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We are a company that reaches customers and prospects by way of print media and the internet. For the last 6 or 7 years we have had one website that provides both a shopping experience and news/informational content to our customers. However, the platform we have been using is sorely outdated and in desperate need of an upgrade. The updated platform offered by the host company is terrific for news and information publishing (including blogging, RSS, etc.)-- which we want -- but still lacking in regards to all the key features we need as a "cataloger" who desires a solid eCommerce channel. We discovered a great eComm platform through the company that developed our Order Mgmt software. Right out of the box it offers everything we need (and more). However, the new eComm platform offers no news publishing mgmt. The solution we've come up with is to develop a news and information site under one domain with the original company and develop an eComm site under a separate domain with the new company. The big worry, of course, is that we ultimately damage our SEO by doing it this way. We'd like to use each site to drive traffic to the other. What are the pros and cons to this approach? Given the situation, is this a viable solution?
Thanks in advance for any help or advice...
[edited by: caveman at 5:02 pm (utc) on Feb. 2, 2007]
[edit reason] Removed specifics, per TOS. [/edit]
Your question is difficult to answer without knowing the site and even if I knew the site it's likely that reasonable people could differ on this one.
Personally I try to be guided by a combination of what would make most sense to users, and also my marketing/business objectives.
FWIW, you would probably fine either way, so long as cross linking between the two sites is conservative. Excessive cross-linking could cause problems.
The other thing to keep an eye on is that if you create a second site, it should not have an identical backlink profile to the first site, IMO.
Also, regarding the original site, sometimes major sitewide changes that come with CMS shifts can send sites into oblivion for a while in the SE's. To the extent that you can retain the same URI's or 301 old ones to new ones that will help mitigate effects of a wholesale change in site URI's.
Thanks for the input! Your insight is helpful...especially concerning linking between the sites. I'm sure as we get into it, the tendency is going to be to plaster each site with links to the other one, but your advice is well taken.
One thing we are trying to do is keep the eComm site under the current domain so that we're not moving the bulk of the content to a completely new domain. The news and information site will go under a new domain. Truth be told, the engines never really did see the news and info content in the old site -- 99% of the search results people saw were in regards to our products.
We will have to make some design modifications on both sites, but the overall shell we hope to keep very similar.
If you (or anyone else) has any further advice, it's greatly appreciated! Thanks again!
[edited by: caveman at 8:13 pm (utc) on Feb. 2, 2007]
[edit reason] Specifics removed (eh, em, again), per TOS. ;-) [/edit]
