Marketing & SEO Discussion List - LED Digest

I build and sell bird house at birdhousesbymark.com. The web site is doing well and I have just finished my best year yet. In addition to the web site, I also work a lot of craft shows. I want to keep growing an expanding and hope to eventually turn this into a web only basis as I encroach upon retirement age.

I am thinking of creating additional "sister" web sites (i.e. birdfeedersonly.com and others). These web sites would specialize in only one type of product such as feeders. The main site would still contain all products. On the new sites, I would enrich the content with useful articles relating to bird feeding, etc. All of the sites would inter-link with each other.

Does this sound like a realistic approach? Has anyone else tried this? Would I just be wasting my time and effort? Would there be a positive ROI? How would the search engines view this?

Any help from experiences with this would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Mark Roberts

Bird Houses by Mark

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Written by Susan Ward
January 13, 2006

Mark,

Yes multiple sites work as long as they are different enough to not be mirror sites and you "enrich the content" as you stated... that is the most important thing. The search engines love them!

A few words of advice... don't be obsessive with the links back and forth, if you can, have the sites on different servers (meaning the last two numbers of the IP address' are different)... consider creating a RSS feed for articles about birds, bird watching, reviews on related products, bird watching vacations etc. Use your keywords in the titles of those feeds when you can. Soon you will be on your way to number one! Good Luck!

Susan Ward

greatgeorgiaproperties.com

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In response to Mark Roberts' post on Multiple Sites...

I've been running multiple sites for the past 9 years, trying to target the world and hone in on the search engines. However, it's my first 2 sites, MagneticSigns.com and Stickerz.com, that continue to fund my explorations into 40+ domains. I still think a catchy, well targeted domain name is the best ROI for a new site or product launch. Who's gonna find my Magnetic Signs at markmart.com?

Even though our business has grown from the dining room table to our own 5000 square foot building, I still get a charge of excitement when I see the first $50 come in from a newly developed website, regardless how much time and effort I spent developing it.

Herein lies the problem. Who are we? How do we answer the phone? We've become a web of identities which can lead to customer apprehension, needless to say upkeep is a bit cumbersome.

Two years ago, we undertook incorporating under the name "igoodz", trying to pull ourselves under one corporate identity - i for internet, goodz for all the things well sell. It hasn't been easy. To the customer, we're still MagneticSigns.com or whatever site he ordered from. Every month when charge card bills come in, a few customers who don't recognize the name igoodz call asking why did we charge them money and who are we.

I see this as a big concern in the scalability of our business and would love to hear from others. I continue to plug away at new products and ideas, mostly for the love of it, never giving in to the hope of being the next big hit.

For a young business though, what's more important scalability or getting a few bucks rolling in? Fortunately, a couple of my ideas pay the bills. Hats off to LED for being there back when I started.

Mark Gering

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I have some experience creating "sister sites." I manage over 30 disease specific sites. I started this project exactly one year ago. Our company wanted to find out the exact answer to the questions you are asking. Currently, I cannot tell you whether or not it is better to create several sites or just create one site and just work out "sections" of one web site.

We linked all of the disease sites to our main corporate web site (via a footer at the bottom of every single page). At first, all these links gave a boost to our Google PageRank raising it from a 5 to a 6. However, that has since gone  back to a 5. Nor did we see any more traffic to our main site from the PageRank boost. We did not link from the corp. site to the disease specific sites. This is because the links would not have made sense or have been appropriate.

We have linked the disease sites to one another where we felt it was appropriate. None of the disease sites are doing a great amount of traffic, some are doing better than others, I'm still in the process of analyzing why some sites are doing better than others. Nothing jumps out at me. Possibly it's the content and the number of people searching for that type of content.

One issue we ran into is that Editors at DMOZ told me that because the corporate site had a listing that it would be unrealistic for me to expect a listing for all the disease sites, as well. I didn't understand this philosophy as the disease sites really have nothing to do with the corporate site content wise, nor are we linking from the corp site to the disease sites. But, I have been having a great deal of success getting our sites listed in Zeal.

I'm promoting them all in a similar way - building out various types of content, submitting to free directories, requesting a reciprocal link, here and there.

My gut reaction is to say that when you first build these sites, it's going to be a long road ahead because they will all be brand new sites and they will have to overcome lack of content, lack of links, lack of history. So if you're looking for a quick fix, build out one established site into sections. However, I believe that in the long run, it will be more valuable to have many niche sites with plenty of content, links and history. It's just that you need the resources to build them up. One year is definitely not enough time.

Renee Kennedy

e-healtharticles.com

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Written by Jim Winters
January 16, 2006

I, for one, strongly believe that multiple sites are a great approach. We operate a number of sites that do exactly what you are talking about. We have our "main" directory site at qualitytrading.com and about 20 or more sites that are accessible from there. Many of the products we sell are listed on several of these sites with all sites leading into a common shopping cart.

By doing this, we are able to focus keywords, content, meta tagging and etc to a specific product line or category which, of course, helps us to achieve better rankings. It also makes these individual websites more relevant to the products that our customers are searching for. Of course, we have them all interlinked which is a grand way of cross selling and has proven to be very very successful.

One of the things we try to do is to maintain consistency throughout the lay out of the websites and pages so that customers never feel that they have been redirected or have left our "family" of websites.

