Single sites per location as well as group site. Should we get rid of single sites & only keep group site.
-
Currently we have several single sites for each of our dealership locations as well as an automotive group site linking to each location(dealership) website. Currently there is no landing page for each location on the group site.
To save money we were looking into beefing up our group site and getting rid of our individual location sites. 301 redirecting them to location landing pages on the group site website.
Each site has about the same authority including the group site.
Each dealership location resides in the same province(state) but some locations are a 7hour drive apart so not all within the same vicinity.
I want to ensure we continue to rank well in each location. I won't be able to include all geographic locations in the title tag on the homepage of the group site due to the character restrictions.
What would you recommend? Keeping the individual websites per dealership location OR focusing solely on a group website. I need to ensure we continue to rank well in each city where each dealership resides.
Thanks for any recommendations! It's greatly appreciated.
Thanks for everyone's thoughts & opinions.
-
All great points. The individual sites are going to be re-designed as they are old designs and the content is a little thin. I will take all your points into consideration and make a decision.
Thanks for the great answer!
-
Hi Samantha,
Good discussion going on here. I'll add my own thoughts.
For local businesses, a single site approach is generally preferred over a mutl-site approach for the following reasons:
-
Easier management for the company/webmaster
-
Reduced risk of duplicate content
-
All marketing activity goes toward building the authority of the brand and then this flows down to all locations listed on the site, instead of the authority being split up over multiple websites
-
Possible reduced risk of merges
-
Google has said a single site is a better approach. See: http://www.seroundtable.com/google-one-site-locations-15454.html
So, in general, if a client came to me and asked if they should start out with a single site or many sites, I'd say a single site 99% of the time. That being said, if the client was in your position with multiple sites already in place, I would help them assess:
-
How old these sites are
-
The quality of these sites (great content, unique content or thin/duplicate content)
-
The overall authority of these sites
-
The depth of citation building that has been done for these sites
-
The client's ability to keep multiple sites updated with fresh content on an on-going basis
-
Any problems the client is having with managing multiple sites.
Answers to these questions would help me understand how big of an asset or a liability the multi-sites are for the business. If they are spammy, low quality, low authority, few citations, it would be a no-brainer to suggest bringing everything together in a single site. But, if they are high quality with lots of citations, I would have to warn the client that some ranking drops could likely occur that would take time to recover from and that a great big citation editing job would be ahead of us to ensure that all references to the old sites had been corrected to reference the new landing pages on the single site.
So, it's going to be different in each case, and hopefully these thoughts will help you assess your own situation. Good luck! This is an important decision you are making.
-
-
There are so many ways to achieve what you want, I understand how it can be confusing. Dont feel bad! lol
Since you already have the other sites in place, take your time and optimize them all a bit at a time. You can use the smaller sites to optimize around individual locations, and then link back to your main site. Have the sites feed each other, and make them all come up at once. On the big site, create a page of basic info about the local site, and have a few links pointing out so the search engines find them. Keep it very specific, but dont over-optimize anything. We dont want this strategy to have the opposite effect, lol.
Make sure there is enough info on the local sites to support a link. If they are landing pages, I'm not sure if I would bother. If they are full sites, 10+ pages of good info, then go for it. Make sure to mark up the locations with schema rich snippets, so it is hyper-relevant to the location.
On the main site, look at a way that users can easily find the local pages. Having visitors spend longer amounts of time on all the sites can only help you. The end goal would be to get all sites seen as an authority.
If you want to combine all the sites under one roof, you can do that too, just move the sites into a subfolder under your main domain, and set up proper linking and structure. I'm only leaning towards the separate way because its already in place, and can help the local effort.
As the the amazon reference, I'm not sure that applies here. They have over a billion pages, and high brand recognition.
-
Also, Amazon is not a local company. It
s a multinational company who does not need to rank on
CITY Keyword`` searches. -
Yes. There are certainly some positives and negatives to having one main larger authoritative site (with link juice from the other sites) Or individual sites with more room for geographic authority as well as a group site.
I cannot decide which strategy to go with.
-
Hello,
I just want to add one thing to what Marty said. If you were to combine all sites under the parent domain and do the steps he suggested, all the traffic would be concentrated under one domain and increase rankability overall. Just ask Amazon how having tons of traffic works out.
-
Yes. Those were my thoughts as well. We wouldn't be able to target as many geographic areas on the main site but can on the individual sites.
Thanks for the great reply!
-
Greetings Samantha,
Combining all your sites into one has several advantages, for example-
- Cutting maintenance, programming and upkeep costs
- Allowing all new trust to flow to one site instead of X sites
- Giving your local dealership pages the trust strength of the main domain
- Brand cohesiveness
Having a main group site with individual locality pages within it is definitely doable from a local ranking perspective. We have a franchise client who has over 50 brick and mortar locations in 3 states and we are able to rank them locally with the same amount of effort you would put into a separate site (from an SEO perspective). You'll want to make sure, at a minimum, you do the following-
- Each dealership has it's own locality page on your site
- The address, phone number, etc. on your locality page exactly matches the same in your Google Places pages
- Link your local Google Places pages to the matching locality page on your website.
- Though not required, I would recommend 301ing your locality websites home, about, contact, etc. to their corresponding locality page (inventory can be 301d to it's appropriate page)
As for a recommendation, I would say do what fits best for you. It seems from what you're saying there are some financial benefits to merging and there are no SEO hurdles to prevent you from doing so. Good luck!
