I couldn't think of a suitable forum for this thread, so I put it here.

I sell a few different software products. They are all sold from one main site. I just registered some domain names that make reference to the actual product names. As far as I can see, I have 2 options.

Option 1: Simply point all these names to my main site.

Option 2: Create a micro site for each name, and have them all link to the main site for ordering. I'm not talking about duplicate sites (I know the search engines penalize for that). I'm talking about fresh content.

My thinking on this is that if I have all the micro sites going, they can help increase traffic, since I will have more sites/pages for the SEs to index. Is this thinking flawed or am I on the right track?

As always, thanks for your wisdom.

Vito

I think you are on the right track because each product will of course get more attention and will sell more. Have a professional design for the sites and be infromative for each, and you will no doubtedly sell more. IMO

I think you are on the right track because....

I would suggest to create some micro sites.

Thanks for confirming my thoughts. That is what I'll do. :)

Vito

Originally posted by vito
My thinking on this is that if I have all the micro sites going, they can help increase traffic, since I will have more sites/pages for the SEs to index. Is this thinking flawed or am I on the right track? You're on the right track, with a couple of important considerations: the pages in the micro sites won't be indexed by important search engines (i.e. Google) unless there are already-indexed sites linked to them. So you have to get or create links to those sites. BUT, I'd avoid linking to them from the main site, creating a "closed circle" of links. You're right that search engines don't like duplicate content, but they don't penalize for it beyond leaving it (whichever page is determined to be "the duplicate;" in Google that should be the one with the lower PageRank) out of the index. Linking schemes, though, can result in penalties given to each of the sites.

After you have established a good set of links to each of the microsites, though, linking back from the main site will probably be ok.