Advice Wanted - Content on Authority Site or Ecommerce Site?

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Hopefully my thread title makes sense but let me explain my thoughts and dilemma:

I am starting a new ecommerce store on a brand new domain that I registered - I love the domain and it's brandable

I already have another domain with exact match relevancy to the same niche as the ecommerce store. This domain is a PR2, aged site I picked up in auction however it's a longer domain and less brandable.

So I have 15 very high quality content articles ready to post online and I will be getting more. I am debating internally what my best long-term move would be and here are my options:

1. Create an authority site on the PR2 domain - put the articles there, pay for someone to blog for me and post to social media etc - goal would be to get an engaged audience. I then pass link juice to my ecommerce site - this looks good for my ecomm SEO and it will also pass some customers over by linking to products, doing reviews and linking through, etc.

2. Forget about the PR2 site mostly - I can put up some articles, maybe throw up a few more here and there and then put contextual links through so I still get some link juice but that's about it. I put the articles on my brand new domain instead and try to get the SEO rankings directly on that site.

Just as an FYI I know what I'm doing in ecommerce and own/ run several successful sites. But this is a different type of niche, think more hobby and it has a lot of people that like to research, read on things, and generally chat about it (forums). Where is the best value? Is it worth it to invest time and money in two sites at once with the goal to make most of it from the ecommerce site? Any other thoughts or options I didn't mention?
#advice #authority #content #ecommerce #site #wanted
  • Profile picture of the author keyon
    Originally Posted by wakeforce139 View Post

    1. Create an authority site on the PR2 domain - put the articles there, pay for someone to blog for me and post to social media etc - goal would be to get an engaged audience. I then pass link juice to my ecommerce site - this looks good for my ecomm SEO and it will also pass some customers over by linking to products, doing reviews and linking through, etc. u?
    You mentioned that you already have some successful sites. Did the method (above) work out for you with those sites? The reason I ask is that the formula you describe here has never really worked for me.
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  • Profile picture of the author malia
    I would test out the strategy of putting the ecom site on the aged/pr domain.

    I'm setting up an ecom site on an acquired PR domain (2 also) because it can be brandable. Not the best brand name, but certainly usable.

    I decided not to use it to "pass juice" to a separate ecommerce site because a lot of consistent links from one site to another makes them look obviously related.

    My strategy is to post the content, get it to page 2 in google and once it hits page 2 for the keywords then build it out.

    If my niche were like yours... what are you using for e-commerce? I'd put a blog/worpress either on a subdomain or subfolder, and put the community there, or make it a community site and put the shop on a subdomain or subfolder.
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  • Profile picture of the author wakeforce139
    I use PrestaShop or Magento for all of my websites. My plan would be (if I used ecommerce only) to have a "knowledge center" category and put the articles as subcats there. Basically like you are describing Malia. If you tell Google to ignore the links you are passing except for a few that should keep you safe shouldn't it?

    I agree with your strategy normally as I typically use expired PR domains for my ecomm sites but I haven't found one I want to brand. The one I have is just too long.

    Keyon - I've never tried this route before as I normally would use the aged domain for the ecomm site itself.
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    • Profile picture of the author keyon
      Originally Posted by wakeforce139 View Post


      Keyon - I've never tried this route before as I normally would use the aged domain for the ecomm site itself.
      I see. The reason I brought it up is that the method sort of sounds like SEO from about five years ago -- when it was actually possible to get a new site on page one without too much trouble. I suppose the basic concept might still work, but I suspect it would require a fairly large team of players working on a considerably large scale to have any impact on the serps.
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  • Profile picture of the author malia
    My plan would be (if I used ecommerce only) to have a "knowledge center" category and put the articles as subcats there.
    I still recommend using WordPress, if this really has a community. I've struggled with this also, and it just has more opportunity to pull your content outside of your shopping cart. I have a knowledgebase within my ecom software, and it just needs more functionality and I get tired of coding/hacking it when wordpress just has lots of plugins like:
    Authorship (i know that's easy, but still)
    Facebook open graph
    Twitter cards
    etc.

    I agree with your strategy normally as I typically use expired PR domains for my ecomm sites but I haven't found one I want to brand. The one I have is just too long.
    Don't care so much. Put it on a separate domain and just rank it for the sake of owning another spot in the top rankings. I felt the same way you did until I started looking at the "brands" in the top 10 in my niche and realized I needed to quit nit picking.

    If you tell Google to ignore the links you are passing except for a few that should keep you safe shouldn't it?
    It still creates a footprint that the sites are related and you're not supposed to have a site just for passing link juice to another site that you own.
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