by: John Gergye

Back in the good old days it wasn't nearly so tough to get decent rankings fast. Wasn't nearly so complicated either. You put up some pages, got some links and built from there. Enjoying improving rankings on your way to the top.

But that was then and this is now. Now there might be times where you WOULD be better off with two sites, (same niche) than just one.

And if I might chance to read you mind you're thinking, "What? Is this guy crazy? I can't keep one site going and growing much less two."

I'm with you. But read on to discover when you might want to break out the second site.

===> Aggressive Article Marketing

Say you're engaged in an aggressive article marketing campaign. Or you're chasing as many reciprocal links as you can. Both legit ways to drive potential visitors or customers or subscribers to your site.

Yet how's that going to mesh with the go slow approach to links Google now favors? Think your zeal might throw be like throwing sugar in the gas tank? And ace you out of the running for top rankings in Google? Maybe.

So if you want to use an article submission service that blasts your article far and wide you might want to rethink that. Or at least develop a second site for the links in your resource box to point to. Since if you've got a site you're grooming for Google, too many links of any kind too fast raises a red flag.

===> Link Triangulation

It's helpful to have two sites to do link triangulation. Which is a great way to get one way links.

Let's assume you feel one way links are better. To get those two sites are a must. Simply offer to link to your link partner's site from Site A while they link to your Site B.

Next time offer to link to the other web site from Site B while they link to your Site A.

This approach lets you build one way links to two sites at once, albeit at half speed. Which is a good thing since you're building links slowly. Or the currently approved approach for Google.

===> Adsense or Affiliate Site?

Some seemingly have strong feelings about whether or not Adsense cannibalizes affiliate sales.

Of course the ONLY way to know for sure is to test it. Simply take an established site and run Adsense ads alone for one month. Then drop those ads and feature affiliate products only for the next 30 days. Which produces the most cash flow?

If you find Adsense does cannibalize this may be another situation ripe for the two site solution. Obviously you'll want to edit the content so it's close to unique for each site. Or you might emphasize product reviews on the affiliate site. While offering informative yet more topical articles on the site featuring Adsense.

===> Yahoo/MSN vs Google Focus?

More and more there is precious little overlap in the respective top rankings of Yahoo, MSN and Google. What works great for grabbing top MSN rankings might well get you in hot water over at Google. While Yahoo at times yearns to be more the anti Google than anything else.

That said, both Yahoo and MSN are more forgiving of, uh, enthusiastic optimization techniques. For instance you can get away with a higher keyword density with them than you would ever dare try with Google anymore.

But as in real life it's hard to please two bosses. So the smart thing might be to set up two sites. To make it easy exclude the googlebot from the site designed with Yahoo/MSN in mind using your robots.txt file. And then reverse roles by excluding Yahoo/MSN from the site you're using to catch Google's eye.

So there you have it. Four instances when two sites may be better than one for your home based internet marketing business.