Hi, As a newbie to this forum and to SEO in general, does anyone have advice to share on whether it would be a good idea and better for rankings to have separate websites for distinct but interrelated services. I have a video services biz with at least 10 different products/services. I have been working to get better search engine recognition of the different key words but have found that the site really only gets recognized for 2 or 3. I am wondering if it is better to have different websites for some of the services, eg. video production & editing, video duplication, film transfer, etc. The website is http://www.clvideo.com Thanks
Yeah me too, I have been wanting to know this for a while but never thought to ask. (Sorry I didn't have the answer for you divlayn)
If you are considering SEO only then yes there are benifits to having individual sites set up to serve/ market specific services ( verticals ). Using a site to specifically serve one type of service allows you to influence your inbound links anchor text more. So instead of everyone under the sun linking to your home page with 50 different descriptions ( the anchor text ) of the 10 different services you provide you get more sharpley focused anchor text pointing at your sites. This will increase the chances that a visitor referred by a search engine will find what they need. The pitfalls of this approach are that you might set it up wrong and create doorway pages. This could get you a penalty if a SE beleives your "spamming". Another is that your anchor text may be so focused and consistent that it would appear statistically odd.
Sorry for sounding dumb but can you explain the "doorway pages" issue and how there could be penalty?
A doorway page is when you optimiz a page on a site for a specific keyword only to redirect them to your primary site.
On another note, does that also apply to fowarded/redirected or masked domains? For eg. I have a domain forwarded and masked to a page in my primary site. I was hoping to optimize for a few keywords but the the problem with masking is the use of frames. If I just foward it, is optimization possible and are there any penalties? Also, how does a doorway page indicate possible spamming? If I pay to host a site and subsequently optimize pages on that site, what is wrong if I want it to link to my main or parent website ? Thanks for your explanations.
If you just use a 301 you will be fine. Example: client requests www.yoursite.com server 301s to yoursite.com -or- client request: foo.com server redirects to: bar.com An example of whats not good ( according to google I could give a crap) is.. - 8 million landing pages that all link to the same page some - 8 million pages optimized for one or 2 keyords that javascript redirect to the landing page - some variation of the above.
Ok, so how do i use a 301? Also, to recap your original reply, you do suggest that one business that has multiple service lines (although interrelated in my case around video) can and should have a website for each major service/product for effective optimization. If I implement this, do I run the risk of looking like separate businesses online when in fact I am not?
From an SEO only perspective I think you can do either and be just as effective. If it were me I would be considering it more from a marketing perspective. Does it make sense to offer verticals ? I think making anything simpler online is good. Offering verticals seperately helps minimize confusion.. but then does your customer for one service need the other things also ? I don't know.. you need to answer that question.
Here is a little bit of 301 info... http://www.tamingthebeast.net/articles3/spiders-301-redirect.htm Hope that helps...