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Is it better to expand the site or to create new city-specific sites?
Issues:
- The current site has pr6, it would take a while to get pr6 for new sites.
- Getting relevant links to specific sites seems easier than getting good links for a section of a site.
- Both methods involve themes but which is best for themes?
For the several travel related areas I've worked in, this is true. But what I've also noticed is that searchers don't always search in destination-specific patterns. For hotels they most definitely do... overwhelmingly. Destination is everything.
For some other travel phrases, though, while the destination-specific searches are much lower in volume, a lot of sites target these phrases with destination-specific pages. This makes these destination-specific searches perhaps more competitive than they're worth... ie, in certain market areas, you might get more traffic for the same effort targeting a modifier other than destination.
It sounds like your site(s) cover a wide range of travel targets for a given destination... in which case city-specific sites at the least make sense. For hotels, for some cities, you may need to go to city-specific hotel sites... or to get even more specific than that.
ie: it works now, but how is the industry going? what do you think will work best in 6 months.
Whether to add it to your current site, you would want to consider where does it fit in. What would your customers be expecting to find and how do they find it. If you use your existing site, you might be able to leverage it's size, current customer base and rankings.
Since you can always split it off later, I would probably opt for building the content into the existing site and see if you can provide valuable content for customers.
>costs of creating and maintaining a site..
Same cost. The content is either on its own site or part of the main site.
>Since you can always split it off later...
I don't think that is as easy as it sounds. It would be a nightmare asking linkers to change their links, and think about getting directory listing changed!
If its all on one site then directories and other links will point to their section and create pr for that part of the site. If its on separate sites then directories and other links will point to a specific site which will build its own pr. My question is: Which approach has the best pr?
Couldn't I get multiple listings for one large site? Currently the site is in Yahoo and ODP not for the domain name but for www.name.com/london. I could go for www.name.com/paris etc.
>..and some cautious interlinking could result in better overall PR.
Hmmm, another subject I don't know much about. I prefer the natural approach: If my client owns 5 sites - one for each city (London, Paris, Amsterdam...) it would be natural for the menu on each site to have links like: 'Paris keyword', 'London keyword'... The link would point to the main domain for that city. I would also expect to put the menu on every page.
So I would not link from every paage of site A to every page of site B, but I would link from every page of site A to the home page of site B. That seems natural to me.
> Certainly, PR spammers have used this approach to good effect (before they get reported and/or caught.)
Is my approach spam?
> Of course, it will take more time and money to promote the multiple sites.
Both options require directory listings a specific links from other sites. I don't see why it would take more time and money - it seems the same to me.
I think you have to weigh your likely sources of inbound links.
- People interested in linking to a London site might not be interested in linking to a Paris site.
- A large European travel site might attract links that neither of the city sites would, but then you have to handle how the PR filters down.
My experience with large sites handling many geographical locations is that inbound links don't always go where you'd like them to. As has been said, it's generally easier to get inbound links and directory listings for the main home page of the site.
It will be very necessary, as the site expands to a multi-city site, to get city-specific inbound links to the city-specific "home" pages. As the site grows and encompasses new cities, you'll need to come up with a site-structure strategy to handle the shifting of the main page and your inbound links from your first-city focus to a more generalized travel focus.
Assuming you solve this big structural problem, I think you'll also find that because your first-city has been established longer than the others, for quite a while on Google, at least, a lot of searches on which other city pages on your site should rank might continue to give you your first city page. So, on searches for "Paris widgets, there would be a transitional period, perhaps a fairly long one, where your site might continue to return a London page... at least on Google. This is less of a problem on, say, Inktomi.
Of course a new city site, with no established incoming links, might take a while to return any traffic at all.
If you had some sort of established branding, that might favor a site encompassing many cities... but otherwise I think I'd tend towards the individual city approach with cautious interlinking.
I've never deliberatly crosslinked a site nor do I intend to. My linking approach seems logical and helpful. Is it safe?
I can seek relevant links to relevant pages.
Both approaches work, but which is best?
