Same domain, subdomain or separate domain?

Hi everyone,

I had an idea for a series of authority sites all on related topics. The site would have similar, but importantly unique, articles and would have a similar theme and structure. I am just deciding on the best way to set things up. In my opinion I have three options (lets assume the niche is soft drinks).

1) Separate domains - cocacolasoftdrink.com, pepsisoftdrink.com
2) Subdomains - cocacola.softdrink.com, pepsi.softdrink.com
3) Same domain - softdrink.com/cocacola, softdrink.com/pepsi

Because the sites are interlinked if I had them on a separate domain I would be wanting to link to them from each site to create a network of sites. I'd do all this through one hosting account and wouldn't want to be penalized of course. I think this would be best but there is the added domain cost and I'd hope to eventually have 20-50 similar sites.

What would you do?

Thanks

I would believe that the order of preference is just as you have listed.

However, the caveat is that your ip for each domain must be different, else, google is going to find out sooner or later.
And, also, if well created,
i.e.
the content for pepsi and coke is truly contributed by different sources and linked by different groups of websites
then, subdomains may outrank different domains
e.g.
blogspot may outrank a primary domain that is just promoted from interlinks

Just my 2 cents.

Thanks for the tip.

If I did everything legit then why would Google penalize me if I owned several sites? The content is different enough to justify a different domain, but related enough to justify being linked together.

I was worried this might be a problem but if I was going to use different domains I didn't want to hide the fact I owned them all in any way. Maybe I'll have to go for a different approach.

Option 1: If your niche is that closely related why dish out the extra expense of additional domains.
Option 2: You would risk passing site authority to the subdomains.


Your goal is to build a "softdrink" authority site, I would chose option 3. This would allow the authority to be passed up to your main site. You would have one site, one domain to maintain and promote. (keep it simple)

Create some redirects to your subfolder content. If you want to do some geotargeting, translate the content to several languages create static pages and place them in to subfolders.. Assuming your niche is an international product.. Put that content to work, translated your content to 5-8-10 different languages, place those static pages in subfolders as well. Translated pages are 'not' considered 'duplicate content' per google. Then let that authority slide up to your main site..