Interlinking separate site or make one mega site? Say I wanted to make 3 sites, one for coupons, one for reviews and one for shopping. Should I put them on separate domains and interlink them, or should I just put everything into one domain? Separating them will allow each site to have more focus?
Seperately: -Keeps the sites more focused on a specific topic (good for SEO purposes) -You can sell 1 site and keep the other 2 if you decide to in the future Combined: -Easier to manage 1 site instead of 3 -Cheaper domain/hosting fees (depending on who you register/host with)
If you choose to go with separate websites I would be careful about how much your interlink them. This is a blatant attempt to improve search engine rankings via a link scheme. You might end up getting penalized if you cross link too much. I think the choice between 1 website and multiple websites comes down to how much time and resources you have. Managing & marketing 1 website would be far easier than doing the same for 3 websites. As Christian mentioned, there are seo benefits to keeping them separate.
If you have a vps or dedicated server with multiple ips, i strongly recommend seperating them and use rare keywords. Put more weight on seo and links building campaign too ( directory links, social links, ask for links, pay for links etc ). SEO requires a lot of patience. You can sell links after you get pr and use the fund collected for advertising.
In and of itself it doesn't matter. What does matter is if you have a plan for what to do with 1 site or 3 sites. To combine or separate based on the hope that some keyword phrase is better used on it's own means nothing unless you have a specific plan for how to implement what you are trying to accomplish. Cost becomes an issue for some if they have a good plan to separate but not the resources to manage. The more sites you have the resources it takes to manage.
I am siding more towards the 1 site now because I would need to interlink them a lot if they were on separate domains