By all means, I say go for it!

Sincerely,

Jim Winters

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Written by Diane Dennis
January 16, 2006

> Every month when charge card bills come in, a few

> customers who don't recognize the name igoodz call

> asking why did we charge them money and who are we.

    - Mark Gering

Hi Mark!

We have this problem as well and while we haven't been able to make it go away entirely we have been able to reduce the number of queries made by folks who have forgotten how the charge will appear on their card.

Approximately 2 weeks after we receive their order we send ONE follow-up email that reminds the customer that the charge will appear on their credit card statement as "Diane Dennis Enterprises".

It's important to note that we do not send any more email to the customer unless they subscribe to our free newsletter, just the ONE email reminder about the charge. (And we've never received a complaint about this reminder email either :).

Have an outstanding day and thank you everyone for the wonderful help and suggestions in the LED, and to Adam for all your time! :)

Diane Dennis

thecontractorsgroup.com

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Written by Shari Thurow
January 16, 2006

Hi all-

This is in response to the thread about building out multiple sites. I, too, have years of experience in building (or not building) "sister" sites. I have a very different opinion of some of the recent posts.

Whenever any business owner decides whether or not to create multiple sites for the same business, I always balance business goals and user goals. Quite frankly, I am completely disgusted with the advice that many search engine marketers and/or optimizers (SEMs / SEOs) give. Split this site up and my PageRank goes up. (FYI everyone - anyone who mentions PageRank and a number between 1 and 10 is an amateur at SEO.) Split your site up so that it is more keyword focused < nothing but search engine "mythology" IMHO.

#1: Multiple sites often confuse users. Just because a site is profitable does not mean it is user friendly. I will create a single user-friendly and search-friendly site any day and watch it outperform the multiple sites. And I mean outperform in every sense of the word. More qualified search engine traffic. More sales leads and closed sales.

Watching people sift through search data can be quite fascinating. Inevitably, users state, "I saw this stuff before. I didn't like it then, and I don't like it now." Then when you tell them that the multiple sites are owned by the same company? Go ahead, ask them how dependable and trustworthy they believe the business is after finding out that information. If you want someone's personal information, your site must communicate trust and credibility.

Brand dilution is also a side effect of having multiple sites.

#2: Search engines do not "Add to Cart." I am still rather surprised that people build sites primarily for search engine positioning knowing full well Google, Yahoo, MSN Search, etc. will not make purchase from a site.

Web directory editors are also onto the multiple site strategy (purely for link development purposes). I am not surprised that editors will only list a corporate site and not the others. Search engine software engineers and Web directory editors have been saying for years to not split up sites. I wish people would listen. For all of the effort it takes to maintain multiple sites, you could create a single good one.

#3: Many "sister" sites are considered search engine spam. Even if a "sister" site has unique content, or some redundant content, the purpose of building a "sister" site is often for search engine positioning. I lost count of the number of sites I've helped get unbanned or unpenalized due to this whole multiple domain, higher PageRank mentality.

When I train large corporations, I always show examples of search engine spam, beginning from obvious spam to less obvious spam. Without fail, a lot of people disagree with what search engine spam is and is not. But that's why I show the less obvious examples because whether a business owner, Web developer, or SEO likes it or not, it really doesn't matter if he/she thought the example was spam. What matters is that a search engine rep thought it was spam. And guess what? My less obvious spam examples are "sister" sites.

That being said, there are times when multiple sites are appropriate. Having a Spanish-language site and an English-language site is acceptable, as long as there are Spanish-speaking customer service reps at the other end of the Spanish-language site.

It is generally okay to have a corporate site and a shopping site. Reason? The visitors' intent is very different. People who go to a corporate site might be investors or journalists. People who go to a shopping site are researchers and/or buyers. However, if the corporate site content is not very large, then it is best not to create 2 sites. What these examples have in common are user-centered design. These examples strike a balance between user goals and

business goals.

Ultimately, search engines want what their users want. Trust me, users do not want redundant content in the search results. They don't want to feel deceived or ripped off. If SEOs don't think they are deceiving users, maybe you should have an objective, 3rd-party ask them. You might be surprised by the answer.

Best wishes,

Shari Thurow, Webmaster/Marketing Director

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Written by Michael Martinez
January 17, 2006

> Herein lies the problem. Who are we? How do

> we answer the phone? We've become a web

> of identities which can lead to customer apprehension,

> needless to say upkeep is a bit cumbersome.

    - Mark Gering

You need to develop a cobranding strategy that informs your customers of who you actually are. People are used to dealing with conglomerates that operate through multiple business names. It's okay to say on your Web site, and in all your correspondence with customers, "We're iGoodz, operating as XXXX PRODUCTS Web site. When you do business with XXXX, you're doing business with iGoodz."

I have been purchasing products online from another company which does this, and they have earned my trust from day one.

But if you look at any of your children's cereal boxes, or your laundry soap boxes, you're more than likely going to see a corporate co-branding with a name you recognize. We have grown up with dual corporate identities. We are comfortable with products that say, "Quantum Cereals is a Galactic Foods Company".

