Splitting content into a 2nd blog, some questions

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

My site is saturated with posts and pages about most subjects related to my topic and these pages already rank extremely well for their given keywords. I'd like to add an entire section of extremely detailed, definitive in quality, guides about repairs and such but there is little chance that doing so will not cannibalize existing keywords, in essence creating more competing pages for my own keywords on the same site.

I'm going to add them to a blog on blogger instead, with links that point back to my site for various items my site has for sale. Product links.

Question: The site will have value for sure but are the links to products on my other site likely to cause the site to be penalized? Will Google differentiate between a site built to pass rank to the first and a site built with a real purpose that also links to the authors "other" site ?

Does anyone have any recent experience with this?

[mhansen]

Are you building your site based on long term branding, or are you chasing keywords and phrases?

If you are building a brand... I would suggest a subdomain versus putting anything on a property you don't own (aka blogger-blog or anything else)

Just my opin... and I am about to undertake a similar thing by adding a troubleshooting and repair section, to a consumer product guide website. I want EVERYTHING under my own branding umbrella, and I also want everything to stay within my own editorial and technical control (my own server)

MH

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Very good reasons to keep it in house.

Reasons for using blogger might be as follows.

- Free, no maintenance costs.
- Incoming links instead of internal links.
- Blogger has an established following and a "next blog" button, some exposure value.
- Some branding, your site on other services, depending on how you name the blog.

I understand the idea behind a sub domain however I've yet to see a site rank well for a keyword and then seen its sub-domain rank too, and it's third... for any on keyword on one page of serps. That means they do still compete for terms imo, regardless of what Google says.

Downside - if Blogger folds so do your pages, a permanent redirect option would be unlikely.

Hmmm, that last part might be enough to make me change my mind. Anyway - sub-domain or not - does Google currently take a harsh stance against a second site linking to the products of the first site owned by the same person? Come to think of it I don't see two entries in any search results page owned by the same company and some companies own lots of sites. Is Google pooling all your sites and allowing you one "best page" per keyword ?

[mhansen]

Come to think of it I don't see two entries in any search results page owned by the same company and some companies own lots of sites. Is Google pooling all your sites and allowing you one "best page" per keyword ?

That is a very good question and with the recent focus being on "Content Ownership or Author Identification" (aka Real Person Ranking) it may very well be.


MH

[HuskyPup]

Come to think of it I don't see two entries in any search results page owned by the same company

And only this morning in my logs I found myself in G.com at #1-4 for a query:

.co.uk
.in
.com
.eu

Ok, I am the registered trademark holder and each page is about the same product but with differing information for each targeted market.

What surprised me was the .co.uk at #1, realistically it should have been the .in from where the product actually originates. I don't think I've ever seen the .co.uk in the .com results.

Is there any reason for not having WordPress on your own server?

[indyank]

Downside - if Blogger folds so do your pages, a permanent redirect option would be unlikely.

not really, if you go for your own domain name.Make sure that you have a back up of the content and switching out would be easy anytime...