I am an offline freelancer in multiple areas and want to create a website where I can offer my services to the online world. Is it best to create one website with multiple topics or create individual websites with unique domain names for each area I offer? I want the different sections to have a different feel and layout.

you can use one domain to be the easiest to maintain and cheaper also! Use a generic company name that will not overly identify your area of expertise.

But here is the key for search engines to identify the area:

When you build each web page, go and manually change the title to the specific area that you want to identify and most impoertantly, change the keywords that should be listed near the top of the page, the index page for SURE and enter as many identifying words as possible so that the multiple words will show up in different search requests.

The html is as follows:

<keywords= artist oil paint custom>

This is how the robots for search engines crawl through a website, they are looking for keyword in either the title, body or the keyword identifier.

Good luck!

I would use one domain.

You could contain the links to all your topics on the homepage, which then branch off to each individual topic (still on the same domain) except they each have their own look and feel.

This will also save you money by only having one domain.

eg:

www.me.com --> home page

www.me.com/topic1 --> blue bground

www.me.com/topic2 --> red bground

etc...

Good luck