Multiple Websites

[CHR]

You were right as it applied to some/many.
So were the other opinions and we know that
opinions vary.....

PS - don't we need varying opinions?

If the opinions applied to the original topic of the post like:

In my web travels, I'm running across florists with both TF and FTD hosted sites plus a non-shopping cart informational site and others to boot.

If all those sites are jammed with traffic, then you know they're working. But for 99%+ of florists, that's NOT the case.

I see florists struggling in the SERPS when they should be at or near the top of their cities - but they have links for their companies pointing to multiple domains so they've diluted their Page Rank.

Emphasis mine.

None of you guys that run multiple domains are 'struggling in the SERPs' so when you opine to florists that aren't web savvy and are not currently doing well to run more sites, not less, I definitely think it's questionable advice.

Indicating that the topic and advice in post #1 as poor (by ranking the thread with a single star) only confuses the florists to which the post was directed in the first place.

They see you guys as successful, but to get where you are, you didn't do it just by paying for a few boilerplate sites - and you certainly couldn't achieve much success that way now.

That's just my opinion, however.....

 

[bloomz]

I don't know anything about the star rating deal, didn't even know what that meant. Sure didn't mean to offend, just meant to add some advice from another perspective.

I just don't subscribe to the theory that less web presence is more. Boilerplate sites are far from what I was talking about - hence the mention a couple times of the time it takes to keep them updated. But, given boilerplate sites - I feel 2 is still better than 1 and yes I do have 1 boilerplate site that is there for its very own specific reason. I just focus 99% of my energy on the other one.

Here's my advice freely given to people who ask me how to do better on the internet - build your own site and then sit up til midnite every night for 5 years. Now if I could only do that for multiple sites.....

But it's ok - opinions vary

blessings

 

[theRKF]

I have to agree with Bloomzie a bit, here.

There is no one-approach-fits-all solution, and the answer lies somewhere in the amount of investment a business is willing to put into their web presence.

When I was full-time in a shop we ran multiple sites, targeted at different clients. It was rewarding to have 3 top 10 results in Google for an overlapping search term, but in the end we scaled back to one site when I left since that was much easier to manage.

Ryan

 

[CHR]

Here's my advice freely given to people who ask me how to do better on the internet - build your own site and then sit up til midnite every night for 5 years.

Now that's great advice.

In the mean time....

Here are a couple examples of why two, three of four weak-performing local florist sites targeting one city are a less than optimal.

1) Review sites (and I've seen this happening to folks right here at FC). One customers adds a review to your listing that displays your WS template site. Two more add reviews to a listing that refers to your other e-commerce site. Your competitors each have three reviews or more. You're not showing in the OneBox (top 3 local listings linked to Google Maps/Local) or are displayed lower for your town because you've spread yourself out too thinly.

(As I understand it, at present neither Google Local nor Yahoo Local will consolidate the split data under one listing.)

2) Social Bookmarking

Customers may wish to bookmark your company to return it later by using del.icio.us, Google's Bookmarks or a similar web-based service.

You have two customers that marked your TF template, 2 that marked your FTD template and one that used your non-shopping cart splash/entry page on yet a third URL.

Instead of having 5 strong bookmarks tagged with the good keywords pointing to a single domain, your link juice is now spread thinly and is far less effective in pushing you higher in search engines.

3) Major Directories

Yahoo listed your first site under your city years ago. Your second site got listed in DMOZ under your city. Your third site, which links to both your first & second site for online shopping, is listed in your Chamber of Commerce profile. Result = diluted page rank which if combined together would put most florists in a small-medium size towns at or near the #1 spot in both Google and Yahoo. BUT, none of the sites have enough quality inbound links on their own to make it to the top.

In each of these cases, I continue to believe that one well-focused, well-linked site would produce much better results than 3 weaker ones.

 

[RJD]

Cathy, as usual, you're very right. Not too long ago we all talked about how to handle both www.myshopname.com and myshopname.com. Two versions of the same domain name can split link love and possibly cause duplicate content penalties. Two sites selling essentially the same products for the same shop are an even worse idea.

Your customers will also get confused if they see a product on one site (say FTD), but end up at another site (say TF) looking for that product again. You'll lose the sale.

Additionally, like bloomzie and Ryan said, it's tough to maintain quality content on multiple sites. We started with just the floral site, focused 100% of our efforts on the one site, and it's been very good to us. Some of my friends in the area with multiple sites aren't seeing the return we are.

My advice is to start with one good website, and keep it good. If it becomes logical to have a second site (as in our case we felt it did), go that route. I did have to explain our position so my agreement didn't seem hypocritical.

 

[blumen]

We have two sites...

We have two. One which I built gives lots of info about our shop, has wedding bouquet photos, etc. That site has links on just about every page to the other site, an e-commerce site with Media99.

It's worked out great for us. Our first site ranks highly with the search engines, due to the SEO work I've done on it over the years.

We've been with Media99 for less than a year, and love them! Would highly recommend the company.

 

[bloomz]

I just "stumbled" across a case for multiple websites.

Googled the word flowers - one of the lucky 10 on that first page was virtualflorist

googled florist - one of the lucky 10 is iflorist.com and virtualflorist.com

2 dfferent sites, same company

I'd love to be in the top 10 for either of those keywords. The have both of them, and 2 of the top 10 listings for florist.

I wish I felt I had time to run a few more, but alas, I try to have some kind of life outside of my business as well.

opinions vary...

 

[twiggy]

could the same thing happen with different pages from the same website?? for example a customer comment page, and your home page, and maybe a wedding page?

 

[bloomz]

could the same thing happen with different pages from the same website?? for example a customer comment page, and your home page, and maybe a wedding page?

Very unlikely that 2 pages from the same domain would be returned in the organic listings.

But it could happen....face

Just very unlikely with the big search engines

 

[CHR]

Let me explain why those two OG sites do well in SERPs:

Seven or eight years ago, and until about 2004, 'virtual flowers' (the sending of virtual bouquets via email) was a novelty. Web directories had a special category for those sites and the category sat under the 'Computers' topic. IIRC the category page in DMOZ was a Page Rank 6 or 7, far higher than any topic that listed real florists, which were generally PR 2-5.

Smart OGs created 'virtual' sites for two reasons: for the page rank link and to collect emails for marketing their OG services. Each 'virtual flowers' bouquet collects two email addresses, the sender's and the recipient's. Great, cheap way to gather marketing info.

The older sites from those categories received thousands and thousands of inbound links and even though Google has decreased the PR to a 3 (since they figured out the listings were just lead generators, too) and most of the sites have been deleted from the categories (for being lead generators made to simply feed OG sites) the residual links and the age of the sites still keeps some of them near the top of the SERPs. (The Yahoo Directory still does list them. )

If any florist wishes to replicate the success of those sites, give yourself about 3-4 years and plan to spend hours every day trying to get inbound links. There's no easy way to get yourself there today, even through ma$$ive link buying.