"Umbrella" sites?

[MaggieB]

Has anyone ever set up one site that is essentially an umbrella site that "houses" all your individual sites? So that you can have a business card with one url that a client, etc. can access and then from there can go to any of your individual niches?

What was your experience[s] with doing that? Does it help? Hinder?

While my micro niches are named after my keywords this site could very well have a catchy name, or my name...

So I need the experienced to "set me straight" on what's the thinking on this?

Thanks!
~MaggieB

[BrittMalka]

We have an umbrella site, yes, and I know some of our clients have used it, because they wanted to find more of our products and to learn about our activities.

But I think you can probably do without. At least our site didn't mean any earth shattering difference for us

I also have a Google page with a link to all of my blogs - not updated in far too long time, though.

On our Umbrella site, we had a thumbnail picture of all our sites, a description of them and a link to them.

[Engage]

Yes, I would do this. It only needs to be one simple page, and it could come in handy some day.

You're in an elevator with Bill Gates, and he asks about your sites. You've got 30 seconds to hook him in to your world. You want one short easily remembered domain name in that circumstance.

The best thing that ever happened to me online came out of the blue, and happened pretty fast. Pretend somebody rich is going to buy you out, be ready for it, and it just might happen.

[DebraLloyd]

The only issue with an umbrella site is that SEO becomes diluted with too many potentially unrelated keywords. However I agree with Engage - well worth doing just be sure to optimize each site individually as well.

I would caution against naming the site with your name - if Bill Gates [or anyone else] ever wants to buy you out - the value will be significantly less if the site is so heavily associated with you and not him or his company.

Deb Matthews
Website Broker

[MaggieB]

I wasn't thinking Bill Gates in an elevator, but there are times that one meets someone and it would be nice to have just one central site with an easy name that you could send them to and from there they can access all the other sites from!

So for those of you that have an umbrella site... how and what do you name them?

Thanks!
MaggieB

The only issue with an umbrella site is that SEO becomes diluted with too many potentially unrelated keywords. However I agree with Engage - well worth doing just be sure to optimize each site individually as well.

I would caution against naming the site with your name - if Bill Gates [or anyone else] ever wants to buy you out - the value will be significantly less if the site is so heavily associated with you and not him or his company.

Deb Matthews
Website Broker

[BrittMalka]

Well, our umbrella site has a very original name - malka.biz - not?

The reason being several, in fact, I have to say to my excuse.

The name of our company has always been Malka. In fact from before my husband and I got married, we used his family name as the name of our first common company.

It's a short name, easy to spell for most people.

People tend to remember it - probably because of the sounds that are very 'primitive' in the same way as "mum", "mam mam" (food said by baby), etc.

So for us it was the logical step to call our umbrella site Malka.biz, since we had several other Malka-domains.

[DebraLloyd]

Ohh I hop ei didn't offend anyone here. I should probably qualify my earlier thoughts on naming a business with your own name. I mean very specifically somthing such as debramatthews.com it just makes it very owner centric and for resale that's not always a good thing.

Britt it makes total sense for your umbrella site to be such especially if you haev related domains alredy in existence. If you are starting from scratch I would always recommend looking to keyword research for inspiration though as it makes sense for later SEO and traffic driving efforts as well as saleability if you ever come to sell the business on.

Cheers,
Deb

[MaggieB]

Debra,
That makes sense, but what types of keywords would you suggest?
Thanks!
MaggieB

[DebraLloyd]

Maggie,
I would start Keyword Research by checking out the articles Lynn has archived here http://www.clicknewz.com/?s=keyword+research there is a lot of invaluable information and you should learn from these articles the best way and tools to figure out the optimal keywords for your specific needs.

Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Deb

[laaronblase]

In my example there is actually one umbrella site, and it's my belief that they shouldn't all be linking from every page, either to each other and possibly not to the "umbrella site" .First of all, there aren't enough independent inbound links to most in the group, and since they're under individual management to a large extent, if one goofs and ends up going south with a penalty it could bring the others down with it - aside from the excessive cross-linking wreaking havoc with the page rank.