1 Ecommerce site for several product segments or 1 Ecommerce site for each product segment ?

[lcourse]

I am currently struggling with the decision whether to create individual ecommerce sites for each of 3 consumer product segments or rather to integrate them all under one umbrella  domain.

Obviously integration under 1 domain makes link building easier, but I am not sure how far google will favor in rankings websites focussed on one topic=product segment.

Product segments are medium competitive.Product segments are not directly related but there may be some overlap in customer demographics-

Any thoughts ?

[yeagerd]

By the product segments not being directly related, I would ask how indirect is the relation?  Are we talking Fresh Produce and Cars or Tablets and PC's?

I would highly suggest building a single site unless you have some regulatory factors that keep you from it.  Think of other eCommerce sites and the product diversity they have.  eBay, Wal-Mart etc.  There is a lot of variations.

You may want to put product information and blogs into separate folders for each product, so you build a clear set of data defining the products you sell.

[InMarketingWeTrust]

I have a client with a similar issue. In the end, it will depend on how close the relation is. Google will favor websites with more focused content. From a SEO perspective you will want to split the domains. You will also save on the costs of running three domains at once. However, from a workload perspective, it will be easier to manage just the single domain compared to three different websites. This will allow you to target your audience better with multiple domains.

Good examples of both ideas can be seen in the business world.
Pepsico split all their major brands into a number of sections, and even have separate domains for some (http://www.fritolay.com), and keep most of their beverage products under the Pepsico website.
Woolworths use a subdomain for both their supermarket and for their car, home, pet, travel and life insurance. They both carry the Woolworths brand name. The two may some crossover in target audience, but the products are not directly related. Woolworths also has other divisions that do have separate domains. Dan Murphy's is owned by Woolworths Limited, but trades under its own domain.

The major influence factor will be how linked the products are under a branding perspective and how much time and effort you are willing to commit to this. Woolworths catagorises all of their 'Woolworths' brand under the one domain. Anything else gets its own separate domain. They want to focus more heavily on the SEO side because they can afford to pay people to do this. If you are a one man operation, consider how much time and money you can put into this.

[MoosaHemani]

I will agree with David, Here you have to decide how different and indirect they are in relation? I mean if they are Laptops and smart phones then i guess you should have all categories under one website but if one is about technology while other is about travelling tools then you probably should try and target each under single website.

Hope this make sense to you!

[lcourse]

Thanks a lot everybody for your input.

In order to make the decision it would be great to learn more on how google determines the topic of an ecommerce site. Many of these potential factors should be relatively easy to test, by watching ranking changes after additions of new product segments to a site. Did you ever see any article/post on the topic or did you notice yourself drops of rankings after adding a limited number of new product segments to a site?

Main factors could be:

• related keywords on index page/title
• percentage of products with related keywords
• percentage of links from external topical related sites
  Anything else?
  By considering these, I could increase likelyhood that google considers my site relevant for all 3 segments.

So maybe by offering just a limited number of 3 different product segments, disadvantage for ranking on keywords may not be so significant compared to single topic site.