the same result developing the content on each category page within the mother website.

Hope you can help us.

Thanx in advance.

 

If you have the time and resources then a series of websites is not a bad choice. That is of course, if you have enough content to fill up those websites. Personally, I would probably go with one monster website in this case. You can start free blogs on the categories and use them to drive traffic and link juice to your subpages. Good Luck!

 

Having cients ask us the same question all the time, it is better to have one site with Categories (product lines) and SubCategories (product line categories).

The name (text string) of the Categories and SubCategories should be Keyword Phrases.

And then use / set up related products to "upsell" or cross link between SubCategories on the Product Detail page(s).

But one site will give you higher Page Rank and your link building effort "focus". But never crosslink between your sites if they are hosted on the same IP address, major Google penalty.

 

As long as the categories is not messing up with other niche, it was a great way to use categories. Eg: Niche Food catering

categories: food, tent service, waiter and waitress services..etc

 

Having multiple websites can help but it takes a lot to manage them, just build more links to your site, also remember that it is not just about the search engines, get links from every place you can even if they are nofollow.

 

thank you very much to all

 

hi punkrazio

do you have any computer category???

 

one site with multiple categories. You dont want to get to the stage when one of your sites is a competitor to another you own. It's better to have one site with great content than to have multiple sites with okay content.

 

Disagree on that one.
Many sites means more presence in SERPs.
There is nothing like having a few of your sites in the same first SERP

 

I'm going to go against the grain here and tell you it's better to have multiple sites if each category is only loosely related. It is much easier to rank in Google if your entire site is on the same theme. Once you start putting several themes on one site you dilute the message you are sending Google. It also makes it harder to get links from other sites because they see your site as just another ecommerce site...instead of a specialty site that would help their visitors.

In your example, "cleaning equipment" and "food equipment" are not even closely related. I'd try to lump all "cleaning" products and equipment into one site and all "food" equipment and supplies into another site. Then provide some content in addition to the products to generate some related links back to your site. This will help you rank in each niche. Then if you have some sites that are somewhat related you could interlink them to boost those sites even more.

 

I agree with freelistfool. But the only question here is that, do the number of products in one category be enough to fill the content of the whole site?

 

freelistfool is right- if the products are completely different then that makes sense. However if they're similar 'cleaning equipment', 'industrial cleaners' etc I'd go with one site and multiple categories. But thats just my opinion

 

Me suggesting single site with different category. If one very easy to promote especially B2B site. Only one type of product in 1 b2b site not good. i saw many b2b site which include multiple types of product without any relation each other

 

I would like to think that search engines place at top position the sites with relevant quality contents of the related keywords searched, regardless if they are placed in one single thematic web site or in a B2B multi-category web site. It can happen to find more relevant quality contents in a one sub-category of a general b2b site then the ones you can find in single thematic web site. Of course it happens also the opposite way.
Would be interested to know your opinion on this. Thanks.

 

I prefer to make more page, more page, more content = more traffic. But more website is harder to manage and need more page and content too, well I guess what get more page first and then more website.

 

i would kindly like to know why some people think more sites are better and other people think one bigger and full of content site is better.

who i have to consider?

one or other? or a mix of them all?



ty
bye

 

punkrazio,
Its easier to maintain one site than many
Also all PR rank go to the same place
But it also means a lot of content that maybe should be split up in order to have more focused sites.
There is pro and con to everything...

 

you should focus on one site with multiple categories because it will be easier to maintain and that one site could rank higher for more keywords because of all the pages

 

you should have categories rather than having individual website for each category...but if you want to make separate identity of your each category then you should use sub domains.

 

I would vote for having one site full of related categories. (but that is just my personal preference.)

Here is a couple of interesting articles about the concept of siloing (also known as theming) which should answer your question.
http://www.bruceclay.com/newsletter/0505/silo.html
http://www.searchengineguide.com/lisa-barone/siloing-revisit.php

Hope that helps.

Cheers
James