Domain names are cheap. There are a lot of people who have dozens of domain names lying around, since they've become so affordable and so readily available. It's also easy to throw up a simple webpage or a WordPress-based site for your new domain. However, is setting up multiple domain names a good idea in terms of SEO?

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When You Should Use a New Domain or Sub-Domain

There are situations where setting up a new domain or sub-domain makes sense. For example, if your site sells one product and you've set up an affiliate program to market this product, then it may be a good idea to set up a separate domain or sub-domain which contains nothing but this product and a link to make a purchase.

Alternately, if your website includes information on a variety of different topics which are unrelated, then it makes sense to create a different website with a different domain name for each topic.

If you've got a site with a great deal of content in multiple categories which you'd like to keep separate yet all under the same brand umbrella, then sub-domains may be the way to go. For example, look at About.com for an idea about how this can be done.

When You Shouldn't Use Multiple Domains or Sub-Domains

Before you go ahead and start creating multiple sites or sub-domains, think about how these new sites or sub-sites affect the user experience of your site. Make sure that your sites are still easy to navigate before you go live with your new pages.

Most importantly, ask yourself why you need multiple domains or sub-domains before you create anything. If the idea is to dominate search engine results by having multiple sites, think again. The search engines don't like to see multiple sites which have more or less the same content; they see it as an attempt to trick them and they typically don't take kindly to this approach. If you're throwing up dozens of sites with the same content, differing only in their domain names, you can expect your search engine rankings to stagnate (or even decline); some search engines consider this kind of thing a form of spamming and may even ban your site from their results entirely.

There is another angle to consider here: unless you have a lot of people on your team to write content for your many websites, there's no way that one person has enough time in the day to keep your sites updated with fresh content. It's a better idea to put all of your content which is on the same topic or at least is aimed at the same demographic on a single page or sub-domain. Making a new site or new sub-domain isn't always the answer, so think very carefully before you begin building on to your existing site - it's often better to simply develop what you already have.

The most recent BlogTalkRadio show for 2 Girls Talk Tech focus on my current project for the new year, converting my static html website to a WordPress site. The project is still in progress, but I'm hoping to have everything converted in the next few weeks.

Listen to Andrea Cannavina and myself talk about the pros and cons of a technology shift such as this, that every business should be aware of when they're thinking about designing or changing their business website.

I'll be documenting this project for a blog series when it's all completed and working, so that it hopefully helps anyone thinking of making such a move. I'll also list all the great resources I found that helped me though this process, as well as the coolest WordPress plugins I am using that address some of the issues of working with a WordPress site.