one big site vs individual niche domains

I would say that if your niche's are somewhat similar having them on the same site, with different pages, categories and etc would be fine.

However, like in my case I have a site that focuses on action figures and another that focuses on shoes. It would make little to no sense for these two niches to exist on the same website. Hope that helps.

the first one

Bloggingpro is right. Often, when I look for something specific online and land on a website that has many categories about a lot of stuff that aren't that related to each other, I don't stay long because it decreases the credibility of the site.

Then of course if it's in the same niche (like parrots and you have a category for each kind of parrots) it's very relevant and makes your site appear as an authority website.

I prefer one big site because the limit is the sky. You can make money money then you think. You can be viewed as an expert in the niche.

I like to hear more on this topic

I think it's better to have several targeted sites than one general site. It's alway easier to work with sites that are targeted at a single theme instead of something that's general with general keywords.

i am building a lot of mini directories instead of one big directory for the city i live in i am finding it easier to rank for my main keywords because of a loaded domain but it would depend on how many niche markets/keywords your after

I've become a fan of small niche sites. They are less work and for me they make more money. If you have one big site and that market changes or Search Engines change then you can easily lose some or all of your income. With several sites in different niches you can lose one and not lose all you income.

It is what you call an authority site. Several domains with different niche/topics can be harder to manage unless you may want to set and forget your sites.

Andrea

I would say it depends on your niche. If the niche lends itself to beingn scalable, a big authority site would be tha best option. If your niche a specialized one, it would be better to build a smaller but highly targeted site.

I prefer big sites to. More money even though more problems.

Isn't that amazon.com?

I hear they are doing quite well.

I would say to separate your domains for niches that aren't complimentary to each other. If they are complimentary products, you could list on the same domain.

It's an interesting discussion but I think a lot of the decision has to do with the resources and abilities of the marketer.

Craig McPherson's breakdown of markets, niches and sub-niches was a good visual example and it does show the sweet spot for most capable marketers.

Going too big can become overwhelming, plus, you're jumping into the big boys and corporate territory. Too small and you're return can be slim to none.

With a solid plan and some resources I think you could jump into the Level 1 and 2 arena. It's a bigger hill to climb when you're getting started but after that, keeping it on track shouldn't be an issue if the marketer already has experience running multiple sites.

An advantage that a smaller marketer might have when jumping up to the Level 1 and 2 league is mindset, especially with SEO. Most of the big sites rely on their authority and put little effort into SEO at the page level. This is why the little guy can still carve out a place for himself with micro-niches. Take that same approach with a bigger site and you might be able to knock a couple of the big boys off the map.

I used to have many hundreds of domains - too many to manage, especially when anything went wrong.
Now downsizing and concentrating on a much smaller number of higher quality ones which is definitely helping to reduce the number of late night early morning sessions I work.

If the main site was a "review" type site that had high quality reviews on different topics/products across a range of niches, you could be seen as an authority when someone wanted to check out the product first. Then add coupons etc.?? Maybe...

I know of a webmaster who has a short main domain name and used his keywords in sub-domains as well as a keyword rich article with his main keyword. It worked well for him with rankings.

ill get first

Mine is a classic case of small verses broad niche debate.

I want the valuable opinion of this forum members on my 'broad vs small niche' experiment.

On 21 November 2008 I started my website on a way too brooooooooooad niche 'home and family health' " 'my weight loss experiment' (remove spaces and add dot com) touching all aspects home issues and family health issues and other topics unrelated individually to each other but all pertaining to home and family life.

My site contains pages of unrelated subdomains individually but all relate to the broad niche 'home and family health.

I created my first website for the purpose of earning through adsense and affiliate marketing and so after much thought (as an experiment)I selected a very very broad niche so that I can create many many pages with unique content.Next I created many individual pages with unique content with adsense and affiliate marketing monetization.

I feel that for the webpage to be on the first page of google certain basic needs are to be fulfilled.They are (1) unique and useful content,(2)SEO optimization internally (3)enough one way back links from other websites for that page.If you can fulfill these conditions nothing else matters.

I created many one way back links for all the individual pages through article marketing. Due to this many of my pages are on the first page of google for unrelated keywords such as 'buy sleep aids','pcos cure','weight loss tips' to name a few.There are many other keywords which are not mentioned here.

My reasoning was that the 99% of the viewers see only the description in SERP listings
and if they think that it may solve their problem,click it and visit the site.Viewers are not
bothered about the broadness of your niche or anything else for that matter.

After I optimized my adsense ads,I suddenly see increase in my adsense earnings.There are some affiliate sales too.Now my adsense earnings are $30 per month and my amazon and other affiliate earnings are picking up slowly.My traffic is around 200 per day and the page views are 700 per day.

I eagerly await your learned views.Thanks.

This is a question I am still looking for answers. A few good ideas out there. If you are going for a big site, maybe you should buy a few exact keyword level 3 domains and let them age for what is worth. They might come handy and ripe at some point.

My personal opinion is that a bigger site is better these days as opposed to a lot of small sites based on exact match keyword domains...

Google seems to be moving away from the mini-site model (you can still make great money from them though!!!) and as larger sites generally provide more value to the visitor, I think these are more long term solutions...they may take longer to rank for keywords however.

OK, being new to this game, this question will sound stupid/confused.

In the large vs. small realm, I see one problem with small as the cost of maintaining multiple domain names, even if they all use the same host account.

Would having a single, generic domain be effective/good? For example, have the domain be: thedefinitivedog.com and then have multiple blog pages on dogs that ARE NOT linked to each other, so it would look like the stuff came from multiple authors?

better? worse? upside? downside?

People purchase from people they trust and like. This can be built by making a large website that caters for your target audience. For example it's much better to have a website that people can keep checking up on for recent news or new products rather than a stale website that hasn't been worked on in a long time. If you know a way to benefit consumers from niche websites such as coupon codes or special offers by all means go for it.

However as some of the other members have stated, don't make a content that doesn't benefit your audience. You may be better off making separate niche sites in that case.

if you use ppc, then one big site shouldn't be that hard to do. It would be an investment though.

Some excellent and numerous answers here as always, This forum rocks. Wish I had more time to hang out here.

In my own case, I was more or less "ignorance on fire" when I first started selling on line almost 4 years go.

In looking at Craig McPherson's post above - where he discusses the Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3 type of structure - My initial efforts resulted in a mix of Level 2 and Level 3, and it took off.

Basically, I found the Level 2 "niche" - which had numerous potential and closely-related "sub niches" for the Level 3 parts of my site. I was able to locate a single manufacturer that offered enough related "Level 3" products for me to populate my website with, and they agreed to a drop-ship relationship.

(I stayed away from Level 1 entirely because I knew I couldn't compete in any category that would be far too broad.)

So this particular model has worked absolutely beautifully for me - I had the primary keyword phrases for the site as a whole, and then more long-tail related keywords for each of the product pages.

Well, I guess that means I personally think that the "one website that caters to lots of categories" option is not as likely to succeed as having websites that are more niche-specific.

Again, I know I've only been at this for a few years, but my own experience has been encouraging enough that I can cast my vote with confidence that keeping each website focused on its own niche is the way to go.

I like the many sites for seo reasons, you can rank high if your keywords are in the url. simple as that.

Justin Atlan

I will also prefer one big site. You can make money money then you think. You can be viewed as an expert in the niche.

I think you should go for many domains on the same category but focusing different keywords....

I think it would be easier to optimize some specific good keywords for certain domain.