Sub-domain or new domain for new location
-
I have a small law firm in Dallas, TX. I will be moving to Austin, TX in the next 2 years. My website is doing great here in Dallas, but I have focused on keyword phrases that include the word "Dallas." I would like to leave my current website as is and maintain a Dallas office to keep the business flowing from this website.
I am trying to determine the best way to get Austin business from a 2nd website. I know I will need new content that includes the use of the word "Austin". My question is:
Should I put the new content on (1) a subdomain (i.e. austin.copplaw.com) or (2) a new domain (i.e. copplawfirm.com). I really want to be a player for the google local search results in both cities. I can use a different name for my law firm in Austin, if necessary.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
Regards,
Zac
-
Hi Zac,
As you are a single company, I would recommend going with a single website with unique pages for your different offices. Google completely understands that law firms and other local businesses have more than one office and as you are presumably offering the same services in both Austin and Dallas, I don't really see the need for a different website.
What will be important is that you have a unique local phone number as well as a unique physical street address for the new location so that you can full participate in the creation of local listings for your new office and not let the Austin location detract from the Dallas one or get 'confused' with it.
From all I have read, there is no difference (rankingwise) between this approach:
and
I prefer the latter, personally, but you can go either way without trouble. I think you will need to do some minor re-optimization of core pages of your website to cover that you have 2 locations and then will need to work on city landing pages. Let me link to a piece I recently wrote on this topic, for situations just like yours:
The Nitty Gritty Of City Landing Pages For Local Businesses
http://www.solaswebdesign.net/wordpress/?p=1403
Can you go with a new website instead of building out your current site? Certainly, but I prefer the latter because it is:
-
Easier to manage
-
You don't have to rebuild the wheel - you've already built it
-
You need have no worries about publishing duplicate content on a second site
-
By presenting CoppLaw.com as a single entity with multiple offices, you will be presenting your business authentically as an impressive, growing law firm with the clout to operate 2 locations.
Hope this helps!
-
-
I don't have much knowledge in Local Search (that should be my next plan. Thank you) but I believe you simply have to fill out all the information on each of your local listings. Furthermore, like getting backlinks for website is important, it is also important for local search. When people link to your website, it is important for them to include a location within the anchor text or around the link for co-citation. Witht that, it should help with local search.
Well, I believe having subdomains or folders will be better because you will probably have more backlinks than creating 2 separate site. As i mentioned above, backlinks also plays a role in Local Search.
-
I am not opposed the additional work (I actually like it). Is one alternative better for local results than the other?
-
Hi Zac,
Since your initial website has mainly content on Dallas, i find it hard to incorporate Austin in there unless you change up all your content. If you have a generic website, I would recommend either using subdomain or folders to sepearte each location. Such as dallas.copplaw.com austin.copplaw.com or copplaw.com/dalls and etc. But that doesn't seems to work.
Since you are moving and having another location, I might create a 2nd website. This option is definitely not the best approach since you will have to spend more time optimizing both websites and build links for both website. Basically more website = more work.
If possible, you can rework the content on the main website to make it more generic instead of simply targetting one location. Then use location subdomain or folder. I find this to be the best approach.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Is it worth keeping a decades-old domain that's merely 301 redirecting to the main domain?
Hi fellow Moz SEOs, We have a bigger client who we just did an SEO Site Audit for, and it was discovered that they have several domain names that are simply 301 redirecting to their main domain name. One of their domains in particular is decades old, and the client is asking if there is any value in keeping it (and the others), or simply leaving them as-is. Considering the domain age, does anyone have any recommendations? Much appreciated, Zack Barton
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Zack
Barton Interactive
(833) 442.6853 // office
(408) 910.7750 // mobile
https://bartoninteractive.com0 -
4-5 New High Quality Links/Month, Enough to Increase Domain Authority?
