Still a good idea to have a niche store?

[inhouseseo]

I have had a niche store since 2008. It has a higher conversion rate than my main site, and does fairly well.

The site template is an exact copy of my main site, and all the product URLs are the same. The only difference is, it only has items from a certain category.

My questions is, are niche store still a good idea?

Will I be better of doing a page to page 301 to my main site, and just focus on a single site?

Am I better of as far as SEO with one main site?

If anyone has experience with this, I would like to hear about your experience. Any thoughts are appreciated.

[gazzerman1]

Without knowing a lot more....

The current state of Google would suggest you keep both sites. Do you interlink them? If so DON'T.

It is easier to rank for niche results with a niche site, however you will have a more powerful site overall with once main site that you can focus all your time on.

Is it possible to rewrite the product descriptions for one of the sites? This make the site more powerful and independent from the other?

Anyone at Google would say combine them, but a penalty is just one small mistake away from you having no business over night. Keep them both (re-write the content)

The fact that you have higher conversion rates on the niche show you that it is easier to rank and easier to show your customers you are an expert in the field. I would not mess with that.

[Hannah_Smith]

If your niche site is working better for you right now there seems little point in 301-ing it to your main site. Not only do you risk losing rankings (as your main site may not rank for the terms your niche site used to), you've already said your main site doesn't convert as well - so even if you get the main site ranking in place of the niche site, you'll still likely lose sales.

If I were you I'd keep the two sites for now, as Gary says don't interlink them and try to make sure the content isn't exactly the same.

However, I would encourage you to consider what you might want to do in the future.

Where do you want to invest your time and focus your attention? Do you want to improve your main site, or your niche site? Continuing to invest in both (i.e. dividing your resources) may mean you're left with two sites which are just 'ok' rather than one really great site which might not be the smartest move long term.