SEO question for my future local business site

[r1pp3r]

Hello folks,

I can use some inspiration on how to set up my business strategy online (it's not an online business, but I will need to attract customers by using a good site).

Basically I will soon register my future company name. It will serve as the base for my business.

I am fortunate that my area of expertise can consist of many small sections, and there a lots of Exact Domein Names available so I believe that this is an extra opporunity to create my own network.

The question is how I should do this the best, I already have a couple ideas in mind:

1. I set up a Wordpress Multisite on subdomains, but I link the Exact Domein Names to the smaller sites (example: Wordpress will be installed on animals.com, a section will be created as fish.animals.com but a domain name like fish.com will link to the subdomein). I basically create small niche sites.
   
2. I maintain all the content on my business site, but register the exact domein names and 301-redirect them to a page on the site (example: fish.com will point to animals.com/fish)
   
3. I maintain all the content on my business site, but register the exact domein names and use an invisible frame to link them to a page on the site (example: fish.com will actually be animals.com/fish); I've seen this technique on sites with static pages, but I wonder how it can be done best with a Wordpress site (or could the 'duplicate content issue' be solved by using a rel=canonical attribute) ?
   
4. I forget about the exact domein names and try to optimize my site for all my desired keywords the best I can.
   
5. other?

I think the Exact Domein Names are a huge opportunity. Some of them have almost no competition so I think it's a good idea to use them. In fact: I already made a website with low competition, which turned into a huge success because it ranked 1st very fast and with the increase of visitors, it also ended up with better results for other pages on the site.

The most important part is that my visitors will be converted into clients, so I will have to make sure that every domain feels like it's part of the bigger business site (so I will be using 1 template for all websites and try to make sure my navigation covers the same for all sites).

The plan for the business site itself: it will be primarily used to optimise for local visitors and to identify myself and my services.

Do any of the above techniques make sense? What do you think I should use best? I'm a little worried about duplicate content and since I haven't used these techniques before (so far I've only built single websites without network) I can't really predict the impact.

Thanks in advance for any response. I hope everything is explained clear, if not I can always provide more info.

[Masterminding]

Originally Posted by r1pp3r

Hello folks,

I can use some inspiration on how to set up my business strategy online (it's not an online business, but I will need to attract customers by using a good site).

Basically I will soon register my future company name. It will serve as the base for my business.

I am fortunate that my area of expertise can consist of many small sections, and there a lots of Exact Domein Names available so I believe that this is an extra opporunity to create my own network.

The question is how I should do this the best, I already have a couple ideas in mind:

1. I set up a Wordpress Multisite on subdomains, but I link the Exact Domein Names to the smaller sites (example: Wordpress will be installed on animals.com, a section will be created as fish.animals.com but a domain name like fish.com will link to the subdomein). I basically create small niche sites.
2. I maintain all the content on my business site, but register the exact domein names and 301-redirect them to a page on the site (example: fish.com will point to animals.com/fish)
3. I maintain all the content on my business site, but register the exact domein names and use an invisible frame to link them to a page on the site (example: fish.com will actually be animals.com/fish); I've seen this technique on sites with static pages, but I wonder how it can be done best with a Wordpress site (or could the 'duplicate content issue' be solved by using a rel=canonical attribute) ?
4. I forget about the exact domein names and try to optimize my site for all my desired keywords the best I can.
5. other?

I think the Exact Domein Names are a huge opportunity. Some of them have almost no competition so I think it's a good idea to use them. In fact: I already made a website with low competition, which turned into a huge success because it ranked 1st very fast and with the increase of visitors, it also ended up with better results for other pages on the site.

The most important part is that my visitors will be converted into clients, so I will have to make sure that every domain feels like it's part of the bigger business site (so I will be using 1 template for all websites and try to make sure my navigation covers the same for all sites).

The plan for the business site itself: it will be primarily used to optimise for local visitors and to identify myself and my services.

Do any of the above techniques make sense? What do you think I should use best? I'm a little worried about duplicate content and since I haven't used these techniques before (so far I've only built single websites without network) I can't really predict the impact.

Thanks in advance for any response. I hope everything is explained clear, if not I can always provide more info.

I couldn't help but think the following when I read your plan: "And then I will launch a missile at a 30 degrees angle during the Winter sulstice when the temperature for the liquid inside the missile is cold enough to blow that fly away... OR... I can also grab a book and smack that fly."

In other words: why so... complicated?

If you want to optimize for local visitors, then get a Google Places listing. Get recommendations/reviews from sites like Yelp, etc.

Plus exact match domain names may work when executed properly (and they rarely are), but why try to grow 5 sites fairly well when you can grow 1 site extremely well?

Less is more my friend. The less sites you have, the better you can make each site. The better you can internally link those sites (THAT is linkbuilding too). Plus, fewer sites make you less lazy. Think about it: you'll invest more time and energy into making it grow because the risk of one site is bigger than that of multiple sites. Plus, multi-tasking never worked. It was just a buzz word.

Focus or fail. One domain, with multiple levels:

animals.com/fish
animals.com/dog
etc.

[r1pp3r]

Thanks for your response Masterminding,

I forgot to mention I'm living in Europe. I read a lot of nice stuff on this forum to improve my websites, but I can't apply everything. Sites such as yelp in my region might not be as usefull for me as it would be for you. Besides, I will start a business where i can't do any promotion for (besides having a quality website). There are very strict rules to do it, and I don't want to lose my licence for something silly like that

You are however right when you say I make things to difficult. I'm pretty much an amateur website owner, but all my sites rank very high and I do prepare as much as possible (covering all possible options which is what I also did with this 'case'). I do have to admit: the competition in my region is much lower as it would be in the US.

My ideas are based on the fact that I already have an exact match domainname. The results were amazing: almost no competetion, ranked 3rd for a single keyword after twee weeks and one month later the site ranked 1st where it still is today, has PR2 and I have done no linkbuilding at all.

So I concluded: this is easy and could be of use as support for a business site (both linkbuilding as attracting more visitors). The keywords I want to target is about the same compared to the website I already have (low to very low competition).

I will follow your advice and start with a single website. Once I get things running I can still expand to mini-sites and target low competition keywords. For some reasons this works for me

If someone else has some ideas or opinions: always welcome, I learn a lot from this