Question Splitting a website into several websites

[GMiller]

Hello all,

I work for an outdoor adventure company that appeals to many crowds across many locations. Business is predominantly generated through organic search and around 80% of users find us organically. However, some of the audience types get put off by knowing we also serve other audience types (e.g. a charity might bounce if they see we do hen parties, or somebody wanting to trek in Nepal might be turned off by seeing that we do rock climbing for kids in Yorkshire).

Originally, we'd planned on having landing pages which direct audiences to the appropriate content, hiding other audience areas. However, one audience type might accidentally enter the wrong audience area.

Instead, we've flirted with the idea of splitting the website into two, three or more websites. We can't decide if these should be split based on audience type or based on location (we do overseas tours and activities across the UK). Our domain is 10 years old and we rank very highly for some keywords and moderately for others keywords. I know there are pros and cons, but what might be a realistic SEO loss to expect? And how long would this last? Would we need to do aggressive marketing to regain traffic and do the benefits of having a specific channel outweigh the negatives of (presumably temporarily) losing traffic?

I hope I'm not too vague and would be happy to provide further info. Any advice or past experience would be of great help.

Glenn