Similiar niches: share domain/site or new domain/site?

[Seamaster]

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Say if I have a site englandfootballtop.com and it is all about the england team football tops.

Then I decide to do a site on arsenal football tops, would I be better off (in the SERPS) doing a seperate site or doing it as a directory of englandfootballtop.com e.g. englandfootballtop.com/arsenalfootballtop/? As I am in essence adding extra content to the domain/site would the site benefit even if those pages arent about the main domain?

If I did do the arsenal pages as a directory on englandfootballtop.com would it be ok if the pages in the /arsenalfootballtop/ directory didnt mention england football tops at all - no keywords or anything or should they have the domain (englandfootballtop) mentioned in the domain, title, content etc?

Cheers.

[moredial]

You don't need to spam the keywords so much. Just using a subdomain or directory for arsenal would do the trick. For low traffic I would go the directory route, for high then host the subdomain on a different server. For SEO purposes, there is little between the 2.

You should, of course, provide links between the 2 sites.

[Sandis]

I don't know how competative is your market SEO wise, but starting a folder on your old site will make it rank easier compared to completelly new site or subdomain (of course, you will need to work on backlinks, etc as always to get high for your keyword).

As moredial said, you don't need to stuff so much keywords in your folder name, just /arsenal/ will do this.

If this proves to be good business, you then can try to estabilish a new domain and get the second ranking site in serps and double your presence/business/income. Of course the site then will need to be different and unique content wise.

[kcheung]

I did some thing similar with a niche.

I created loads of small 1/2 page sites will a little keyword stuffed content on variations of the niche i was trying to hit, then created links from those sites to the mail site i was trying to get ranking.

so -

widgets got links from white/blue/gree/purple/red widgets, and white/blue/gree/purple/red widgets all ranked in their own right, giving oneway link weightings to the main widgets URL, which had individual subdirectories of white/blue/gree/purple/red widgets, and white/blue/gree/purple/red widget products.

[Seamaster]

Sounds like an interesting approach. Were those mini sites on seperate domains?

[kcheung]

Sounds like an interesting approach. Were those mini sites on seperate domains?

yep, variations of the main site:

eg. main site - widgets.co.uk

other site - bluewidgets.co.uk, widgetsblue.co.uk, yellowwidgets, buywidgets.co.uk etc.

[Seamaster]

Did many of the people who landed on Xwidgets.com click through to widgets.com?

[kcheung]

Did many of the people who landed on Xwidgets.com click through to widgets.com?

not many, but the point is both from an SEO perspective (you've giving your main domain more weighting) and from a self standing site perspective (the supporting sites are fully funtional affiliate sites in their own right)

[Seamaster]

not many, but the point is both from an SEO perspective (you've giving your main domain more weighting) and from a self standing site perspective (the supporting sites are fully funtional affiliate sites in their own right)

So the sites make their own sales but also give some credibility to the main site via the links.

[kcheung]

So the sites make their own sales but also give some credibility to the main site via the links.

exactly that.