Michael Martinez, Author

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Written by Alex Hughart
January 17, 2006

Hello LED people,

I am currently involved with a project where the site owner wants to use subdomains to set up different sites for different countries. For example: blabla.com will have australia.blabla.com and uk.blabla.com. The content will be pretty much the same with shopping carts set up accordingly (multiple storefront Miva Merchant cart). Any ideas on how will this be viewed by search engines?

Your insights are highly appreciated.

Alex Hughart

bonsavon.com

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Written by Renee Kennedy
January 17, 2006

Just want to bring up another point regarding multiple-sites in response to Shari's great post. In terms of both SEO and visitor perspective, isn't it better to focus on one content topic and have all kinds of resources dedicated to that topic - staying in the niche, so to speak?

For example, when you are dealing with disease topics - say Breast Cancer - you can have a whole site dedicated to nothing but various Breast Cancer resources - news, discussions, articles, etc.  When people are searching out diseases, they usually aren't interested in 20 different diseases, they usually have one disease and that is what they want to know about.  Why confuse their experience with other disease topics?  Maybe in other content areas it is not as cut and dry as disease, but I feel that with diseases, maybe it's better to have the separate sites.

However, the branding issue has to be taken into consideration.  For instance, WebMD is a respected brand, it's going to be much easier for WebMD to build out a disease on their site because they are known, respected, etc.  However, when you're starting from scratch, what's the difference?  I believe that you can still brand across many different sites effectively.  If they have the same look and feel and they're all connected in some way, I think it would be possible to brand across sites.  I liked Michael's post on branding, I think he said it effectively, "We have grown up with dual brands."

I guess that I see nothing wrong with having multiple sites from an ethical standpoint, it's a choice, what will make your visitors happiest?

Renee Kennedy

e-healtharticles.com

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Written by Tom Anson
January 17, 2006

I'm not an expert on this, or anything, but it seems to me that Mark Roberts' idea of building multiple sites for related products (bird houses vs bird feeders) might possibly be somewhat self-defeating.  One of the things that search engines look for is content.  Why not just fill out (enrich) the content of the site that is listing the products already, insteading of listing products on one site, but sending visitors to another site for details.

It has been my experience that having multiple sites is not that big of a benefit, in and of itself.

I have four websites now, all under the umbrella of ansondigitalconcerns.com.  There is Anson Aromatic Essentials at therapeutic-grade.com, Health-Essentials.info at (you guessed it) health-essentials.info and Essential-Vitamins.com at essential-vitamins.com.  Health-Essentials is an informational website with articles that link to product pages on AAE and E-V. The ADC site links to each of these other sites, and each links back to ADC.  I'd have to say that interlinking these sites has not done much for traffic or sales.

However, when I did a major update to my therapeutic-grade.com site, I started seeing a major increase in traffic and sales to my website.  Before, other than the information pages on AAE, most of the content was in large, online catalog pages that listed most of my products in any one category.  (You can see that at http://snipurl.com/lnzz  [therapeutic-grade.com] ).  The update, which you can find at www.therapeutic-grade.com/indexNew.html, has a new page for each of the products.  While this update is not really online yet (it's running as a parallel site while I work out shopping cart problems on some of the pages) and the pages are generally not showing up in search results, traffic to my old site is increasing dramatically while sales are about triple of what they had been before November.

And while therapeutic-grade.com and essential-vitamins.com have several product pages that are VERY similar in content (both are selling Young Living supplements), I have yet to make a sale through the essential-vitamins.com website.

I'd have to say that this is all due to "enriching" my old website, not having a separte site with informational content. Another bonus (which seems a bit like a contradiction to what I've said above): Although I haven't updated the links on my Health-Essentials site to include the NEW product pages, the search results for this site have improved, as well.

Based on this, if I was Mark, I'd focus on building a really good site for bird houses and feeders, with lots of enriched content and helpful information.  After that was functioning, I'd maybe think about building a (mostly) informational site dealing with related topics.  Like, how DO you keep squirrels out of bird feeders?!?

Best of luck, Mark.

Tom Anson

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Written by David Spahr
January 18, 2006

Multiple Sites for Marketing:

I have done this with good success. After opening stereoviews.com and having decent success with it, I opened stereoviews.info, a links page where I sell some advertising. The income is relatively minor but far more than my hosting costs me. It is a very low maintenance site. It directs people to my sites as well as all others on the page.

I opened stereoviews.de and stereoviews.co.uk this past year. Stereoviews.de has material that is directed at European buyers. Stereoviews.co.uk is directed at Great Britain. These sites have been surprising. They have generated very decent income on their own and gotten these visitors to my other sites as well. They have jumped right up in the searches. Merchandise I have had great difficulty selling is doing very well now.

Stereoviews.com, .de, and co.uk all share the same links page. The sites are all heavily cross linked in other areas. They all have similar but different content.

Antique-photography.com is also part of this mix. It is an online auction. It has done far less well than the others. It costs very little to run though and allows me to run incoming inventory through it with at least some sales. I do save thousands by not using ebay to sell. It does get fairly decent traffic and also directs people to my other sites. It is No. 1 on all search engines for the search "antique photography" which is a really excellent thing. All of these sites place well in Google, Yahoo and MSN (and most everywhere else). I sell stereoviews (and most other types of antique photography). I place #1,2,5, and 6 for a search of "stereoviews" on Google. Yahoo is even better (#1 through 11,14,16,20). MSN is very good too (#1,2,3, 12, 14. and 17).

