Forum Moderators: phranque
The store which is located in a busy tourist area does very well. Their site however does not because there are too many, unrelated products to sell.
Much like the question prior to this one, I am debating the possibility of splitting the product categories into various domains and cross linking. In other words, having a main domain explaining the company itself, with links on the home page to all the product categories ... each with their own keyword domain.
Will this work? If it is going to cause trouble with Google or other search engines? What other alternatives should I look at?
Most liely your friend either tries to become a web superstore, or she concentrates on a few related products, which have a chance to get sold over the web.
Doing an online shop which mirrors a bricks & mortar shop in most cases is not profitable.
But: if she manages to sell all those products as related , like native carribean, original carribea art & gifts etc, then the structure of the site could perhaps utilize subdo. err: canonicals.
What I am concerned about is getting attention for each product line. All have very good potential to sell over the web, but they (the products) are so varied that it makes it difficult for anyone surfing the web to find their current site. Of course, it has not been optimized which is more than half the battle.
I don't really understand what you mean by "sub domains" or "canonicals". Would that be something like: www.store-name-caribbean-spices.com and www.store-name-caribbean-art.com?
Thanks for the input!
Take ebay. To describe what they are doing with many unrelated and different products would be the understatement of the year. Which exactly is the reason why such superstores have a tendency to generate gazillions of doorway sites - they can't possibly optimize one site for gazillions of keywords/products.
They have to beat small sites focusing exclusively on one or two of those keywords.
Which is what a small site can do perfectly. Concentrating on a couple of products, totally focusing the structure of the site and the optimization efforts on a few keywords and variants thereof.
This would be a small shop for original carribbean voodoo widgets. Plus a book explaining the use . Plus carribean voodoo joss sticks. etc.
The alternative would be to try and see how all of those products could be marketed together. Not going for specific product keywords in the first place, but for a general broad term.
You might have voodoo widgets, green plastc widgets, something non widget at all = different and unrelated products.
Do they have something in common, apart from being all sold by one bricks & mortar shop? If so, what is that? And is that common denominator marketable?
If that common denominator is regional related - is it small enough? And would people use this regional reference as qualifier in searches, especially in shopping searches?
If however you feel you have found a concept which unifies all those products and makes them marketable in one shopping site - then the question arises how to structure that shopping site.
At this point subdomains might be an option.
Subdomains meaning:
voodoo-widgets.your carribean-shop-site.com
holding some products and pages on caribbean voodoo widgets and accessories
someotherproductgroup.your-carribean-shop-site.com
etc etc.
Actually I'm interested in other peoples opinions of utilizing subdomains for shopping sites.
There are mixed opinions about the use of sub-domains, which would be
jewelry.caribbean-example.com
perfume.caribbean-example.com
It sounds like there would be a lot with all those products. Some have a lot of success with that arrangement; others have gotten into trouble with it. Technically, each subdomain is a separate site - some hosts require a separate IP number be assigned to each and charge just as though it were a different site. They have to be done very carefully; there's a lot of spamming done though the use of them which the search engines are not unaware of and it's all too easy for people to run into problems accidentally and unintentionally. Done right, they're a different story but we can assume extra care is needed, especially with that many product types.
>>The store which is located in a busy tourist area does very well. Their site however does not because there are too many, unrelated products to sell.
The local aspect can be capitalized on with trying to brand it as "the" place to shop relative to the locale and taking advantage of the location for promotional possibilities at that level. Possibilities exist to raise Page Rank at this level that might not be available for the individual product categories.
This is no different, with the assortment, from an online shopping mall or a craft mall. How well those can do for individual products depends on how the site is laid out with the navigation, directory structure and file naming. If each of the product sections is optimized as though it's a separate entity, how the PR is distributed depends on the linking pattern and the depth of the directory structure.
If a small site can be optimized for an overall theme and get good rankings for well optimized individual product /directories/ I personally can't see where this is that much different, other than being more instead of less. In fact, the regional aspect could well be an advantage for getting higher Page Rank, since within certain product sectors it seems practically impossible for the PR to go over 5, a PR6 seems to be rare.
They have to beat small sites focusing exclusively on one or two of those keywords.Which is what a small site can do perfectly. Concentrating on a couple of products, totally focusing the structure of the site and the optimization efforts on a few keywords and variants thereof.
