One Site vs. Multiple Sites

From a link development perspective

[rover]

When developing content for widgets, if we went with one large site that has directories:

widget.com/blue-widgets.htm
widget.com/green-widgets.htm
widget.com/red-widgets.htm
etc.

Instead of doing separate sites for each one:

blue-widgets-guide.com
green-widgets-guide.com
red-widgets-guides.com
etc.

Wouldn't this be easier in terms of getting more links concentrated/focused on one domain?

In other words if all of the information is on one domain (rather than multiple domains), then all of the links we develop would work to boost that one domain, rather than having the inbound links divided between several sites.

I've just started to develop separate sites, but now I'm liking the idea of having less overhead with running one site rather than several stand alone sites in terms of link development, and also not worrying so much about other issues related to interlinking our own separate domains, getting caught in the google sandbox, and other possible negative search engine effects of having multiple domains that might exist now or likely come into play in the future...

But, I don't know if this single site approach also produces a lot of negatives in terms of having all of our eggs in one basket, getting less focused anchor text on inbound links, fewer opportunities for directory links from DMOZ, Yahoo, etc.

Does anyone have any experiences or suggestions about this (single site vs. multiple sites) in terms of link development or other things to watch out for?

[prairie]

Hello Rover,

Possibly you could consider linking all the more specific sites to the main site, but not the same in reverse.

Prairie.

[bhartzer]

If you're developing separate sites just for link popularity then don't do it. The search engines are getting better and better at discovering "networks" of sites.

One content-rich site on one domain is far better than separate non-content-rich sites linking together.

prairie has a good point, I would develop content-rich sites and then point them to the main site without the main site linking back.

[rover]

Thanks very much for your input.

Actually, if I did continue with the separate domain approach, each of the separate domains would be content-rich and there would be no duplicate content between the sites.

I guess, I'm just realizing that focusing link development on one domain might produce a better boost and overall effect than dividing inbound links among several domains.

Also, I am definitely concerned about the search engines and how they view interlinked domains now and how this continues to evolve with so much search engine spam out there. I'm concerned even if the intention is not spammy, and if each of the separate sites are content-rich and don't share any duplicate content. (We have a dedicated server, but the IP addresses are on the same IP block, and I don't want to try to hide things like this or the whois information for the domains, etc.)

[prairie]

Perhaps you could dice up the hosting as well. Even if its not an issue now, it could well be in the not too distant future.

Prairie.

[rover]

Thanks very much Prairie. I think I'm just getting a little weary of the whole game with multiple domains/sites, and will finally just go with one site that has multiple directories and concentrate on creating unique, relevant, useful content for it.

Of course, I will then have all of the eggs in the one domain basket, and some additional drawbacks.

But on the upside, I don't have to manage all of the individual domains, don't need to worry about the IP addresses of the multiple domains, and the domain whois information, and basically will have nothing to hide.

And, as relevant to this forum, I can do focused, concentrated link development for the one site, to really boost it. (Rather than diluting the efforts for several sites).

As I see more and more search engine spam and webmasters with dozens of interlinking domains, and realize that the search engines are more actively combatting it now (and probably will continue to step up their efforts), I think this might work out for the best for us in the long term.

I often see the comment that Google and others rank pages and not sites, but I do think that the sites do come into play in all of this.