2 websites in the same niche?

Hey,

I have a question for you SEO marketers.

I built a couple websites in the same niche, going after the same keywords 3-4 months ago (when I was first starting out). It's in a relatively tough niche (top sites have 5,000-15000 links all focused on these keywords), but nevertheless my sites are starting to rank for keywords (first page for a long tail, or 1000 or less exact search keywords), second-third page for some good trafficked 2 word keywords, and top 100-200 for big time keywords.

I have heard from people that you can't/shouldn't create multiple different websites in the same niche for SEO. Then I've heard from other peole that it doesn't matter.

What are your thoughts?

Notes about the websites:

1. All are with different hosting companies.

2. All of the sites have been worked on/linked by different IP's. ie I'm doing linking for one, I have someone else doing linking for another, and a different partner doing linking for another.

3. 2 of the websites unfortunatly (?) do have my name as the registered owner under the whois info (I created these while I was learning SEO...or else I would have used privacy!)

4. no sites are linked together (no links on each others pages). and no sites share common links on other sites. Their SEO has been done completely apart, without looking at what links the other site was getting.

Does it matter? Can you SEO multiple websites? Will I receive a shit storm? Thoughts?

Thanks for any advice or opinions!

Just don't post duplicate content and the reason people discrouage it is because you will have to come up with twice the content for two sites that you could have just put all on one and now you kinda split your content in half. Remember, Google doesn't like sites light on content.

Maybe you can try spinning or something like that.

ok, that's an interesting point, i never thought.

the content is different, at least to the extent that it was written for each site independently. however, it is probably close to the same. i'll look to change that.

thanks.

anyone else?

I have a couple of sites in the same niche. both ranking page 2. they are targeted to the same audience, but have different content and monetization methods. both on different servers, but with same hosting provider.

I did this because I have gathered alot of content for the first site, but realised i didn't need it all on one site, so I made 2.

Here is the different site profiles

Site 1:

- lots of original articles targeting main keywords
- some images in a featured content gallery
- adsense monetization
- amazon monetization

Site 2:

- No articles, only images
- all images in a featured content gallery
- CPA offer monetization only.

I dont see a problem with having more than one site in your 'field of expertise' and I cant see the big G penalising you for sharing your knowledge in different ways. BUT here's what NOT to do:

No Dupe content- Make sure its all original (i'd stay away from spun content)
No interlinking- I've heard one or 2 sites dont matter, but I still wouldn't do it.

Thats all I can think of at the mo, Hope this helps.

I did a little experiment last year for this very thing. I built 10 sites on WPMUs - all with the exact same subdomain name. .

Name examples:
dogbites.freewheling.com
dogbites.houseplants.com

And put the exact same content on each one. The one with the most backlinks is now #1 in G for my keyword and I have 2 more that float around the top 20.

I say the more sites you can rank in the top 10 for your term, the better. That is one less spot your competitors occupy.

hey Thomas and movieman, thank you both for the info. very interesting.

I don't see any reason you can SEO and rank multiple websites for the same keywords as long as they are on different hosts, different C class IP's and with different whois info (just to be safe).

Even if you dont have privacy now you can always get it added at any time, so i would do this if i where you.