Selling a few items on ebay using some strategies I outlined recently on this list should help build traffic as well.

Building "sister sites" has had a synergistic effect for me. It has cost me very little money. It has been mostly just my time and the wear and tear on the seat of my pants. You can get truly great hosting very inexpensively these days. Ask me about my really great host.

David Spahr

stereoviews.info

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This is in response to multiple threads about multiple sites. I knew this was a hot topic, and I figured that my opinion and experience is quite different from others.

Regarding Renee's network of separate health sites? Well, WebMD is one of my clients, and some of their "sister" sites have been either penalized or banned from the search engines. (For the record, I didn't build the "sister" sites nor did I promote them. I told WebMD to get rid of them.) MedicineNet also had a network of "sister" sites. Banned from Google, which is why MedicineNet came to me in the first place -- to help them get unbanned.

So I absolutely do not agree with Ms. Kennedy's opinion on building different health sites. It does not matter whether or not anyone agrees with me. The bottom line is that Google, Yahoo, and other large search engines considered these types of sites to be spam. Software engineers determined that many "sister" sites were created deliberately to exploit the engines, and they were promptly penalized.

I honestly believe that my previous post holds water, so to speak. All I hear is "user user user." How many of you have really asked your users what they thought? A set of real usability tests? I don't mean site statistics data, which is not user testing at all. And I also don't mean you, the Web site owner, asking family members or friends what they think. I mean an objective, 3rd-party usability firm asking the hard questions to users about multiple sites.

I understand that this group is going to have its own anecdotal evidence to share, as will I. But there is a huge difference between anecdotal evidence and hard data. When I crunch my numbers from user tests (both formative and summative), Web analytics data, site search engine data, etc., both users and Web search engines show a resounding preference for single domains with plenty of useful content.

I would not split up different types of cancer into different sites. One of my clients is the National Cancer Institute. Their site isn't split up into multiple domains. Reason? It confuses users. Believe me, this site has no problems with search engine traffic and conversions.

If Web site owners want to go the multiple domain route, fine. You're the Web site owner. It is always your choice. My choice is not to go the multiple domain route. I'd rather spend my clients' money on building an outstanding user-friendly and search-friendly Web site.

Best wishes,

Shari Thurow

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Written by Mark Roberts
January 18, 2006

First of all, I want to thank Tom Anson and all of the others that responded to my post, both on and off list. The information has been very enlightning and informative and gives me a lot to think about. I would expect nothing less from all the fine people on this list.

One of the reasons that spawned the initial post is that, as a web develpment person, one of my clients that I began servicing a couple of years sells one type of product. When he came to me, he brought his 3 existing web sites. All selling the same product. The pages look different, have a different design and presentation. They all have the same pictures, products and wording.

One thing that has always puzzled me about these web sites is that one (or another) always appears high on the Google search results page (using the same search argument). Each of these site has essentially the same meta tags, site description, etc. Yet, One rates as high as 4 or 5 on the first page and the others are burried deep as on pages 30 + or deeper. I have never been able to figure this out (and not wanting to necessarily start another discussion about search engine positioning or if we should really care about it).

I know from personal experience that by searching using the arguments "bird houses" "bird feeders" "bat houses", etc. you can't even find my site...unless you include my name in the search. Yet I get a remarkable number of sales from my web site. Other people seem to find it, even if I can't.

Not really a question here as much as just to say thanks. Thanks!

Right now I think I will just start new sites as I have time using such content as to why bird feeding is important, how to feed, and environmental value of birding.

Mark Roberts

Roberts Computing Systems

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Written by Tom Aman
January 19, 2006

> I sell stereoviews (and most other types of antique photography).

> I place #1,2,5, and 6 for a search of "stereoviews" on Google.

> Yahoo is even better (#1 through 11,14,16,20). MSN is very

> good too (#1,2,3, 12, 14. and 17).

    - David Spahr

> Software engineers determined that many

> "sister" sites were created deliberately to exploit

> the engines, and they were promptly penalized.

    - Shari Thurow

I agree with Shari. Why build multiple, so called "sister sites"? What is the advantage? Do these really place any better in search engine results than a single site with sub-sections, provided the single site has good navigation that the search engine can spider properly? The multiple site approach is certainly not very friendly for the user. It clogs search results with annoying duplications. It may seem a good way to do SEO but, as Shari says, do any of you know what the users think?

David has multiple domains for his stereoviews and takes lots of positions near the top of different search engine results for the "stereoviews" search term. Taking postions 1 through 11,14,16,20 may sound great from an SEO point of view, but it is damned annoying from a surfer's point of view.

I am interested in stereo photos so I will give a user opinion on this. I wish David would get rid of the multiple domains and bring it all under one site. It is MOST annoying when doing a search to find the top positions being taken up by what is essentially the same site. It wastes a lot of time weeding through these to find the other sites of interest and the annoyance factor keeps getting higher when I keep coming back to essentially the same site or

information.

David, if I had ONE search result returned for all of your sites and that took me to a page that would let me get to any of the sub-sections of interest easily, I would be a *much* happier surfer and would be more likely to visit you site more often. It would also let me get to the exact thing I wanted much faster.

