| If there is one area on the Web
that is often overly abused, this is it. There are several
factors that make this a dangerous strategy. Let's start
by outlining the tremendous amount of work that would
be necessary to build, maintain and achieve a high ranking
for, let's say fifteen websites rather than one only.
On top of all that, let's not forget the cost of the
domain names themselves which some, in certain cases,
can be expensive to begin with.
Yahoo now charges US $ 299 per year per website just
to have it listed. In this hypothetical case, you would
have to pay to register and host at least fifteen new
Web domain names. Since many Internet search engines
and directories actually penalize mirror sites, you
would have to spend time building fifteen different
web sites. Additionally, you would have to pay to host
those fifteen Web sites.
You would also have to spend time, actually many weeks
just to optimize the same fifteen web sites. You would
then have to spend more time submitting fifteen independent
web sites (very time consuming). You would then have
to build link popularity to each separate web site.
You would have to start doing some reciprocal link exchange
trading with quality sites that are in a similar and
related sector to your actual field of expertise. If
you are starting to think that this sounds like a lot
of time, effort, energy and expense, you are 100% right.
Instead, consider this: your other option is to do
all of the above, but just to only one site. Now, you
may be willing to put in that extra time and expense
if it means more chances to rank well in the search
engines. The thinking behind this strategy is that you
could buy fifteen keyword domains and focus the content
of each site so narrowly that it will rank very well
for a few terms. Experience has taught us that, in reality,
it doesn't even come close!
Webmasters who try to use this strategy find themselves
doing fifteen times the work, and rarely, if not ever,
getting the results they would have if they'd simply
put all that effort into one single domain to begin
with. We like to compare this to the straight-line principle:
the shortest distance from A to B is still the straight
line. Why won't all that extra work translate into extra
rankings? Well, there are several reasons. Depending
on the actual content that you place in these domains,
search engines and directories would flag them as mirror
sites and refuse to list them. You will spread your
incoming links (and therefore link popularity) across
multiple domains. This will keep any one of them from
ranking as highly as your main domain would if all the
links pointed at it.
You have less ability to cross-sell and up-sell the
products that you have listed on one of your extra web
sites. A visitor may not realize that you offer blue
widgets as well as green widgets. As a general rule
of thumb, larger sites nearly always outrank smaller
sites. It's going to be difficult to compete with a
company that has a two thousand page web site when your
keyword-rich mini-site only has ten pages. Think about
sites like Yahoo! and Amazon.com or eBay. They clearly
have more than enough information to warrant dozens
and dozens of smaller sites, yet they choose to house
all of these areas of content under their main, single
domain name.
If you have multiple products or services to offer,
make sure that everyone that comes to your site realizes
it! Don't undermine your chances of success by hiding
your content on separate domains in an attempt to artificially
improve your rankings. It just won't happen. What will
happen however is that you will probably make things
a lot worse for yourself and your Web site could get
penalized. Sometimes, we often wonder ourselves if some
engines do adopt an updated "blacklist" of
Web sites that have a habit of using illegal and unethical
practices and/or that have done so in the past. Some
in the industry even believe that, if ever that "blacklist"
does exist at all, it could be circulated, probably
by email to the other engines.
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