I’ve received this question from a few clients lately. They’re wondering if they should have multiple domains for their business and my answer is yes – and no. The problem with multiple sites is that you are spreading your content across domains which can confuse customers. With one domain, you have one brand in the mind of your customers and inbound links from other sites all going to your one brand. With additional domains, you need to now brand those extra sites and monitor another set of metrics. Considering how valuable reputable links are to your SEO strategy, it’s a lot of work to split that SEO goodness among domains.
When is it a good idea? If you own a keyword rich domain such as “bestkeywordever.com”, you may want to work on traffic for bestkeywordever since it’s a hot search term. If you plan to sell it at some point, that’s when it’s a good idea to have a second name to differentiate a piece of your work. The key to this strategy is putting separate, fresh content on any microsites (no duplicating) and promoting them as independent sites. The bottom line is you need to think about how much time you have and your ultimate goals before you go the microsite route. Do you have the resources to maintain solid content on multiple websites? Is there a great reason to split your work? If not, stick with one URL and focus your SEO efforts on it.