There's no need to have a domain for each topic. That's a waste of money and affort.

make a real site, not a scraper. thanks

[edited by: martinibuster at 4:00 am (utc) on July 15, 2006]
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[1][edit reason] Corrected spelling. [/edit] [/edit][/1]

Who's talking about scraping? How bout some benefit of the doubt. Not everyone who wants to make web sites is going to steal your content.

In reply to the question.

You could try subdomains also.

food.example.com
example.example.com
etc...

In your example, I'd go for the three additional domain names, if the domain names don't look like SEO-spam.

Google will have an even better understanding about the topic of your sites, and Ads will be targeted better. But don't overdo it.

Also note that it may sometimes be wiser to add the subdirectories to a popular website which has already a good ranking.

YMMV, all cases are different, it depends on your specific setup and audience.

Good luck.

There's no need to have a domain for each topic. That's a waste of money and affort.

that's a common disbelief. i'm having much success with splitting my content into three (initially five) stand-alone fully linked similar sounding domains (like widgetone.com, widgettwo.com, widgetthree.com). i never understood the equalization of website content and domain. actually, you can have one topic with endless sub-categories in different main domains if you want. and without trouble, if you pay attention to some basic rules.

in fact, it's kind of a way to success regarding google rankings (= adsense earnings). and a pretty good insurance for serp variations, since one of the domains is up for the different targeted keywords in any case and most of the time i'm ranking with several domains in the hot spots.
it may well be, that i'm one of the lucky few having made this experience handling a subject with unique domains, since i don't spot other "domain-bundles" in the serps besides duplicate spam at least in my area.

secret? multiple odp listing in 02, related but clearly distinct content to stay on the ethical side and escape duplicate content trouble, separately optimized websites (risk distribution), optimization for the same keywords across all domains to achieve the mentioned ranking effect and all that simultaneously from day one. so it was very well worth the effort, but i must admit the positive side effects were not clear at the beginning. it was no deliberate attempt to tackle the serps this way, rather by accident because i couldn't get the one and only widget.com domain.

[edited by: moTi at 3:33 am (utc) on July 15, 2006]

make a real site, not a scraper.

loganz, read the original post. The member said he's going to create legitimate content. You have a problem with legitimate content?

As far as having one gigantic website covering a multitude of topics, that's a great way to go. Take a look at about.com and howstuffworks.com, or even wikipedia.

The key is to create quality content, which in turn will make it easy to gain quality links, which in turn will help you rank, which in turn will help you become wealthier than you might be imagining, if $1k is currently your target.

But it's hard work and requires talent, bla, bla, bla, etc. Easy to say, harder to do.

You shouldn't have too many problems if you decide to go for sub-directories of one main www.example.com, as per your own suggestion.

But, as moti suggests, you could do equally well having separate, linked, individual domain names - so long as you don't have too many.

You could also go for sub-domains of your main URL.

All the suggested options have their pros and cons. What I would suggest though, if you decide to go for sub-directories or sub-domains, is to buy the other actual domains if they're available.

So if you want to have sub-directory food.example.com, buy "food.com" if it's available. You can always redirect it to point at your sub-directory. You don't have to use the actual domain if you don't want to, but don't give the competition a leg-up by leaving the actual domain available ;)

Personally, I have separate, but linked domains. By spreading the load a little, this has helped during the recent indexing problems with Google, with two sites recovering quickly and two still in the doldrums. This may or may not have been the case if I'd had everything on the one URL. :)

Have exactely done this. The site is on a topic you spell differently in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. So I bought both spellings and redirect them to the original site. Curious what the effect on the traffic amount and adsense earnings will be.

I have had great success to date with multiple domains. While all are related, each web site is a different topic.

Host them on different servers instead of the same hosting company and cross link them... wait a week or a month... the traffic will come.