2 websites for 2 dealer locations or one website for both locations - Thoughts?

[DCochrane]

I'm trying to decide what would be the best option for my client.

They are a car dealership group who own 2 dealerships about a half hour away from each other. The dealerships have the same name but are just located in different locations.

One dealership is in a small city in competition with several other dealerships within the city. "Dealership name city name"

The other dealership they own (Same dealership name) is located in a small town close to an even larger city. "Same dealership name small town name"

My options are:

1. Creating 1 authoritative website optimized for all 3 locations. The 2 cities both dealerships are located in as well as the large city close to the small town.  This option would be less time consuming, we would only have to earn links, citations & blog for one website. However we'd still need to have citations using both dealership addresses. So that's still double the work. This site would probably be more authoritative and we could have a page promoting each dealership & have shared vehicle inventory. We'd attach 2 Google+ pages using the different addresses & have both location addresses prominently in the footer of the site.

2. Create 2 separate websites for each dealership & target the surrounding towns/cities in their respective areas (even though both dealerships are only a half hour apart). This option is more time consuming as we'd have to earn double  the amount of links. Work on citation building, blog for 2 websites etc. But we wouldn't be diluting our SEO by trying to rank for all 3 locations. We'd have a better chance if we focused on each locations separately on 2 sites. BUT the 2 sites would have less authority.

What is everyone's thoughts? What would you recommend to be the best option.

Money isn't an issue.

Thanks so much for any help.

[YMD]

I have several clients like this.  i have a client with 5 locations in New York City.  I built one website and setup one Google Places + account.  I then setup, registered and marketed the 5 locations under the one Google Places account.  Setup a Google Places account for the main location and you then have the option to add more locations. I build citations for each individual location and link build for each location.  I even do separate press releases for each location.

Basically build one website and market each location/page separately.  You are correct in stating the obvious that you will lose domain authority by developing multiple websites.

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Gary

[WhoWuddaThunk]

What manufacturer?  Each of them have restrictions on what you are allowed to do on websites.