David's sites are not the only ones where this happens. I keep hitting this problem over and over when I am searching. And on terms I search regularly, I have learned the domains of many of the sites that do this and try to avoid them whenever I can (i.e. by not clicking on those particular results).

I was just thinking the other day that there seems to be a great deal of effort and money being put into SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Why? Search engine spiders don't buy anything, don't need any services, aren't interested in anyone's thoughts. What Web sites really need is UEO (User Experience Optimization). Sounds like Shari is on that track. I believe that, if more effort were put into UEO, SEO would follow without any added special effort (except possibly for META tags in the HEAD section of the document if you feel that makes a difference).

How about a whole new thread on UEO. We have lots of SEO experts here. Do we have any UEO experts?

Tom Aman

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Written by Barb Radiavljevic
January 19, 2006

> Approximately 2 weeks after we receive their

> order we send ONE follow-up email that reminds

> the customer that the charge will appear...

    - Diane Dennis

We also sell through several sites -- some our own and some are book search services. We do all credit card processing ourselves. Since we have designed our page titles and URLs to be search engine friendly, our company name is only being used on our newest site -- still under construction. We use Endicia for our shipping software, and it generates an email when we print the label for each package containing the tracking number. We have a standard selection of add-on's for this letter, depending upon the payment method. Here's an example:

-----------------------

This package contains xxxxx  , which you ordered from

barbsteachinghelp.com, hosted by tomfolio.com. Your credit

card was charged $0.00 by Barb's People Builders.

Thank you for your order.  Please check our other educational

materials at www.barbsbooks.com

-----------------------

This lets the customer remember what he ordered from me that's on its way, how much the credit card was actually charged, and the company name that will appear on the statement. It also makes sure that he remembers where he ordered it so he can go back again. If I have any other personal or relevant information that also needs to be explained (such as charging less for shipping than the shopping cart calculated) I add it to the end.

I am also sure to tell repeat customers how much I value their continued business. I hope this helps to distinguish my business from the larger sites I compete with.

Barb Radiavljevic

barbsbooks.com

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Written by Scott M. Stolz
January 19, 2006

I think one thing that is important here to distinguish is the definition of sister sites.  If you mean sites with the same or nearly identical content, you are likely to get banned or penalized by the search engines.  If you are talking about sites with related but not identical content, then it actually can help you in more ways than one and the search engines will love you...

The key is whether or not the website is useful to the user as a stand-alone website and whether or or not it duplicates another one of your websites.

When designing sites, think about the users experience first.  Does in make sense to have seperate websites?  In one example by another reader, having different websites targetted to different markets with different content would be something useful (i.e. if I am from the U.K., it is nice to not have to weed through a huge international site for U.K. specific information).  Or having separate websites for different types of content (i.e. an information website with articles, an e-commerce website, a directory of related resources, etc.) on the same subject can be useful because it helps them find what they want (i.e. they know to go to the article website to read an article and go to the e-commerce website to buy).  Basically ask yourself would organizing the websites in this way be useful and understandable to a visitor?

Remember, huge websites with a lot of content can and will do just as well as the same content spread over many sites.  And its a lot easier to market one website instead of 20 or 50 small ones.

I have large sites and I have many small sites.  I only create a new site if what I am creating does not fit into one of the other sites. All of them have done well because I focus on content, content, content.

Instead of trying to trick the search engines with the latest techniques, building a number of websites that are not duplicates that focus on content will give you much better results in the long term.

Multiple sites are good, as long as they are not duplicate content.

Scott M. Stolz

wistex.com

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Written by Boris Poljuha
January 20, 2006

> The multiple site approach is certainly

> not very friendly for the user. It clogs

> search results with annoying duplications.

    - Tom Aman

Well, just to express one more opinion, I also sort of hate when I search for something, and multiple results appear, coming from one same company.

But am I really just a user here, or rather an "educated user"? I am a webdesigner and I am not sure that I can put down the webdesigners glasses when I'm just searching, when I'm just a user. So, when I hate those multiple results, is it a designer talking or a user?

Another point - everybody hates commercials, yet they are present in more than a multiple number and form, regardless of whether we asked for them or not. In spite, they do work! And there's a lot of money pouring into advertising business.

And yet another point - when I test searchability of my own site - mmxdesign.com - I also get multiple results, even though I don't run sister-sites, just one main site with a few sub-sections, and they all (or at least the relevant ones) appear in results.

To summarize - more results are more likely to get more hits, than just one (surrounded by many, many others); must have something to do with the repetition, branding principles, subconcious impression, what not...

Boris Poljuha, Webdesigner

mmxdesign.com

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Written by Lee Roberts
January 23, 2006

I've been watching the multi-site thread started by my old Philips 66 credit union buddy Mark Roberts with intrigue.

So far we have had people suggest that sister sites selling the same things are not good.  I'll agree to the extent that, as suggested, the efforts to promote two sites with the same content is extremely challenging and for the most part a spinning of wheels.  The efforts and money expended diversified on the same content could be better used by promoting one Web site more heavily.

