Main vs Pointing URL Confusion

[chirsirwin]

Hi, I have a new website that deals with 3 very similar businesses  The main purpose of the website is to assist the consumer to search, compare and book chaffered transportation online. The 3 businesses are taxi cab hire, limo hire, party bus hire.  My main domain is www.mytaxicab.co.za.  I also own the domains mylimo.co.za and mypartybus.co.za.  My question is, from a best practice SEO perspective, how should I set this up. Should I have one main site www.mytaxicab.co.za and have the 2 other niche domain names point in eg user types www.mypartybus.co.za and lands on www.mytaxicab.co.za/party-bus-hire or is there a better way? Any help or insite would be appreciated

[Trius]

What you are asking about is often called "microsites"; you may want to search for that term. There are many arguments both for and against, but in your situation, I would recommend keeping them apart, since you say that these are three different businesses, and since none of the three domain names sounds like an overarching name. Now, if you had a domain name like mychafferedtransportation.co.za, it might be worth combining them and thus reap the benefit of a a higher visibility for the overall page. But don't worry too much about SEO specifics. The most important consideration is whether this fits in your overall business strategy; whether you want to keep the businesses independent from each other or appear as one combined brand.

[chirsirwin]

Thank you for your response Mark.  I have bought a domain name that better suits the overreaching purpose of the website.  www.myride.co.za,  the domain is 5 years old and sounds good.... I think;)   Now one more question, Should I use www.myride.co.za as a landing page then link to the 3 individual niche sites through the main menu or should www.myride.co.za be the main website, and when the user clicks on | Taxi Cab Hire | Limo Hire | Party Bus Hire should that point them at the domain relevant to each of those businesses..... eg user clicks on party bus hire and get sent to page that looks the same but hosted under www.mypartybus.co.za the only commonality of the 3 businesses is that they are chaffered transport.... but the businesses themselves hit 3 different industries, thus my choice of www.myride.co.za for main page I know this is complex , but I want to start right from the start, any help from this community would be appreciated! I guess to make it clear the best thing to do is visit my current main page www.mytaxicab.co.za I am putting a big drive into SEO and PPC and need somthing that will work well for both as well as link building etc etc Thank you so much Chris Irwin

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