Is it Bad to Break Up A Site into Multiple Sites?

[bosleypalmer]

I have a big cluttered website with endless pages. It's a non-profit that has content for patients, researchers, therapists, etc..

Would it be a bad idea to turn this cluttered site into 3 or more completely different sites, each focused on their specific demographic? Or should I just figure out how to organize the one site better?

Thanks for your help!!!

[JaredCarrizales]

In my experience it's rarely the best solution to break up a site (or start out with separate sites for that matter). The cases that generally warrant having multiple properties don't usually have anything to do with the site itself, but the business. An example would be a medium fast food chain that begins allowing franchise operations, but wants each location to now have it's own website.

A big reason for this so rarely being a good option is because you're splitting assets, plain and simple. Domain authority, link equity, brand awareness, inevitable loss in rank for certain pages, not to mention the technical work on the back end that would have to be done (site architecture rearrangement on the new sites, 301s, etc). And this isn't just in the beginning either - you're going to always have to do things in 3s once you make the change. 3 link acquisition campaigns, 3 content campaigns, 3 social campaigns (not to mention the individual accounts), and I can't even begin to think about your PPC, whew! That's a ton of work.

In my opinion, you're much better off reorganizing your current site for long term success.

References:
Splitting a Site into Two Sites for SEO Purposes TCS Case Study: Why We Combined Two Sites Into One Web Content Management Strategy

[SirMax]

I agree with Jared that generally splitting up the site can lead to drop of SEO results. It will also increases your work load since you will have to work SEO on 3 sites instead of one. However, it seems that you are concerned with usability of your site and in my humble opinion that should take a presence and should be addressed. I would suggest splitting the site under a single domain. You can have essentially 3 sites with very few crosslinks (so users would not get confused). www.mydomain.com/patients

www.mydomain.com/doctors

www.mydomain.com/researchers

On each of the 3 home pages, you can have a cross link to other two home pages. E.g. on www.mydomain.com/patients page you can put link like Click here for the medical professional to route user to www.mydomain.com/doctors