Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Each of the smaller sites would have just a couple of pages - one describing the product, the other pointing to the main site where it can be ordered. The main site would also have a page for each product. I assume it's important that the main site description page and the mini site description page aren't too similar.
Would it help significantly to have all these mini sites? Would having the main search term as the URL help the optimisation of these small sites?
Or would it be better just to have the one big site and copy optimize each page? (There's going to be some competition, but not a vast amount.)
Sorry for the long post and thanks in advance for your thoughts.
One big site would be my choice in most cases. Depending on the execution, those small sites can cause Google problems. However, a few dedicated sites for specific and "feature" products can work out - but those sites should be very solid and well developed.
How were you thinking about getting backlinks to all those small sites? Are the solitary products important enough that they would attract interest and links from others?
I'm not actually the webmaster, merely the copywriter. The plan is to copy optimize the sites. The main site should develop a reasonable number of links over time.
With the mini sites, there would be no links to speak of at any stage - just a link to the main site ordering page. The main site would be frequently update and added to, but the mini ones would just be set up and left alone.
I think the client's thinking is that they can buy the URLs of the most relevant search term and get lots of hits as long as the sites are copy optimized. And to be fair, there won't be a great deal of competition, so that should be possible. These are new products which no-one else is offering, but which are still searched for occasionally. They will also be searched for more frequently as the main site gets publicised. (Sorry if this sounds cryptic, but it's all very hush hush.)
But from your answer, they may be wasting their money doing this. And there seems to be a danger that Google might penalise them for duplicate content.
If the sub topics aren't competitive, a well optimized page on a main domain that has lots of backlinks will rank as well. That's my preferred choice since it lends itself well to duplication. Once you've got enough of the right kind of backlinks to a site you can put up a page and rank well on just about anything.
It would probably be easier to have one optimized page on the main site and two on the mini sites. Three optimized pages per product on the main site isn't going to work well and will look a bit odd - the client really only wants one page per product on the main site.
