Forum Moderators: phranque
What I am now thinking of doing is creating a new site dedicated purely to "widget" design ADVICE rather than selling a service. Then, this site will link to my current site should someone want help (I hope that makes sense).
Is this OK to do? Would this be frowned upon by Google if both sites are registered in my name?
Sorry if these quesations are stupid - I just want to be sure before I go ahead and do this! Thanks in advance for any advice...
Taking kitchens as an example, it's perfectly reasonable to create one site dedicated to selling goods and services, etc. and another site with design ideas, dos and don'ts, etc.
I would be open about it and use use similar domain names - don't pretend that the advice site is wholly independant.
Kaled.
1. Why double your marketing effort?
2. Why risk a duplicate content issue - or having to change pages for the sake of avoiding it?
3. Why spread your ranking success across two sites, when you can concentrate it on one?
4. Why risk confusing your visitors?
On the positive side, most visitors are a tad suspicious of ALL sales sites; a salesman who offers some free help is MUCH more likely to be trusted than one who just sells like the other 20,000.
You could go further; open a forum. All these moves will build trust, encourage revisits, and build your reputation. Do it well, and who will they turn to for professional services?
[edited by: Quadrille at 9:24 am (utc) on July 21, 2006]
On my current site I currently offer free advice (without giving so much that someone wouldn't need to pay for my services) - this takes up about 30-40 pages of my site.
What I don't want to do is give so much free advice that my sales will start declining where people don't need help.
For example, someone searching on google for "widget design service" is obviously looking to pay someone to help them. I don't want prospective customers looking at my site and then thinking they have enough free advice to do it themselves.
With the new site, I was going to specifically target it towards "widget design advice" alone - compiling new articles to prevent any duplicate content and marketing it as a completely different company. This site will then link back to my current site as a means of further increasing traffic for people who then decide they need help.
What I don't want to do is give so much free advice that my sales will start declining where people don't need help.
A sensible concern - but needn't be too much of a problem.
While there's no one 'right' way,
1. Make the free advice very non-specific - that will tend to encourage more questions, rather than give away too much - everyone want to know about their site!
2. Give advice in separate chunks, with a note that doing one thing sometimes affects other things, so to be very careful.
3. Repeatedly (but not to the point of boredom!) emphasise that design is a 'total site issue', involving seo, access, appearance, etc., and while small changes can help, an initial site-wide assessment and plan (which you don't give free!), is vital.
4. and so on ...
All that is true, and provided you don't overdo it, you will be helping many with small details that would never make you a fortune, while gently reminding others that they need skilled help.
And, don't forget, you avoid the negative apsects of two sites!
Good Luck, whatever you decide - the web usually rewards those who 'give a little back'
