When do you split a site?

What factors go into whether or not to split a site into 2 sites

[piney]

One of my sites is an image site. At this point it is like two sites, one being the images and one being helpful information about the industry. The helpful info was developed in order to provide text on a site that otherwise has very little. After having most of the site recently go supplemental, I'm adding text to the image pages, potentially making the text on the helpful info pages not necessary (or not as necessary?)

My question is how do I determine whether to split the "helpful information" part off from the core reason for the site's existence (the images)? Initially it seemed to be a good thing but now, as I see some of the helpful pages in the main index and some of the images pages in the supplemental index, I'm not sure it makes sense to keep the helpful pages at the risk of losing images pages. (Presumably the pr4 is what keeps so many pages in supplemental status and if i reduced pages, i could get some important pages out of supplemental.)

The helpful info pages have a lot of keywords that are on topic for the site, overall. I could not get the same keywords onto the images pages themselves without the content looking forced. The site ranks well in its industry. Would it be better to take a close look at which pages are contributing and prune the ones that aren't?

I'm not sure I even see value in splitting off the "helpful info" part of the site into its own site. It doesn't make much money and making it somehow add to the pr of the main site is probably beyond my technical sophistication.

[Robert Charlton]

piney - I'm not understanding why you'd want to split the site. It seems like your image pages need the support of the info pages to bring in traffic.

The image pages are primarily going supplemental because they have no differentiating text content and are probably being seen by Google as more or less identical to each other.

How you're distributing your PageRank among your pages might be affecting how much PR your image pages are receiving... and that could be contributing to going supplemental as well... but that's most likely a site structure and inbound linking issue.

Adding text to your image pages is a good idea. Done tastefully, it shouldn't hurt the effect of the images... might even augment them for the user... and will definitely help them with the search engines.

Another option, if text identification is simply not appropriate for each image, might be to have groups of images and thumbnails in an iframe... and have some relevant text on the framing page.

[piney]

It seems like there could be a certain number of pages, given your pr, that will appear in the main index and the rest will be supplemental, with limitations as to what you can do about it. My reason for deleting some (or all) of the helpful info pages would simply be to get them out of the main index in order to free up room for the pages that are in the supplemental index.

I might just need to have some patience, but with only 3 per day being added back into the main index, it's wearing thin. ("When helpful info starts to hurt..." ;-))

I will look at the internal linking more closely and reduce internal linking to the helpful info pages. Thanks.

[Robert Charlton]

My reason for deleting some (or all) of the helpful info pages would simply be to get them out of the main index in order to free up room for the pages that are in the supplemental index.

That's not exactly how it works. It's about how you structure your nav, not just about how many pages you have... but I do agree that many site supplemental problems could be reduced with some judicious pruning and adjustment of the navigation.

Also, being supplemental per se is not the problem. If pages are supplemental because all Google sees is a bare-bone template with no content, getting rid of other pages that are attracting visitors and inbound links is not going to fix things.

And maybe you don't even need your image pages without text on them to rank for anything. Maybe your problem is getting visitors to your site so they'll see the image pages.

PS...

I will look at the internal linking more closely and reduce internal linking to the helpful info pages.

You may have it backwards. You've got to find a good balance that works for search engines, visitors, and your site objectives.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 1:00 am (utc) on April 4, 2007]

[piney]

My product on this site is commissioned widget art. I'm a widget artist. I have helpful pages about widget art history and info about how to do widget art. The potential clients aren't interested in that, but it's presumably helpful for links and content. I read Brett Tabke's themed site post, the one with the diagrams, the other day. I don't think my "money pages" would really be my previously-produced widget image pages (they produce some income but not the bulk of it). They are the deepest links, in the location of those on the diagram. They function more as establishing trust with a potential client so they can see that I can do widget art. The money pages would probably be the sub-index pages, those directly under the home page, that target terms like "round widget artist," "square widget artist", etc. This is the type of thing a potential client would enter at a search and when my site would (ideally) come up. There are about 10 of the sub-index pages. 4 are supplemental. As pages come out of supplemental, these 4 are passed over and remain supplemental (even though they seem to be next in line). The pages with the more obscure subjects seem to come out easier. They have the fewest internal links to them on the site (they have no external links).

Given this, does it still make sense to build up the links to the widget art history pages or how to do widget art pages?

If Wikipedia is an example of an authority, where the viewer stops at its pages, and Open Directory is an example of a hub, where the viewer is led from DMOZ to some place else before stopping, then Google would want to focus on Wikipedia's deepest pages and DMOZ's upper heirarchical pages. I might be overthinking this, but it seems to me that I've positioned my site in the form of an authority and need to position it like a hub. Maybe sticking more outbound links on the deepest pages would help.