Wildly different topics on one domain? (hobby blogger)
-
Hello Mozzers,
Let's say I have a lot of knowledge about a range of different subjects, for example:
-
bicycle maintenance
-
wildlife photography
-
tennis racket re-stringing
-
brewing beer
-
windsurfing holidays
I would like to share all of my knowledge in blog format with lots of good content, instructions, videos etc.
What is the best way to set up my blogging empire?!...
a) Use separate domains for each subject:
www.BRANDbicyclemaintenance.com, www.BRANDbrewingbeer.com
b) Use one brand domain with sub directories:
www.BRAND.com/bicycle-maintenance/, www.BRAND.com/brewing-beer/
b) Use sub-domains:
bicyclemaintenance.BRAND.com, brewingbeer.BRAND.com
(I would like to achieve good rankings & traffic in order to generate a small income from these sites)
-
-
Reading your list of possible topics.....
-
bicycle maintenance
-
wildlife photography
-
tennis racket re-stringing
-
brewing beer
-
windsurfing holidays
I would register a domain like FunHog.com and attack.
-
-
I was thinking about this a bit myself recently.. I can see a few advantages to both options.
Advantages of the all in one approach:
Inbound links you get will benefit all your blogs.
If you get a link to a post about brewing beer, then a certain amount of the juice will be passed around the domain which will contribute towards ranking the rest of your content. Over time, as links amass, the DA of this all-in-one blog will be higher than that of the individual blog sites.
I'm not sure how you do it, but I would also find one site far easier to manage than juggling 5 or so of them.
Advantages of having separate domains:
All other things equal, then right off the bat **www.BRANDbicyclemaintenance.com will outrank **www.BRAND.com/bicycle-maintenance. ****The exact match domain and consistency of hyperlink anchor text within the site is likely to give you a headstart in the SERPs over the all-in-one domain.
If it was me I'd go with the all-in-one, on the basis that inbound links are harder to get than exact-match-domains - which you can always buy later. That said, I'd be really interested to hear from anyone with more experience doing this.
-
A couple of questions first:
You mention "BRAND" in all the examples. What is this Brand, how does it relate to the topics covered and what's it meant to mean to people? Why should they care? What's going to tie it together across all these disparate topics? Is there a common theme/view across all of these subject.
While they may all be very different, if the blogs are about your insights, you experience then maybe they deserve to be under one banner.
Do any of the topics you want to cover share the same audience?
If you want to achieve good rankings, then the key really is to write good quality content that people are going to want to read/share/link to. Creating this content takes time. Seriously think about how much time you have available, not just for writing, but research and promotion (guest blogging etc.)
Can you afford to spend the time required across all of these topics? Would it be better to focus on one and build that first. It's easier to write about something you absolutely love. To which topics can you bring new insights, unique point of view etc?
Think also about your return on investment - what's likely to give you a better return? One totally kick-ass, blog or lots of weaker ones.
What do you want to mean to the world. Do you want to be known as the go-to guy for "cycle maintenance?"
My suggestion again is to think about how you want to be perceived and then do whatever you need to do to be that person - but clearly set out your goals first. (Don't stop at "write blogs, make money")
You don't say what your background is, or if you've been blogging before or how much success you've had in the past, so I hope this helps.
Obviously there's a lot to consider, by my guy feeling would be to go with separate blogs on separate domains and give them each an appropriate/unique personality/look. The more blogs you create - the more you're diluting your attention.
Good luck!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
I have one keyword which disappeared
My site currently ranks for over 2000 of which 92 are in the number 1 position. Im very active with this site. My Main keyword is a two word keyword ,I have never been below the position #30. Has always been at best 3rd and fourth page. I rank primarily for mostly 3 part keywords and 4 part keywords. However , I noticed about a month ago,The main keyword no longer showing up on serp tools .Moz included. At first i was getting wierd results using keyword tool .Not moz serp tool. I would get different result every time i checked it. When i tried to verify these results ,Only to find my site not at the projected page and rank. After more than a month now this particular keyword is no where in site. Im still getting traffic fom all the other keywords but im a bit confused over this. I thought my main keyword was about to be on the bottom of the 2nd page but instead seems to be completely gone.