We have had people suggest that it is good and that some have had amazing success.  Well, I've seen it all and there is no amazing success.  The only success realized from an effort such as this is the possibility that you might have the sister sites showing up in the top 10 positions in the SERPs.  That's not real success.  You can't consider a store in the cyber market the same as two brick-n-mortar stores in different parts of the same city or even different cities or states.  If that were the case, don't you think Amazon, eBay, Overstock or any of the other major brands would have multiple sites?  They know it's a waste of money to promote more than one online store when that money could be more beneficial to the one store and bolster that store's position and brand.

We've heard about people with different stores selling different products.  That's no different than Ford Motor Company owning Jaguar, Range Rover, Mercury, Lincoln and others.  Heck, even Diahatsu owns a shipping company and makes cars.  Honda makes motorcycles and cars.  Toyota builds Toyota and Lexus.  That's brand diversity.

As Tom [Aman] points out, it is damned annoying to see multiple sites with the exact same content from the same people in the SERPs.  It's like going to the mall and find all the stores sell the same thing under different store names.  How boring can it get? Search engines need to do better, hopefully they're reading this, and eliminate multiple sites from the same company.  Search engine result quality will improve as a result.  A good way to  determine if the results are owned by the same company is to refer to the domain registration records.  Sites whose domain information is hidden behind privacy registrations that hide all the information instead of simply the email address could easily be considered owned by the same company.

Dave Spahr points out the one concept that many have probably never considered.  Building Web sites for other countries. You might have to get your information or content translated, but that's extremely beneficial.  Now, how Dave handles shipping issues I'd be interested in hearing more about.  As for how easy it was to move up the ranks in Germany and the United Kingdom, you need to consider the level of competition.  Many companies in other countries purchase the .com TLD to compete against Americans in the US-based searches.  However, many purchased their .com TLD before country specific TLDs were available. So the previous argument could be debated as not being 100% accurate.

Dave's sister site, based upon his description of the .info site, was one that he set up to provide information only and redirect people to his store or other places he advertises.  This is being used by many companies such as Crutchfield who has a sister site with over 100 articles.  Building an article Web site with really great articles is an extremely good idea.  If the articles are really great, the articles will be linked to by others which then builds the Page Rank values.  Having articles on your ecommerce site is a great idea as well, but Crutchfield is only one example of how educational material on another site can direct potential customers to the exact products being discussed in the how-to articles.

Considering the push towards search engines providing results for informational searches versus purchasing searches, Crutchfield's and Spahr's examples resonate with a truth that can't be denied. Informational sites will or should rise to the top when a person performs a search for information.  Product sites should rise to the top when a person performs a search for a product they wish to purchase.  Let's see if the _king of information_ can find a way to provide such informative searches.

Sincerely,

Lee Roberts

applepiecart.com

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Written by Don Baker
January 23, 2006

> Taking positions 1 through 11,14,16,20 may sound

> great from an SEO point of view, but it is damned

> annoying from a surfer's point of view...

    - Tom Aman

I agree with Tom from the user's viewpoint -- it can be annoying. From the merchant's viewpoint, however, I think David has the same moral responsibility to minimize his online presence that Coca-Cola has in minimizing the varieties of Coke stocked on grocery shelves -- i.e., none. In the grocery store, it's called "brand extension" -- creating variations of winning brands to increase the possibility that the shopper will notice and select one, if not more, varieties.

It's "damned annoying" to me that I have to look past all the varieties of Coke on the grocery shelf (i.e., offline SERPS) to find Diet Rite, but I accept it and I'll bet Tom does too. Many autos sold as different brands are essentially identical under the skin (e.g., Fords and Mercurys; some Lincolns and Jaguars). How "damned annoying" is it to figure out which cars are really the same car? -- but it's understood and accepted. Why should it be different online?

Offline merchants design product packages to take the most shelf space, and even pay grocers to stock their products (i.e., offline pay-per-inclusion URL listings -- Google could charge for Froogle feeds, too). If merchants try to take up as much space as possible in physical stores -- where it costs real money to pursue this strategy -- why shouldn't merchants try the same thing online, where it costs almost nothing to do so?

I once took a call from a fellow who wanted us to improve his SE rankings. I asked about his site, and he gave me four or five domain names. It turned out they were all variants of the same site, selling the same products through slightly different sites. In so doing, he had achieved several top-ten rankings for the most important KW phrases, which guaranteed visits and sales.

I asked him why he had created more sites,  since the original site was doing pretty well. "I gotta feed my family," he replied. He didn't become a client, but I couldn't argue with his logic or his strategy. The online real estate was there for the taking (there's no shortage of online shelf space) and he took it. If that's wrong, then "private labeling," "rebranding," and "affiliate marketing" are also wrong -- I believe they are not.

What I think hasn't been emphasized in this thread is that Google is waging a *vigorous* war against "damned annoying" merchants: multiple-domain retailers (aka mininets), affiliate-spam sites, blog-and-ping sites, scraped-content-AdSense-focused directories, etc. The Jagger update was designed to eliminate a lot of this stuff. Earlier last year, Google wiped out affiliate spam in AdWords listings. A cursory read of Matt Cutts's blog shows Google has also developed the tools to spot and eliminate lots of spammy sites manually; they're paying human editors to find and eliminate them, and encouraging users to inform them of spammy sites.

One day, Tom could get his wish: only one site allowed per product line; no mininets, no affiliate sites, no aggregators, no rebranding. But would that be better?

