Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I am somewhat new to all of this and have done my best to seek answers to these questions before burdening this site with “more of the same”. So I apologize in advance if these questions have been posted by others and answered previously.
My web business is a one man show. I sell specialized widgets to a niche market. I offer about 10 types of widgets and though these widgets relate to one another they do not function the same.
I have one domain running an ecommerce program and all of my current sales come from web orders or phone orders. I actually make money via my site but not as much as I think I can.
One of the possible ways to generate more traffic, one I have seen discussed here, is to develop unique sites for each product group and link these sites to the shopping cart at my current site. The question is how to go about doing this without getting penalized by the SE’s. The content for each site would be different due to the nature of the different products. But I may not be able to generate more than a few pages (5-10) of content per product group. Would this be a problem?
I would greatly appreciate any guidance or direction to previous posts that can help me.
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Thanks!
gtodell
[edited by: DaveAtIFG at 5:30 am (utc) on Dec. 30, 2003]
[edit reason] Snipped off topic paragraph [/edit]
develop unique sites for each product group and link these sites to the shopping cart at my current siteYou'll find various opinions on the merits of this approach, here's mine! :)
As a veteran of the SE wars (since 1997), I've learned that I prefer to optimize for the long term. Using the latest SE tricks will often win you short term prominence and traffic but once a trick becomes widely used... Short term tricks tend to induce a "boom and bust" financial cycle as a site moves from one trick to the next. Domain names may get banned and it's clearly not a way to establish your site as a "household word" or as a "major brand."
My preference is to work slowly and steadily to firmly establish a site for the long term. As SE preferences change, my sites may fluctuate a bit in the SERPs but invariably recover nicely. I don't need to deal with throwaway domain names, moving the site periodically, and "covering my tracks" left by the "bad things" I've already been caught doing.
Should you "develop unique sites for each product group and link these sites to the shopping cart at my current site?" It depends on your goals for the site. I wouldn't.
