Duncan KingoriA common dilemma for many online brands is figuring out whether it is better to have one umbrella website for all their content, or separate their product over different sites.
Note that both approaches have their perks and pitfalls, so it all depends on how effective your marketing strategy and what exactly you want to achieve. Focusing on multiple sites, here is a list of advantages and disadvantages to help you decide if it’s the best strategy to maximize the reach of your content.
More significant Real Estate on SERPs
Covering more real estate on Google can be of excellent service to your brand, especially in niches that lack too much competition. For audiences seeking unique content, having multiple sites helps them find your content more accessible. It also allows you to have a more imposing presence on SERPs.
Placing separate websites in different domains for the same keywords means you will probably get two listings instead of one, which is an excellent thing if you are offering a different service for each. Having one umbrella site won’t get you this kind of quality real estate.
Avoids Duplicate Content Issues
Brands that offer similar products will benefit from multiple listings because they can prevent bad rankings based on duplicate content. This only works, however, by having these products spread across different sites on different domains.
Multiple sites are a common feature for retailers, as it allows them to post the same products, with the same description, without having to deal with issues of duplicate content. Note that this perk isn’t for everyone. Although it does help at times, always prioritize the quality of your content over all else.
Specifying Search Intent
You should consider multiple websites if you offer several different products. Putting everything under one umbrella site will limit your reach if your portfolio is vast. Also, if you have separate companies that deal with different products or services, you can improve your reach by strategically placing each company under a different domain.
Note that you are not branching out each service for each company. You’re merely separating the companies and giving the relevant product listings under them as a way to ensure specificity of service delivery.
This reduces the user requires to sift through all your content looking for relevant products, and it prevents your site from being too congested with too many listings.
Drawbacks
Although having multiple sites can be an excellent idea for your brands, it is only as effective as your overall SEO strategy. That said, there are various pitfalls that you should be aware of before you consider it for your business.
Reduces Link Efficiency
Link authority, as well as the strength of your backlinking profile, is a crucial contributor to your rankings. For this reason, it is better to have a high profile umbrella site for your target keywords, as opposed to multiple locations that are detrimental to your overall success.
The biggest drawback of splitting up your link authority reduces how effectively it works to help your rankings.
It’s A Complicated/Time-Consuming Process.
Effective site optimization requires a lot of time and resource investment. Having multiple sites means you have to do the same type of optimization for every website you put up. The marketing on all platforms can be quite exhausting, and you will need a ton of resources to keep each site operating to the max.
Multiple sites also leave you vulnerable to lower-ranking because Google rankings are now more inclined towards content quality, not quantity. This means that branding effects are far more active on umbrella sites as opposed to having several sites.
Bottom Line
As mentioned earlier, establishing multiple websites should serve the purpose of promoting your brand. So before you take it on, ensure you evaluate the potential for growth. Don’t do it if it hurts your link profile, and don’t put the same content on different sites.
The user has to gain something from your link profile. Having the same content on every site adds no value to your brand, and it may hurt your rankings. Lastly, it all boils down to principles and best practices, so ensure you link your sites together to ensure you have the proper link authority.
