Thank you all for responding. I think I've got it.
There are several things I'm setting up. The first is for my management consulting practice. I already own the domain name. I also now own a second domain name that I'm setting up as a forum for independent consultants to share ideas, ask questions, etc.
Based on what I think I read above, I want to create a blog off of my consulting forum. For this, I think it would work better as
www.mydomain.com/blog. Also based on all I've read so far, WordPress with some of Teli's products are the best way to go.
I also want to set up a link from the forum to at least the above-mentioned blog, if not the website itself.
The second "big" thing I'm doing is setting up a series of related niche sites (I haven't decided on a domain name for this one yet). For this, I'm thinking subdomains are the way to go similar to the car example above. (e.g.,
www.mydomain.com, niche1.mydomain.com, niche2.mydomain.com). I think this'll improve my overall performance with the search engines (assuming I do SEO even halfway right!
). These are information sites, not discrete hard products.
The third "big" thing is a product-based ecommerce site (internet storefront), also niche based (I also own this domain as well). I think this is also best set up as item number two above. The different twists here though are that this series will be product based (dropship). I've already signed on with DOBA and COPEAC (thanks, Lynn! ) and I'm looking into Chris Malta's site (
www.worldwidebrands.com). But this will also be tied to an eBay store. Teli's script will probably work real well for these sites.
For the product and informational niche sites should I consider multiple landing pages? Or is that in effect what I'd be doing?
Right now all are hosted on HostGator. Being as they are all with the same host, will this present an issue? The "big" things aren't related and so I don't see any cross-linking there - only for the site, forum, and blog dealing with consulting.
Now I'm just trying to learn more about natural SEO, tagvertising, and RSS!
Bob