Is it better to build a large site that covers many verticals or many sites dedicated to each vertical

[tlhseo]

Just wondering from an seo perspective is it better to build a large site that covers many verticals or build out many sites one for each vertical?

[jhinchcliffe]

In my experience one site that covers many verticals as long as they are related. For example if you have a fitness website, all the verticals should be fitness related, you dont want to talk about taxes on it lol.

The reason you would want one site is because all the content would be in one place, and you would have more regularly updated content, which is part of Google's algorithm. In addition, if you had separate sites it would be much more work. By having one you are gaining more authority much quicker, with less effort than optimizing a bunch of different sites.

[josh-riley]

And there's less back end to manage, which can be a huge obstacle to SEO if you don't manage it well.

[TommyTan]

I just wanted to add to this, in SEO's presepective, if you have one big site then you will only need to build backlinks for one site.  On the other hand, if you have multiple sites, you will have to build separate links for each site which causes more work and more complicated to manage.

In addition, freshness plays a role in SEO; therefore, if you have a big website, you will have more topics you can create contents for which means you can frequenly update your website.

Of course, there is always some cons.  If the big site falls, all of them falls together.