Which domain to place my sales pages in for SEO

My main site is LongRangeHunting.com

I am about to start offering custom hunting rifles for sale under the business name of: Long Range Rifles, LLC.

I am trying to decide which would be better SEO:

1. Place my rifle sales page(s) in its own recently registered domain: www.LongRangeRiflesLLC.com . If so, I would link to it from my 8 year old main site.
2. Place the sales page(s) as vBAdvanced CMPS content located here: www.LongRangeHunting.com/articles/LongRangeRiflesLLC.php

Currently the search term, "long range rifles" has my main site coming up as the #1 result.

I would keep the store on its own domain, but also do a write up article with a link to the new .com

Brian, thanks, I value your judgment. Can you explain your reasons, please.

The main reasoning is that you'll have far more control over your store on its own page than you will on a vba page. If things take off and you actually get a cart script running, you'll regret putting it on a vba page at first.

Plus, while it's the same genre, selling guns/etc has nothing to do with your forum. Keeping it on its own domain can also keep your ad agency's in check. Some places may allow discussion of topics, but not sales thereof. Keeping it seperate keeps you ok for your ads on yoru forum.

• Brian, I will never have a cart.
• I already have a member "Classifieds" section that sells many more guns already than I will ever sell.

My original question is really about SEO. Any thoughts on that, please?

I still think the separate domain is the way to go even in terms of seo. It's more focused, and has the key word 'rifles' in the domain that isn't in your forum. Odds are, if i were looking to buy a long range rifle, i'd search for long rance rifle, not long range hunting.

Plus, because of this post, you already have an indexed linkback to the new domain
http://www.longrangeriflesllc.com/ - Google Search

It will likely be indexed a day or two after you actually set it up between the link here and the link from your own site. It's just a matter of coding the page correctly using headings and a clean layout/markup to finish it off.

Brian, you make good points. But I have been wondering if a search would be more productive if my "rifles" page was part of a busy site with an 8 yr old domain that has most of the search words in its 8 yr old domain name.

Keep in mind:

Currently the search term, "long range rifles" has my main site coming up as the #1 result.

Any fresh thoughts on this question. I will need to decide in the next few days.

Len,

I agree with Brian completely on this. There is absolutely no reason why you couldn't capitalize on both domains and improve each of their ranking in the long term - and increase your profits.

vBulletin and your LRH website offer you great opportunities to drive traffic to your LRR llc store. You can also minimize the negative effect of linking to so many other rifle suppliers by making sure spiders don't follow those links - using the "no-follow" attribute in all links to your competitors. It doesn't keep people from following those links, but it goes a long way to prevent spiders from using your website popularity to improve the popularity of other sites. vBSEO has features also that can assist in this regard.

Think of it this way: you are allowed to have 2 related businesses in the same town, even on the same street. While the new business may still be struggling, the older one can lend a hand by directing traffic to the new one. In fact, the older business has credibility with it's regular clientèle and they will listen to your words about that new business. They will even follow your directions to the new business out of loyalty to your older business. In time, word gets around and more and more people are finding out about the new business, either from other sources, through your older business or finding it in the directory.

At some point in time, you may decide to sell or even abandon one of the businesses. Either way, a buyer may not be as interested if the 2 businesses were under the same roof. Moving the business to a new location would be almost as difficult as starting a brand new business, which kinda leaves you outa the picture - and with another competitor.

SEO works on any site you apply it to. There is also no reason you can't sell the very same rifles on both sites. The final checkout could even lead to the LRR llc site. Starting that new business on a new website does not necessarily mean starting from scratch. The LRH site is established and can support the new site until it can stand on its own. Your LRH site may be 8 years old, but your real growth has been just in the last couple of years. All because of better organization and SEO. A new site can and will do very well and it won't take 8 years to see success.

Just some of my random thoughts.

Jim