Need good ideas for my SEO/Domain dilemma...:-)

Started by jjk, June 08, 2012, 17:50:15 PM

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jjk

Since my VM2 shop nears completion, I'm just trying to think ahead a little bit for going live with the shop.
Situation: I own three top level domains, for this explanation let's assume they are myname.com, automobile-art.de and airplane-art.de
Currently my new VM2 shop is set up (still localhost) for myname.com with category names automobile-art and airplane-art, so my urls will look i.e. like this:

myname.com/automobile-art/product-details
and
myname.com/airplane-art/product-details

Not bad, but from the SEO point of view I loose the (big) advantage of the category name being the same as the top level domains. If I split the shop into three seperate ones, I could have:

myname/product-details
automobile-art.de/product-details
airplane-art.de/product-details

However, it happens that a customer is ordering products from the automobile-art category and from the airplane-art category at the same time. In this case the customer would have to check out (and pay) twice if the shop is splitted into three independent domains. Certainly not comfortable for the customer as well as for myself.

For my old website I use A-record url forwarding, so all three domains are pointing to the same content. Disadvantage is, that you have to tell the search engines, which one is the primary domain. The others are more or less ignored in the SERPS. Also, automobile-art products end up in airplane-art SERPS and vice versa, which is not good either.

I think that the ideal solution would be to alter the top level domain along with the product category, but this seems to be impossible. A single cart for three independent domains probably doesn't work either.

Any bright idea how to solve this dilemma?
Non-English Shops: Are your language files up to date?
http://virtuemart.net/community/translations

PRO

Dont split the site, go big

Go with
automobile-art.de or  airplane-art.de (THATS UNLESS, you are the actual artist) If you are the artist, I would consider keeping yourname.com

else;


Then, re-think your category alias' and names

automobile-art.de/shop-automobile-art/product-details
or
automobile-art.de/shop-automobile/product-details
or
automobile-art.de/art-for-automobiles/product-details


jjk

Quote from: BanquetTables.pro on June 08, 2012, 18:51:08 PM
Go with
automobile-art.de or  airplane-art.de...

That's pretty similar to what I currently have on my old website. The downside of this is that Google as well as other search engines almost ignore the other top level domains, pointing to the same content. Search engines are unable to notice that automobile art products should be listed with the automobile-art domain if the search engine recognizes i.e the airplane-art domain as the primary one. So most automobile art products are being listed under the airplane-art domain or vice versa and the result is very poor ranking for the products listed with the wrong domain.

I'll keep thinking about this... :)
Non-English Shops: Are your language files up to date?
http://virtuemart.net/community/translations