Starting Multiple Blogs
Sub Domains or Multiple Domains? - This is one of the eternal questions that I’m asked. Which is a better way to go?
Having taken both approaches I can assure you that both have their distinct advantages and disadvantages. It IS possible to take either approach and establish a successful blog. Here’s a quick list of factors to consider (these are just some of the many things that are debated by proponents of the different methods):
* Multiple Domains will gerenally take longer to establish SEO for whereas Sub Domains generally get indexed quicker and ranked higher IF you have a well indexed and ranked domain already
* Once established Multiple domains be be very powerful with SEO when they link to one another. This is one of the reasons that blog networks are so successful (100 blogs all linking to each other virtually ensures good ranking in Google over a longer period of time). Note: this can take a long period of time to get working for you.
* Multiple Domains are easier to sell down the track (you might be able to sell a domain with multiple blogs but splitting them up would be a nightmare).
* Multiple Domains lend themselves to individual branding of your blogs. Of course a subdomain approach can be branded well also (check out about.com for example) but multiple domains are generally simpler to brand
* Sub Domains will obviously be cheaper to run in terms of buying domains - although they are so cheap these days that it’s hardly an issue.
* The only problem with them is that they might be a challenge to manage on an administrative level (especially when you have a lot of domains expiring all at different times.
* Some believe that covering multiple topics on the one domain can be detrimental for both SEO and systems like AdSense (there’s some debate over this).My own preference these days is much more to register multiple domains as I have a long term approach which I think this lends itself to. However I can point to a variety of very successful examples of both methods so a blog’s success or failure doesn’t depend upon this choice alone.