Blog Network: One vs. Multiple Domains
 

I have 8 niches with WordPress content ready to go. Trying to decide whether to register 8 niche-specific domains and have separate sites, or register one central domain and have 8 www.domain.com/niche category URLs. Pros? Cons?

8 individual domains so you can trade links if for no other reason

I have enough other domains to create lots of backlinks, so that isn't a high priority in the decision making.

always on their own domains

Hey Jace your sig makes you sound more-than-qualified to give that advice. But I'm curious, what the reasons are? Thanks in advance

because domains are cheap and a single domain is always looked on as better than a subdomain or folder in the search engines

not too mention it is good for repeat visitors, think a visitor is going to remember sexylegblog.com or sexylegblog.com/stockings better?

Would the engines smile or frown on a pattern with the domains? Like niche-blog-guide.com?

they wouldn't frown on it. niche-blog-guide.com reads as "nich blog guide" via search engines.

DO less thinking and more work.

domains are cheap...and if ur really hurting go with infos (=

Go with multiple domains.....

I agree with everything ^^^ these guys said but...

when you have one site it will be one bigger site and google loves that, IMO when you have 2 sites and everything else is equal Google will place the bigger site higher in the SE results

True. Networks of sites rather than individual sites are always treated better in my experience.

In my experience sub-domains are MUCH better for SE. I am not sure why and I don?t really care. All I know is my ?sub-domain blogs? are always placed higher in serps. :2 cents:

Addition to all mentioned above:

For domain

- Lot's of webmasters set "no sub-domain" or "root domain only" trade rule
- Separate domain network valued higher (in case you'll decide to sell it)
- If one of your blogs will be closed due to abuse report etc. the rest of the network will remain working.

For sub-domains / dirs

- Higher Alexa rating

I would go with a new domain and IP for every blog, good for hardlinking, SE's usually like it better (that would also depend on the status of the domain you use sub's from), good for bookmarkers etc

yep, that answers about 90% of all questions asked on webmaster boards...:thumbsup

if you go with one domain,I prefer blog1.domain.com,blog2.domain.com....

Yes and no. Subdomains are pretty much treated like seperate domains and not like subdirectories by the search engines (because www. is a subdomain itself), but they get some authority (or however you want to call it) from the main domain.

That's the reason why blogs on blogger, xlogz, thumblogger, etc. rank so well, it's because of the strength of the main domain, not just because they are subdomains. Look a squidoo for example, similar phenomenon, but they use subdirectories. Bottom line: If it's on a popular domain, it ranks well, no matter if subdomain or subdirectory.

The advantage of subdomains or domains is that you can put them on their own IP and the URL is more memorable, the advantage of sucdirectories is that they often get crawled and added to the index faster.

I personally prefer subdomains, the URL looks better and the respective keywords get more emphasis when someone looks at a result in the SERPs and the keywords he was looking for are at the very beginning of the URL.

get unique IPs and seperate domains... importanto
research your domains... check with google trends and other seo tools to find the most search terms/phrases for your niches and put them into the domain..

Remember.............Quality brings people back

All good feedback, thanks guys

go for seperate domains...