When Building A Niche Site

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jerxs

jerxs

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Jun 24, 2006
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When building a niche site which do you prefer or which method does better for you overall?

Do you #1;

Like to take one large niche, lets say hunting and then break that one collective niche and break the site down into smaller niche subjects like;

*Hunting.com*
Deer Hunting
Bear Hunting
Turkey Hunting
Cooter Hunting (he he he)

Or do you #2;

Take each sub-niche and make a mini site from each, dedicated ip's or uniques domains for each niche;

CooterHunting.com
DeerHunting.com

Ive used both and have done decent using both, but Im having a hard time deciding what to do with a rather large site that I never launched, I could break this one site down about three different ways, if broke down to each individual niche I have a minimum of 50 mini sites here....

Whats your preference? Whats worked best for you in the past and why?
 


I'd go with one domain and break it up from there for the simple reason that if you wanted to conglomerate these "like" sites into a network later, you would prefer for all of them to have the same URL setup (i.e. cooterhunter.com, snatchhunter.com)

But what if you find that cooterhunter.com is available but snatchhunter.com isn't?

Save yourself some time and money and just go with one domain and branch that puppy out. It will be less maintenance too.
 
So from your experience, have you noticed any SEO benefits from using either or? Do you find using one collective domain makes is just as easy to rank for the sub niches contained in the collective domain, or do you find it easier to rank using a unique domain for each?

Like I said Ive went both routes in the past and really have not noticed much of a difference, besides what you have already mentioned, 50 different domains, means 50 different CMS installs, 50 different unique templates, 50 different sites to keep track of and somehow update on somewhat of a regular basis......
 
Well, look at it this way: With one domain you are attempting to gain trust to just one site. With 50, you are attempting to gain trust to 50.

Just the effort you have to put in to "SEO" 50 sites as opposed to 1 makes the decision for me.
 
jerxs said:
When building a niche site which do you prefer or which method does better for you overall?

Do you #1;

Like to take one large niche, lets say hunting and then break that one collective niche and break the site down into smaller niche subjects like;

*Hunting.com*
Deer Hunting
Bear Hunting
Turkey Hunting
Cooter Hunting (he he he)

Or do you #2;

Take each sub-niche and make a mini site from each, dedicated ip's or uniques domains for each niche;

CooterHunting.com
DeerHunting.com

Ive used both and have done decent using both, but Im having a hard time deciding what to do with a rather large site that I never launched, I could break this one site down about three different ways, if broke down to each individual niche I have a minimum of 50 mini sites here....

Whats your preference? Whats worked best for you in the past and why?
Click to expand...

in the end, it very much depends on if your target group is really homogenous. e.g. you took the topic hunting.

now, you can distinct between rifle hunting and bow hunting. bow hunters however have quite often nothing in common with rifle hunters. they go for the same prey but are quite rivaling about the right way to hunt.

now, the decision to be made is two-fold: type of prey and way of hunting it.

you could split this further and further in the very beginning but you would not no one thing for sure: how many visitors will actually decide to stay with your community/site/shop whatever.

therefore, i would start small (one domain, hunting.com), then diversify (subdomaining special topics duck.hunting.com), then spin-off: duckhunting.com.

but that is just me and my 2 cents :)
 
cyberworkspace said:
in the end, it very much depends on if your target group is really homogenous. e.g. you took the topic hunting.

now, you can distinct between rifle hunting and bow hunting. bow hunters however have quite often nothing in common with rifle hunters. they go for the same prey but are quite rivaling about the right way to hunt.

now, the decision to be made is two-fold: type of prey and way of hunting it.

you could split this further and further in the very beginning but you would not no one thing for sure: how many visitors will actually decide to stay with your community/site/shop whatever.

therefore, i would start small (one domain, hunting.com), then diversify (subdomaining special topics duck.hunting.com), then spin-off: duckhunting.com.

but that is just me and my 2 cents :)
Click to expand...

I think I may just take this route.....

So im going to throw something else out there, when you build a site that you spawn off into subdomains, how do you go about setting things up? The last site I built like this I used seperate installs of Wordpress on each subdomain using the same template, with a sitewide nav file that was included in each, to navigate around the complete site seamlessly.

Though I have heard doing this could throw up a red flag "Blog Farm," what do you think? how would you normally go about developing subdomains, so that they are seamlessly merged to act and behave like one large site?

Im just full of questions this afternoon, but seriously Ive been doing things my way for awhile now and am starting to become curious as to how other people operate. Hopefully me and others will get some new ideas to try, or be introduced to an easier and smarter way of doing things.
 
me personally, i prefer smaller niche sites rather than tackling one large site. that's just me though
 
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