Would it be better to make one large site targeting many keywords or try to make many smaller sites and target 5-10 keywords? What is more effective for seo the competion is med-low? Also if the sites have fairly simular formating and identical funtionality will that hurt my rankings?

Thanks any input is much appreciated

It would be more effective to have multiple sites because the url's can can be created to contain the keywords you want to target. That would boost rankings, but it is also more expensive and tedious to maintain. It would cost more money to market several sites instead of one.

You could create page names within one site that contain these keywords too, but you would have to market each page just like you would each site.

I personally utilize one template, copy it, replace some wording, create a sub-domain url to point to it, and market that. I find my rankings are pretty high when I do that instead of packing it all into one site, creating pages with file names that contain the keywords, or folder names with the keywords.

Either way, the SEO portion has to be done for the pages individually to make them rank. I just have higher rankings with the sub-domains over file and folder names right out of the gate. An actual url you purchase would be more effective than a sub-domain though. I choose to stick with the free way; sub-domain of 1 url I own.

Here is an example:

Pickerington Ohio is a pretty hot market with higher priced homes. Here is a keyword I focused on typed into google. Pickerington Ohio Mortgage Loan

First, you have your sponsored links, and then your directory listings. I rank 5th today. All I did was create a 1 page sub-domain with the keywords in the url. I did no other marketing at all! No financial investment... Nothing extra aside from the 1 domain name I own and my hosting.

Is easier to rank for multiple keywords with a large site because assuming the site has links pointing to it and acquires Google PR - some of that PR is passed down to the subpages which then allows those pages to rank for lesser keywords.

Having multiple sites means that you have to build links to multiple sites. That is not easy so people often take a shortcut and link the sites together. If the sites that are linked together have similar content Google will opt to only return one of them in searches - which negates your efforts.

Google can also see the linking together as a link farm and ignore them or even worse - penalize or drop the sites from the index.

The problem with one large mega site comes in when that site gets penalized or dropped - suddenly all presence is lost.

So having a large mega-site is easier but if done right having many smaller sites can be just as effective and actually be a safer solution because all the eggs are not in one basket.

from my experience i believe mega site is better as big site is more authorized site in eyes of search engine so help alot in ranking also mega site has benefit if user want to search something different thing which can be on mega site not on small site. So recommended mega site

There's no question that having one big website trumps having 5 smaller ones - except you trying to rank for keywords from totally different industries (e.g. real estate and computers)

multiple sites can only help you to decrease your keywords competition but its better to concentrate only one big site .

One mega site wins over multiple sites....

Hi,
I would like to suggest you single mega site, but make sure that it will not cause loading problem for user.

Hi,
I will go with one mega site because it is having lots of advantages. Like:
- number of keywords
- broad category
- more traffic to a single site

I think one mega site is best. Two sites is just confusing for the people trying to get info. I currently going to wind down my point2 site and move it all over to wordpess site.

Instead of everyone randomly guessing at which is the best solution here are some stats from my IDX.
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I have one mega site and 10 mini sites all which share the same framed IDX.

From 1/1/12 to 1/11/12 this idx has been sent 2,764 visitors from my main site and 1,323 visitors from the 10 mini sites with a total of 20,078 page views. These are not all unique visitors as many people come back repeatedly to search and save listings.

These stats do not include the different idx solutions on some of my other sites.

So if you don't have the resources to make multiple sites then 1 mega site would be best. If you are willing to put in the time, resources, energy and effort then as many niche sites as you can come up with could be well worth the effort.

I would first focus on one site and make it as great as you can. People can make the mistake of creating many sites that all together don't amount to anything.