How to treat a website with several different types of subject matter

[minyona]

I know it’s hekpful, when attempting to rank for a various cluster of keywords, to have a site that is primarily about that subject matter.

For instance, it would be very difficult to rank for keywords pertaining to window treatments, roof repair, lawn mowing, interior decorating, and vegan recipes.

I have a client who owns a multi specialty center that does plastic surgery, dermatology, welllness, ophthalmology, skin and laser treatments, and more.

I feel like the solution would be to make each verticals a subdomain, and treat each as its own website, for all intents and purposes, using WordPress multisite to manage it.

So, plastic-surgery.website.com, dermatology.website.com, etc., and have website.com act as the landing page for the center, linking out to the various practice areas.

what are your thoughts? Thanks so much in advance!

[EGOL]

This topic requires books to explain.  But with limited time at this season of the year, here is a quick stab....

Do not fear having a website with multiple topics.  The strength of one topic can actually help power the rankings of all other topics as it builds domain authority.

Google has a patents on assessing a "body of work" which might be a folder on your website egol.com/dentistry/ or a subdomain on a website dentristry.egol.com.

Current SEO best practice is to prefer folders over subdomains because google currently seems to treat subdomains more like separate websites rather than a portion of a large website.

So, don't hesitate to build the multi-topic website but separate them clearly in to /folders/.

Always keep in mind that one folder full of /crap/ can damage the rankings of the entire website.

[minyona]

thank you for the response.

Im inclined to agree, but it seems as one area improves another struggles. As though google is trying to determine what body of work it should categorize the site as.

Isnt this why microsites tend to be a good strategy? Because you can sort of comfort google by essentially saying, “don’t worry. This is a site about x and x alone, so sending users there is safer because there’s no chance they’ll navigate to content unrelated to their initial query.”

[EGOL]

If you attack with a collection of microsites, you lose the domain authority of a large website with overwhelming linkstrength.  It is like attacking a battleship with a fleet of rowboats - none of them have enough strength to do much damage.

Also, there is a marketing advantage of the large diverse site.  Cross-selling.  Some plastic surgery patients might need dermatology services and they will see from the website that the single business offers both.

The large website will pull in more links, more domain searches, more brand mentions, and more of many other things that will build brand recognition and search engine strength.

[minyona]

Again, I tend to agree. But when mapping it out on a whiteboard, and showing how the subdomains would link to one another, for cross selling purposes, it seems so elegant and clean.

his is one of those instances where my heart says yes but my reason, according to the evidence, says no.