Strategy for adding informational content

new domain or existing domain

[rottenuncle]

I am developing some informational content in order to increase traffic and boost link popularity to an e-commerce site of mine. Instead of adding the content to the existing site, I could put it on a new, externally hosted (separate ip range) site and crosslink with my e-commerce site. That way I could optimize the two sites independently (and get a free yahoo listing for the info site). The downside is that its twice as many links, etc to maintain. Any ideas on which strategy is better (for boosting traffic and link popularity to the e-commerce site).

[takagi]

Hi rottenuncle, welcome to WebmasterWorld.

Having a different site for the non-commercial information can help to get links from other sites. But be careful with heavy cross-linking between 2 or more sites. It's OK to have several links from the informational site to the commercial site. But limit the links to the informational site to 1 link from the homepage of the commercial site.

[vitaplease]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld rottenuncle,

Your strategy might help, but (depending how competitive the sector is) it also might lead to dominating the Google serps with positions 1 to 4.

If searchers get disturbed with that, it may lead to reporting you.

Check this related thread running at the moment:
[webmasterworld.com...]

[SEO practioner]

Hi rottenuncle, welcome to WebmasterWorld.

Vitaplease is right. I would be careful not to place more than one link at this time.

[rottenuncle]

Thanks, takagi, vitaplease, and SEO_Practitioner. That's very helpful.

I had not planned to crosslink very heavily (& certainly not with hidden links). Just a simple "Please visit our other site x.com for y."

Do you think that, all other things being equal (content, link popularity, etc), my commercial site will derive more PR benefit from the info content as an external site, or as pages within the commercial site? (The info content will I think be useful to my commercial site visitors, but also will have broader appeal as well.)

Also, I'm planning a 2nd e-commerce site (marketing a totally different product from my existing site). Should I crosslink (gently) all three?

Thanks for the help!