Don Baker

NSI Partners

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Written by Sandra Linley
January 23, 2006

Multiple Sites - a Personal Perspective

I have a 6 year old marketing dilemma / website.  B Independent was formed to provide information and assistive products to brain injury survivors and their families. The site has been successful, but not as originally envisioned. Most visitors arrive via product searches (we rank high for fitness gear, medication reminders, rollators, etc.) and depart without ever realizing the brain injury connection.  Personal injury lawyers and rehab centers tend to outrank us on brain injury searches.

Last fall, we decided to launch a secondary site with a tighter focus and a subset of products.  KeepSafeJewelry is packed with information on emergency medical ID jewelry.  The site logo makes clear the connection between the two sites, noting this is "B Independent's KeepSafeJewelry," design-wise the two sites are similar, and the shopping cart used is B Independent's.

Was going with a second site - as opposed to beefing up the medical jewelry section of B Independent - a smart marketing move?  I wish I knew. We announced the launch on B Independent, and google crawled the new site almost immediately.  However, it has taken several months for KeepSafeJewelry to start coming up on keyword  searches, and on most terms it still doesn't rank high.

Adding a comparable number of articles to B Independent would have had a greater immediate impact.  But long term the separate site seems to make sense.  Visitors seeking to learn about or purchase medical jewelry can find exactly what they want - no clutter.  The website name accurately reflects its purpose, a definite plus for adwords and similar campaigns (unlike the situation with "bindependent," which is consistently misread as "bin-dependent"). Finally, the search engines should relish the focused and information-rich nature of the site.

What do you guys think?  Is this a situation that justifies separate sites, or are we mucking things up?  Pros, cons... I'd love to hear them! Then, if there's interest, I'll report KeepSafeJewelry's progress (or lack thereof) six months to a year out.

Sandra Linley

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Written by David Spahr
January 24, 2006

> David, if I had ONE search result returned for

> all of your sites and that took me to a page that

> would let me get to any of the sub-sections of

> interest easily, I would be a *much* happier surfer...

    - Tom Aman

Tom, this is very easy for you to say considering you are not truly interested in anything on my site and do not share the mentality of my customers. Can you tell me what really motivates the majority of my visitors? Saying "stereoviews" or "they like antiques" is not the answer. Can you hit the nail exactly on the head? I do not get "surfers". I get people that know what they want.

As I said, It has increased my sales of merchandise I was having trouble selling. These new sites do present material that I was not able to sell well at all before. Stereoviews.com was becoming too gargantuan. I was getting to the point where I was in danger of exceeding my storage space and bandwidth for that site and it would cost me as much or more as spinning off these specialty sites. Gargantuan sites can be quite annoying and frustrating. I needed a way to break it down into more focused, easy to navigate sections and not throw a bunch of stuff in people's faces they do not want or need to see.

European buyers would rather look at the strictly European site. I get customer feedback all the time saying exactly that. Most do not buy American subjects / items at all. Why should they have to bother with sorting through it? Going to an American site looking for European items is not an intuitively obvious choice! It is attempting to be all things to all people which I believe to be a mistake. I can show you a stereoview site that attempts to do that. After you shop it a while, you see why it is a bad idea. Just too darn big. You do not "get the exact thing (you) wanted much faster". Try GoAntiques or TIAS or eBay (speaking of multiple country sites) if you think I am wrong. They break it down into subsections and have search features that bring you to places where 80%+ of what you find you still do not want. A deluge of junk. It can take hours too! The way my sites are populated is completely legitimate and definitely not junky. Each site has completely unique material.

These single word domains (of my exact principle product) became available to people of all countries just recently. I should not acquire / use them and allow competitors to have them? Just park on them? I think not. If you had over 20,000 mostly unique items to sell you might see why I would do this. My sites get repopulated with new and completely different items all the time. Nothing stays the same. Ever.

I suppose I could make my home page so it went to broader subsections but if you have a page that has always been No. 1 there could be great danger in jimmying with it too much. I have often thought of making big changes but always decide not to fix what is not broken. Why not let Google do the breakdowns? If all a person wants is European or British material why shouldn't they just see it right there on the Google list rather than play click roulette?

What about most other stereoview sites? You might find it and you might not while dealing with the navigational and categorical idiosyncrasies of each site.  Idiosyncratic they are too!

I am just a one man business and single parent just making an OK honest living. I am not a corporate entity and do not have big cabbage for real fancy designs, consultants, studies etc. I do not do design or SEO for others. I took a business model I was using in the world before internet and converted it to this purpose (while I was the stay-at-home parent in the 90's). I deal with all my customers on a personal level answering all email myself and doing all the other schlepping to keep things going. No shopping carts, customer reps., receptionists, nothing. Don't need em. Yes, I have no flunkies! My customers appreciate the personal contact. I talk to many of them on the phone and end up meeting many of them in person at shows and conventions.

As I said before, the effect has been synergistic. My bottom line is better and I am getting new customers. So far, the search engines seem to have recognized that I am not a spammer.

I get positive feedback from customers all the time and have not fielded even one negative response.

David Spahr

stereoviews.com

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Written by Barbara Radisavljevic
January 24, 2006

I've been following this discussion with a lot of interest because I'm in the process of building a sister site of my own, but not to get higher search engine ranking.