Exactly so, it's proven over and over, those are easy to see. A small PR4 site can beat one that's much higher with multiple times more links because of the tight focus. There are people who swear by small, focused mini-sites. However, when it comes to the more competitive categories it seems to take more in the way of PR so if there are a lot of sites that's a lot of footwork hunting down links for all of them, except that separate sites would qualify for their own directory listings.
There could be a hub and spoke relationship established if there are separate sites, with the linking well planned out in advance. Both ways are probably viable if done right.
Question about SEO and SERP rank for one site .vs multi site setup:
If a single site is laid out such that each different type
of product is in a separate directory or section, and if the
level of SEO is the same for each individual section as would be
the case if each product section were instead a separate website,
what would be the likely difference in SERP rank for a product page
of a single site with multiple sections .vs that same product page
on a mini-site covering just that product type?
If there is likely to be a difference, would it be due primarily to the directory
depth the product page is from the home page on a single site .vs mini-site?
Thanks,
Louis
The store is located in the British Virgin Islands, but the product origins are not limited to the BVI and cover many different islands of the Caribbean.
www.caribbean-spices-sauces.com
www.caribbean-jewelry.com
www.caribbean-art.com
www.caribbean-coffee.com etc.
... was sort of how I thought it might work each of which would be linked to the existing homepage. Within the umbrella of the homepage site would also be the shopping cart, history of the company and general information.
However, I am now thinking (in light of what has been posted) that:
www.shop-name.com
www.caribbean-jewelry-shop-name.com
or
www.shop-name.com
www.shop-name.com/caribbean-jewelry.html
Would be safer in the long run and that each product category would have to have a great deal more content and information about each category as well as being heavily linked to other informative sites about each product category.Very time consuming!
Am I reading you right?
Overture:
173 caribbean jewelry
314,789 jewelry (general, not clearly focused and very competitive)
Go down the list with those and see how the numbers crunch as they get more specific, comparing number of searches with level of competitiveness.
Before you could decide you'd have to make a list of the primary product categories and do exhaustive keyword research. Products that are not overly competitive do NOT necessarily need a site of their own at this point in time. With those that are more competitive it's an individual choice depending on the product.
>if each product section were instead a separate website,
what would be the likely difference in SERP rank for a product page of a single site with multiple sections .vs that same product page on a mini-site covering just that product type?
That's the $64K question Louis, and there are variables aside from how competitive:
1. Individual sites can have their own ODP listing going in the gate, assuming there's an active editor.
2. There would be a difference in Page Rank. The amount of PR needed varies; with some it can be critical and with others plain vanilla optimization can win out every time.
3. There would be a difference in the number of direct external links, including link text.
4. What applies for Google does not necessarily relate to how the site will do with Inktomi PFI, which is a different animal.
5. Not to be disregarded - what would be the difference with search engines that use clustering and favor the homepage?
6. How much value does a keyword laden domain name have as compared to a branded domain name using keyworded directories?
7. How about factors that affect theming of sites? That landscape could change dramatically at any time with regard to ranking.
The evidence most likely weighs in favor of doing small sites - my preference, because that's what I do - small sites. I personally like the instant gratification. But from an overall viewpoint like Liane's situation, there has to be a cost-benefit analysis done in terms of how much time and effort will be required.
>www.shop-name.com/caribbean-jewelry.html
Others may disagree, but you'd never catch me putting all the pages in the root with a multi-product site. :)
Those looking for the type of art and gifts they carry, would certainly include the word "caribbean" in their search. Things like gorgeous and colourfully painted wall hangings made out of old oil drums, paintings of Caribbean scenes, small boats carved out of coconuts.
The same thing goes with many (but not all) of the spices & sauces as they are all Caribbean spices and sauces, but some people may not know that. Although, most good cooks looking for exotic or tropical spices know where they come from.
Much of the jewelry and gifts are very easily identified as Caribbean and would not likely be found in tens of thousands of jewelry stores in North America. They are mainly specialty items such as colourful hummingbird earings, gecko necklaces, things made from coral and sea shells, etc. I know it may sound kind of downscale or tacky ... however these items are anything but. They are extremely artistic and very attractive. Not cheap either.
"Caribbean maps", pretty much require the word "caribbean" to be optimized.
It may not be as critical for the coffees, teas & perfumes. I don't know ... I am getting very confused. I guess I have a lot of thinking to do before making any final decisions. It seems not everyone agrees on the "right" way to go about doing this. Its a tough one for sure! Thanks for the help.
