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We have four sites for our products:
www.brandname.com (products targeted to industry A )
www.brandname.net (targeted to industry B )
www.brandname.org (targeted to industry C )
www.branddata.com (site containing our employment listings)
Because of this, we pretty much own the first page of results on each engine for "brand name". Now our brand name isn't super competitive (and doesn't include targeted keywords), but there are companies with similar names, distributors using our name; plus we get a large amount of traffic from people searching our brand name on the SE's.
My original plan was to move our .NET and .ORG content over to the .COM website and 301 redirect individual pages from .NET and .ORG to their new .COM URLs, etc - all the normal SEO stuff that you would do when moving domains. The reason for doing this was to increase the breadth of the .COM and piggyback off the power of the .COM (which has significantly more backlinks and ranking power than either .NET or .ORG). My thinking was that the keywords we're targeting on .NET and .ORG would perform better under the umbrella of the .COM domain.
There are pros & cons to keeping the domains or combining them. Here's the list I've come up with so far:
PROS (for keeping separate domains):
1) Continue to dominate the SERPs for 'brand' searches
2) No drop in current rankings while (and if) the 301 redirects are followed
3) Easier to do targeted link building for a domain about 'topic A' than a domain with a 'topic A' category
CONS:
1) Splitting ranking power between three sites
2) No authority/weight from the larger .COM site applied to targeted keywords from .NET and .ORG
3) Have to manage 3 sites instead of 1
4) Most customers that are told to go to brandname.NET or brandname.ORG will type in brandname.COM out of habit anyway
I've also toyed with the idea of subdomains: transitioning brandname.NET to "industry.brandname.COM"
So what would you guys do in this situation? I can't make up my mind.....
These days 301-ing always involves some short term risk. But if you're in it for the long term, I'd ignore that issue if you can take a short term hit in traffic...which may or may not come about.
Personally, if it's the one company with one set of products/services generally, even if they are modified by industry, placing them in directories or subdomains would work.
My personal view is that it comes down to how different they are. For example, if I make industrial widgets but for very different industries to the point that I can't easily conceive of a natural looking homepage, I'd use subdomains. If the widgets are essentially the same across applications and the end user industries are somewhat related, such that they can all comfortably co-exist on the homepage via links down into the site, I'd probably consolitate under the .com for the reasons outlined in your post.
My 2 cents.
