1 Big Website vs N small Website ?

[Pakinsto]

I´ve got this site, example.com, from wich i sell most of products and services. So far, i´ve been doing some SEO and SEM, and i had excelent results, i cover some keyword areas with SEO and some others with SEM.

I´m thinking about using all my seo learnings into a new website
( unique content, keywords, tech stuff, etc...). I want to know how would it affect my rankings, if instead having 1 big website, where i´ve got my 5 main products and services, i have 5 differents websites, like:

example.com/product1(keyword)
example.com/product2(keyword)
...

vs

product1.com
product2.com
...

The problem is the optimized content vs time ranking.

I could define much better keywords and products, with a related domain name, optimized content and landing pages, but i´m afraid of loosing my google age, 5 years.

So what do u say?

Old trustful seo vs new optimized multi sites?


Thanks for your time !

[BasicECommerce]

I would only split it up into multiple sites if the product(s) met a few criteria:
If you can you continue frequent updates of the site/product to make the search engines need to continue to crawl your site.
If you have enough expertise on each different product to be able to gain the trust of publishers in order for them to link to you.
If it wont confuse your current customer base. (web customers are awfully picky and a name change makes them think ownership change which makes them think value change...etc).

Also, dont plan on linking all the new mini-sites together. Google will see the loop and understand what's happening and can dock your sites' value.

This is just my opinion.

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

one big site vs. a couple of small sites is often a balancing act, I guess. I've seen this question more than once on the forums and there is no answer that's true for any case, I guess, however with the current search algorithms most SEOs would probably tend to go with having one big site if it already has 5 years of domain age (and trust) and a lot of link authority associated with it.

you could also use subdomains I guess such as product1.example com product2.example com ...I'm not a 100% sure, but I think Google (and other SEs?) understands that those belong to the same site (I think remember seeing SERPs where subdomains would rank with barely any link authority pointing to them in somewhat competitive SERPs (the main domain did have authority)...and the only reason I can see why Google wouldn't allow subdomains to share the same link authority would be because they have technical problems with it (which seems to not be the case))

[cryptblade]

This is a question that has been asked A LOT. The last thread I saw actually went pretty long and in-depth.

The BEST thing is to go with 1 big site if you can. I'm a proponent of that. Because you build up a lot of links to the same site and you do less work.

But, on the other hand, if each store is a unique and separate niche, then you may need to seriously stick to just a bunch of niche sites. It really depends. If you can get away with 1 big site, do it - saves a lot of trouble for you.