Different or Same Keywords for Second Site

[BobGW]

Hello,

We're flushing out a second site for a client that's a second site in the same niche. How do I know when to use the same keywords for both sites and when to use entirely different keywords. One site is fairly strong, and the other will be less strong, though we're going to strengthen it quickly.

[CleverPhD]

It depends on your business plan.   Why are you building a second site?  Is it for insurance in case the first site gets taken out due to penalty?  I would think that focusing on #RCS and using best practices would make sure that would not happen.   Are you trying to dominate the SERPS so that you can rank #2 and #3 and #N for a given key word?   Maintaining another site is a lot of work.  Seems simpler to build up a YouTube Channel to rank or some other social profile.  Are you wanting to rank for a second set of key words?  Seems simpler just to build up an additional section of content on your current site.

Just sounds like you are doing a lot of work on a second website in the same competitive niche, where it may make more sense to just focus on the site you have, make sure it is super wicked awesome and just continue to focus on that.

[BobGW]

My client really wants to build out a second site. It's to get them both to rank, one for spot one and one lower for most keywords. But we really need to know when to target the same keywords and when to target different keywords. It's ecommerce