One general website VS several specific websites

Discussion in 'Search Engine Optimization' started by ProZero, Apr 1, 2013.

  1. #1
    Hello everyone,

    My name is ProZero, I'm kinda new on this forum (last time is visited was a while ago) but not entirely new regarding SEO. Right now I have one website (relatively small) running, another one (big one, could've made it a book) is coming online next week. The small website's genre is history, the larger one's is travel, more specifically: it's an extensive travel guide for my hometown. You can probably tell from this that I like to create content-rich websites that I can be proud of, websites that I can include in my résumé, proudly stating that I'm the owner. My experience so far (about 3-5 years) is that content rich websites can score really well but they also require alot of time to create. Enough about me, my question:

    The project
    I would like to create a website similar to WorldTravelGuide, Fodor's or InYourPocket. I would like to focus my website on just one part of the world, let's say Asia, Europe or the Americas. My intention is to write content-rich city guides.

    The problem
    As a fulltime law student I do not have that much time and I would like to create this in my spare time (not much...). The problem is that I am not sure how far I will get creating this website, will I eventually end up with a three city guides, seventeen or just one?

    One big website or several small websites?
    I would like to ask you guys what you would choose: would you create one large city guide website like Fodors or would you create multiple small ones, such as Budapest.com, Venice.com and Madrid.com? I know that once Google notices the authority of a big website it usually ranks good with multipe keywords, I would like to know where the line is between where a big general website is going to rank better than a small focussed website? In other words: when will Google give preference to a large scale general website over a smaller specific website?

    Another question would be how difficult it is for (ex.) City Guide Dublin within this Fodors-like website (which also contains City Guide Budapest, City Guide Amsterdam and City Guide Berlin) to outrank a City Guide Dublin-specific website.

    I do realize that when I would create (say) 5 city guide websites, all seperate, I would have to do the SEO for each one individually, once I create a new one I would have to start again all the way from the bottom to rank that website up. This would not be the case if I would set up this general website but I have the risk of just managing to create one city guide that will be hosted under a domain/website that claims to be general.

    Clear?
    I have tried to tell my story and ask my questions as clear as possible, if you have any further questions please feel free to post here so that I can clearify if neccesary.


    Thanks for reading this post!
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 1, 2013
    ProZero, Apr 1, 2013 IP