I met a criminal defense attorney while camping at San Elijo State Beach who asked me whether or not it is better to have a few smaller websites rather than one for search engine optimization reasons. I am often asked this question so I thought I would blog about it.
The general premise to be that the more websites you have the more success you might have in the search engines. In other words, you might be found in either more places or take two (or more) spots in the top 10 results of a particular keyword. My knee-jerk reaction is that it is better to have one website and promote the heck out of it instead. However, the answer really depends on you and your situation. You might also be wondering if Google (or other search engines) have a problem with this tactic in general.
From a purely technical/logistical/cost perspective the reason I say to have one website is because I find most customers have enough trouble simply building and maintaining their website and two or more becomes a heap more trouble. Consider these factors: cost of outside help, time to write content, cost to advertise two websites etc .. Think of each website as a brick and mortar store- do you have the time to manage both? So if you are capable of overcoming these challenges, and you have a lot of time, then it may be feasible to have more than one website. But what does Google think?