The link profile on our domain is poor and our domain authority is only 18. In April we migrated domains and our domain authority tumbled from 24 to 8 and as of August had recovered to 18. Since August we have engaged in a link building campaign. We are getting 4-5 new links per month. They are good quality. Can we expect to see see an increase in our domain authority? If so, when? The domain is www.metro-manhattan.com. The new links to date are below: <colgroup><col width="114"><col width="252"><col width="377"><col width="296"><col width="97"></colgroup>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
| Status | Anchor text | Final URL | Terget URL | Live date |
| | | | | |
| Done | office space for rent in Manhattan | | | |
| | | | /commercial-space/office-space | 9/20/2018 |
| Done | medical office for rent | | /commercial-space/medical-space | 9/21/2018 |
| Done | office space for rent in Manhattan | | /commercial-space/office-space | 9/23/2018 |
| Done | office space for rent in NYC | | /commercial-space/medical-space | 9/24/2018 |
| Skipped | | | | |
| | | | /commercial-space/medical-space | 10/8/2018 |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |0 -
Gradual Increase in Domain Authority After Domain Migration But No Improvement in Organic Traffic Yet
We migrated our domain in early April and simultaneously added an SSL certificate. Everything was done by the books. All redirects implemented perfectly, very few errors. Google notified via Search Console. Despite all steps being done perfectly our domain authority dropped from 24 to 8. Organic traffic dropped from about 80 per day to about 10. Each month domain authority increases by 2 or 3. We are now back up to a DA of 16. But no improvement in organic traffic yet. At what point should organic traffic start to return? Hopefully the consistent improvement in DA is a good sign. I have been told that adding SSL and moving the domain at the same time was a very bad idea. We are starting link building next week. Hopefully that will help further. Any ideas as to when this situation will improve? Needless to say it has been awful for our business.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
Rankings drop from the new update
Hello, I've noticed some big ranking downs on important keywords, from the last Google update, and don't really know what seams to be the problem, but have an assumption. In April 2015 we had 3.000.000 pages indexed by Google, and 80% of them had duplicated content for about 90% of it. The site I'm talking about is http://nobelcom.com/. The duplicated content came from variations between calling from and calling to selections, because each of this selection was making a new url (ex. nobelcom.com/caling from/calling to). If "calling from" and calling to were the same country the url was nobelcom.com/calling-from, but after you chosen another calling to, the url become like the one in the example. To solve this I've decided to keep the nobelcom.com/calling-from urls and for different calling to country to display the content trough a javascript, because it was the same, it changed only the country names and the rates. I thought that this change will help us with the duplicate content, and still deliver our client what they are interested in, without affecting the UX, and also reducing the link juice dilution because we had 3.000.000 indexed by Google and most of them with no added value Can this be the reason for the drops? Now we have 590.000 pages indexed by Google.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Silviu1 -
Client rebranded with a new website but can't migrate now defunct franchise website to new website.
Hi everyone, My client is a chain of franchised restaurants with a local domain website named after the franchise. The franchise exited the market while the client stayed and built its own brand with a separate website. The franchise website (which is extremely popular) will be shut down soon but the client will not be able to redirect the franchise website to the new website for legal reasons. What can I do to ensure that we start ranking immediately for the franchise keyphrase as soon as the franchise website is shutdown. We currently have the new website and access to the old website (which we can't redirect) Thanks, T
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tarek_Lel0 -
Is having all your media hosted on a sub-domain bad?
I just realized yesterday while doing some audit work on our site (which is still relatively new) that all of our audio assets are stored on a separate sub-domain. We are an eCommerce site that sells audio books, and every product page has a sample audio file to listen to. But all those files are stored on a sub-domain of the main site. "cdn-media.oursite.com". First, I understand that media(our audio files) has some inherent SEO value if hosted correctly. Is that true? And if so, how important would you think it is? Secondly, assuming that it does have value, are we losing that value by having them hosted on a sub-domain? I have read things that say sub-domains are bad, and I have read things that say that Google at least has been treating sub-domains as sub-folders, but I can't find anything definitive one way or the other. On another note, another thing I saw is that people are linking to the sound files directly in various places, and those links are going to the sub-domain, not the main domain. There aren't even pages on the sub-domain, just the files, so those links deliver a "visitor" to a page that is completely blank except for a tiny little audio player. Not sure what to do about that, but that can't be good one way or the other right? How big of a problem is this really? Is it worth me going to our IT dept. and trying to change it? It sounds like it would be a pretty big deal to change, so I'll need a few voices to back me up if that's the case.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DownPour0 -
Subdomain and domain authority
I have Domain A (main content site, lots of content), with a domain authority of 91, and Domain B (blog of the first site, lots of content), with a domain authority of 82. I'm merging the blog into the main domain. Would it be best to keep it as a subdomain, or under a directory?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | smorrison0 -
New Domain Name For Site That Ranks Highly on Key Terms
Here's my problem -- which is actually a pretty good problem to have. My client is a speciality service provider in an extremely competitive field. It charges 3 to 5 times what others do for providing a super-premium level of service. It doesn't have -- nor does it want -- many customers. I can't go into details, but let's just say the business model is a bit like the charity or premium newsletter publishing model. It is extremely hard to recruit new members -- but once recruited, members tend to stay for a long time at high price points. Personal referral is key. As result of my efforts over the last 90 days, the client's SEO results have skyrocketed. After a couple of false starts, we have focussed on key terms the target demographic is likely to search, rather than the generic terms others in the industry use. We have also had great success with a social media strategy -- since the few people likely to be interested in paying such high prices know like-minded folks. For the first time, my client is getting "walk in" prospects. They are delighted! But they are not really walk-ins. They have already found the site -- either through SERPs or Facebook or Twitter. Now we need to get to the next level. Here's the problem: the client's domain name sucks. It is short, but combines an acronym with one of the words in its long-version name. It uses the British spelling version of the long name fragment, even though most Canadians now use American spelling. And it is a .ca, rather than a dot.com So I think we have to bite the bullet and change to the long, dot com version of the name, which is available and has the additional benefit of having embedded within it a key search term. I am basically an editorial/content guy and not a tech guy. The IT guys at my firm are strongly encouraging me to make the change...in very "colorful" language. We can certainly do 301 redirects at the page level. But I would like some additional validation before proceeding. My questions are: how much link juice might we lose? I've seen the figure of 10% bandied around. Is it accurate? might we see a temporary dip in results? If so, how long would it last? what questions did I forget to ask? What additional info do you need to offer informed advice ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DanielFreedman0