I’m leaning towards option 1 because I can get domain names that match specific searches. But I’m worried it might be harder to manage or hurt my SEO. What do you think?
Think about it like this: if you had a market stall, would you rent a different stall for every type of pie you sell?
Creating separate domains for each pie type is a quick way to waste time and money. If all your pies are related, it’s better to have one site with dedicated pages. That way, if someone finds your apple pie page, they might also discover your pumpkin pie and buy both!
I get what you’re saying, but maybe my example wasn’t the best. What if I was a painter who does both residential and commercial projects? Would it be better to have separate sites for residentialpainting.com and commercialpainting.com, or should I stick with one site and separate pages for each service?
Also, this business isn’t local. It serves customers nationwide. I’m thinking about separate sites because the domain names match what people search for. I’ve also seen others succeed with this multi-site strategy.
You can create sections within the same site for your residential and commercial services. If you serve different locations, you can even make separate landing pages for each area you cover. It’s like giving each audience its own ‘homepage’ without the hassle of managing multiple websites. It’s more efficient and cost-effective.
Does this mean there’s no real benefit to having a domain name that matches a common search term? For example, if I want to rank for commercial painting, would commercialpainting.com be helpful?
If your only reason for multiple sites is the domain name, it’s not worth it. You’ll lose brand consistency. Sure, having a keyword in your domain can help a little, but it’s not a magic solution. When was the last time you saw a top-ranking site just because of its domain name? Focus on building a strong, unified brand instead.
Managing multiple domains means extra work for SEO, ads, and updates. If your audience overlaps, splitting them between different sites could hurt your efforts. But if others are succeeding with this strategy, it might be worth looking into how they handle it.
What about the value of a domain name that matches a search term? For example, if I offer tech and healthcare consulting, should I use myconsultingfirm.com/tech and other pages, or techconsulting.com and other separate sites?
The ‘competitors’ I mentioned don’t offer the same service as me but target a similar audience. A customer could easily use both of our services during one project.