I currently have two sites that sell mostly the same educational materials for teachers and home schoolers. The first one is the largest, but it is free form, created with FrontPage (I'm not a programmer), and has just been growing as I add new books that come in, day by day. The navigation is so bad I sometimes can't find what I'm looking for myself. Since there is no shopping cart, people have to contact me in some way in order to buy.

As a temporary fix, I got my own domain on a booksellers' cooperative I belong to and although my domain stands alone, it is also searched along with the main site. I try to link to my title descriptions there in answering inquiries from people who just want one or two books so that they will have the convenience of using the shopping cart on that site.

But I see this as only a temporary fix. I can't get any separate stats for this domain, so it's hard to judge whether people are finding it through the search engines or not. My original site, clumsy as it is, still generates the most traffic and sales.

The site I'm building now is to have its own shopping cart (Miva), which I understand is hidden from the search engines, so I want to build up the content outside the shopping cart. Some of this will be new content, and some will be revisions of what is on the original site.

The purpose of the new site is to make it easier for customers to find what they want and to complete their shopping on line if that's what they prefer -- not to generate more hits. My thought was to keep the old site up for a while after the new one starts being promoted until the new site begin to do as well in the search engines, but it might not ever do as well, since all pages in the present site are static and the engines can see every word in the book descriptions. It's my understanding that these won't be seen in the Miva shopping cart.

I'm not sure what to do about that, but after all this discussion I'm wondering if I'm hurting myself to leave the old site, which ranks pretty well, up after the new site is submitted. I'm not planning to submit it until it has much more content, and until I get a good mix of products in the cart, which will take time, I will probably still link back to my domain on the cooperative.

My rankings have not been hurt any by having the two sites. Do you think the new site will knock me out? Any advice? I was thinking of leaving the present site up because it gets so many visitors, and then maybe linking to the titles I'm describing on the Miva shopping cart if that is possible.

Barbara Radisavljevic

The best books for children and education

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Written by Alex Hughart
January 25, 2006

Barbara,

I used Miva to build my entire site, not just the shopping cart part. The only static page is a copy of the Miva's Store Front page to accommodate search engines. As soon as customers click on any link on the index page they are in Miva - so are the search engines which on their own are getting better and better in indexing dynamic pages.

In addition to this, Miva has SEO abilities. By adding keywords, swapping store code, etc. you can optimize each and every page. You can also get a module that shortens those long links. Many of my Miva pages rank high.

That being said, you can leave your site as it is and just link products to the Miva shopping cart. I know it's scary to change anything and potentially lose your ranking but better organizing your site and making it more user friendly will certainly help in the long run. Who knows how many customers you've lost because they couldn't find what they need. BTW, you can have inventory tracking with Miva. This will eliminate trips to the warehouse to check on availability (I snooped around your site...)

Regards,

Alex Hughart

bonsavon.com

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Written by Mark Medlicott
January 26, 2006

I have followed this thread for quite a while now, and allowing that many people have different opinions, and different results to base their conclusions on, it has amazed me that no one has followed up Shari Thurow's post in any detail.

> How many of you have really asked your users

> what they thought? A set of real usability tests?

> I don¹t mean site statistics data, which is not

> user testing at all.

I encountered a customer who also wished to create a multi-site scenario, with closely related products, and working on the SEO improvements they expected (had read about). I was against this, even though I stood to make more money designing more websites, and suggested we do a random customer survey.

My results were not scientifically correlated, as neither of our budgets stretched that far, but we did gather enough information to put us off multi-sites. I stress this relates to our products, but the interesting response we got from most people interviewed was along these lines; "Why try and confuse me? If I go shopping in the real world to buy cat food in one shop, why do I have to drive to another shop (that you own as well) to buy dog food?" Those  interviewed also consistently talked of the trust and reliability of the shop / website owner, established over time as in the real world.

These people could accept that one shop has groceries, and another has animal food, but related products should be in the same shop. Transferring this lesson to the web, if a person can buy cat food and dog food (pet food) all in one place, and only use their credit card once (lessening fears of hackers or fraud), you are more likely to gain their custom.

If you are an information site only, (IMHO) have as many sites as you like, because your content is what searchers will find, and if it is relevant they will come.

Regards

Mark Medlicott

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Written by Tom Anson
January 27, 2006

Barbara Radisavljevic presents an interesting situation, in terms of sister sites.  I'm not sure what my advice is really worth, but here goes anyway.

If I was (were?) in Barbara's shoes, I think I'd forget about building the new site.  The old site, even with its navigational nightmares, (by her admission) still generates the most traffic and sales.  I can think of no good reason to move away from that.

What could be done instead is to add the Miva shopping cart to that site, then redesign the it (which can all be done off-line with Dreamweaver or something) to include good design and navigation, but keeping the old file names.  These pages could then link to Miva for payment.

This is essentially what I've done with my websites, and my sales are up about 300% since November.  You can see an example of each at therapeutic-grade.com/products/supplements/ningxiaRed.htm (the new page with the shopping cart link), compared to therapeutic-grade.com/cgi-bin/ez-catalog/cat_display.cgi (my shopping cart page, which has made it's way into the Google index).

Tom Anson