I would personally go with the smaller more targeted site. I would still only start with 1 though, so you can focus resources on it. Then once it's starting to generate income, move on to the next one. My reasons behind this are that its easier to rank a niche site - less resources required, less competition and also that you are spreading your risk when you have multiple smaller websites.
If it's the same niche then one big site with more content, more external backlinks, more and properly made internal backlinks as well.From a SEO point of view, is it better for ranking to have multiple small specialized sites with a few powerful custom niche relevant backlinks or one big site that covers the whole niche with many, more general backlinks?
one big site
I would personally go with the smaller more targeted site. I would still only start with 1 though, so you can focus resources on it. Then once it's starting to generate income, move on to the next one. My reasons behind this are that its easier to rank a niche site - less resources required, less competition and also that you are spreading your risk when you have multiple smaller websites.
A bit off-topic, but out of curiosity. How could a high traffic site like this get killed off by an algo update and never recover? Where there some BH elements involved and it was "a matter of time"? Or it truly came unexpected?I'd go with both a big site but also a couple of smaller sites.
If you get hit hard by Google, then your big site can kill you off.
This went from HUGE traffic until it got killed in December.View attachment 168532