Technical SEO | | Yellow20000 -
Redirect 301 & Wild Cards
Afternoon All! Question, I am having trouble getting my head around redirects and I am wondering if someone could help me on this.... We recently changed our website and although were using the same database, were using a different URL structure. So for example... Old URL siteurl.com/products/product/moredetails/merlin.id1553.html
Technical SEO | | scottiedog
New URL siteurl.com//vertigo/dl/product.php?p=1553 As you can see the product has the same ID number, just in a different directory. What I'd like to happen is.... If you go too siteurl.com////.idXXXX.html then you are 301'd too siteurl.com//vertigo/do/product.php?p=XXXX Obviously XXXX is the ID number of the product in our database. Any thoughts? I need help! Thanks in advance.0 -
Redirect root domain to www
I've been having issues with my keyword rankings with MOZ and this is what David at M0Z asked me to do below. Does anyone have a solution to this? I'm not 100% sure what to do. Does it hurt ranking to have a domain at the root or not? Can I 301 redirect a whole site or do I have to do individual pages. "Your campaign is looking for rankings for the www version of the campaign but the URL resolves as a root domain. This would explain the discrepancy. Since there is no re-direct between the two, you can have brickmarkers.com 301 re-direct to www.site.com which will prevent you from re-creating your campaign to track the root domain. Once the re-direct is in place it will take a while for Google to show the www version in the results in which your campaign rankings will be accurate." Thanks
Technical SEO | | SeaDrive0 -
Different domains vs subdomains for 6 e-shops
We have to choose to stay working with different domain or move all 6 domains to new domain. Right now we have 6 different brand e-shops with 6 domains that have Domain Authority 30-40. So for example:
Technical SEO | | TauriUrb
e-shop1.com
e-shop2.com
.. And we are thinkig about making brand new domain and move all these domains content and link juice into one domain with 301 redirect. So we would have one e-shop solution with 6 subdomains like: e-shop1.newdomain.com
e-shop2.newdomain.com
... Like gap.com does with their brands or http://www.andotherbrands.com. That each brand has subdomains but they use same e-shop solution. With same domains or new subdomains strategy, we will improve internal linking structure between all these e-shops. We have also considerd that with new domain we don't have good organic search results within few first months. So we try to see the bigger picture and consider SEO future. SO QUESTION IS:
Lets leave brand marketing out, then what would you suggest to do? To stay with 6 different DA 30-40 domains or build one stong domain with 6 different brand subpages? We cant use subcategories. All subpages products will be clothes. Latetly there as beed many news and articles that subdomains are part of main domain and vice versa we are looking suggestions from this board. As we right now think that as we have weak domains righ now it would be better idea to start building one strong domain.0 -
Domain Switch - With lost control of original domain.
Hey all, A client finally sold a domain name after being harassed to sell for many years, without talking to us about it first. They moved the site to a new domain, and the purchasing company took over the original domain. Then they called me, wondering why the site is no longer showing up in Google. I've done some initial research, and everything I find for advice assumes that you have control over the original domain. We don't. I'm hoping someone here has some creative advice, so we don't have to start from the beginning, and/or painfully update links we've acquired. My only thought was that the new company may be kind enough to post 301's for us if we provided them.... Any thoughts / advice / life rings will be greatly appreciated! 🙂
Technical SEO | | KBK0 -
Domain redirect seo
Hello, my domain www.pacomarca.com and when i start the new campaing i get this pronblem: We have detected that the domain www.pacomarca.com and the domain pacomarca.com both respond to web requests and do not redirect. Having two "twin" domains that both resolve forces them to battle for SERP positions, making your SEO efforts less effective. We suggest redirecting one, then entering the other here. my domain is in networksolutions.com. how can i resolve it? many thanks Gonzalo
Technical SEO | | Kuna0 -
Changing preferred domain
My company has an international website, and because of a technical issue visitors in one of our main countries cannot visits the "www" version of our site. Currently, the www version is our preferred domain - and the non www redirects to that page. To solve this problem, I was thinking of proposing the following and would greatly appreciate any feedback! (Note: If you answered my www vs. non www question, thanks - this is a follow up) 1. Set non www site as the preferred version 2. Redirect from www to non www 3. Contact our current links and ask them to change to without “www” 4. Change canonical URLs to without “www”
Technical SEO | | theLotter0 -
Consolidating domains on root subject
I had several sites regarding a core subject. The main site was xyz.com and then I had multiple sites for the inner categories of xyz.com . I decided to consolidate everything to a single site and so did a change of address in webmaster tools and 301 redirected all niche sites to the appropriate page on the primary site of xyz.com. Shortly after we lost rankings for those niche pages. Any thoughts?
Technical SEO | | Hakkasan0