-
"Each site has about the same authority including the group site."
Since they are already setup and working/ranking, why do you want to get rid of them? I'm curious as to how that will help you save money. If the main site links out the the sub sites in a natural fashion, and helps the user find a location closer to them, I would leave it alone, especially if it is a driving factor of business.
Having the sub sites I think will work to your advantage, as you will be able to specifially optimize around that location and geographical area, including all sub towns and local areas.
I am guessing you are trying to increase the authority of the main site by combining them all into one? Perhaps the solution is to leave the sub sites as they are, begin to expand the main site, and link out to the others where it makes the most sense. There is nothing stopping you from expanding the main site just because the mini sites exist.
Another think to think of is the local factor of the mini sites. Each one can have its own LBL (local business listing) tied to it, and linking out or embedding that info on that site. Might help the mini sites have a bit more authority that you might lose be combining them all into one mega site.
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
-
Local Site Linking to Corporate Site In Main Menu - Bad for SEO?
Hi, We have 'local' websites for different countries (UK, DE, FR, AP, US etc.) and a corporate website, the local websites are going to be linking back to the corporate website in the main menu (think about us, terms and conditions kind of pages). Any local products will have their own pages on the local website but global products will be linked back to the corporate website. We will be placing an indication the user will be going to another website next to those menu links that go to the corporate website. Is there any drawback to this for SEO? Should we use nofollow in the menu structure of regional websites for these links? Thanks for your help.
Local Website Optimization | | UNIT40 -
Client wants to rebrand but insists on keeping their old website live as well...
I am working with a client in the dental space that has an existing (11 year old) website for his practice. His domain is tied to his last name, which he would like to get away from because he plans to sell the practice in the next couple years. Backstory: Prior to taking him on, he was working with an SEO agency out of India that were built him quite an ugly backlink profile. Once we discovered it, we immediately notified him about the risk of a penalty if left alone. He was riding high in Google SERP's so of course, it was of no concern to him. Needless to say about a year ago he was inducted into Google's "manual penalty club" for suspicious links. His site vanished in Google and all! Hooray! But no, not really... We met with him to discuss the options, suggesting we clean up his backlink profile, then submit for reconsideration. Based on the time we told him it could take to make progress and be back up and running, he wasn't very excited about that approach. He said he wanted us to rebuild a new site, with a new domain and start fresh. In addition, he wanted keep his original site live since it is tied to his already thriving practice. To sum it all up, his goal is to keep what he has live since his customers are accustom to using his existing (penalized) website. While building a new brand/website that he can use to build a cleaner backlink profile and rank in Google as well as to sell off down the line without having his name tied to the practice. Question: Being that he has an existing site with the company NAP info throughout and the new site will also have the same NAP (just a different domain/brand), is there a "best way" to approach this? The content on the new site would be completely unique. I understand this approach is iffy but in his situation it makes sense to some extent. Any feedback or ideas on how to best handle having two sites running for the same dental practice? If any part of my question is confusing or you need further details to help make a suggestion, please fire away and I will be happy to give as much detail as possible. Thanks Mozzers!
Local Website Optimization | | Bryan_Loconto1 -
Does having a host located in a different country than the location of the website/website's audience affects SEO?
For example if the website is example.ro and the hosting would be on Amazon Web Services. Thanks for your help!
Local Website Optimization | | IrinaIoana0 -
Should I use Rel-Canonicals links for a News site with similar articles each year
Our small town news site provides coverage in a lot of seasonal areas, and we're struggling with the current year's content ranking above previous years. For instance, every year we cover the local high school football team, and create 2-3 articles per game. We'll also have some articles preseason with upcoming schedule and general team "talk". We've seen where articles from past seasons will rank higher than the current season, presumably because the older articles have more links to them from other sources (among other factors). We don't want to delete these old articles and 301 them to the newer article, since most articles include information/stories about specific players...and their families don't want the article to ever come down. Should we rel-canonical the older articles to the newer one, or perhaps to the "high school football" category page? If to the category page, should we rel-canonical even the new articles to that main category page? Thanks for the help.
Local Website Optimization | | YourMark.com0 -
Multiple location pages are they bad?
Hello all, I am research some competitors of a client of mine. My client specializes in H.P. printer repair and over the last 8 years has lost market shares to the competition. I want to reclaim market share. As I was searching some of the service companies many have page that list multiple towns that they service. here is an example. http://printerrepairservice.com/locations-we-service/ Should I be recommending this to my client? To me it seems like a spam keyword process. I know an employee of this particular company and he say their online business is booming. I want my clients to boom too! What are your thoughts on these location type pages?
Local Website Optimization | | donsilvernail0 -
Does it matter how or what site you use to GeoTag your photos?
I found a site that was very easy for me to upload my pictures, add the coordinates, download it and put it on my site. The site is GeoImgr.com, but it's not nearly as popular as some of the other's out there. Does that matter? I'm under the impression that as long as the GPS coordinates show up in the XIF Viewer, then I've gotten whatever benefit (albeit slight) there is to get. Is that correct? Or is there something about tagging them from the more popular sites like Flickr or Panaramio? Thanks, Ruben
Local Website Optimization | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
A question about similar services a multiple locations
Moz Friends, I hope you can help with this question. My company has 25 locations, and growing. Our rankings are strong in the Serps and Local Maps. With each location, we create a new page (with a unique URL) for that specific location (ex: Thriveworks.com/knoxville-counseling). We then write about 15 pages of unique content for that location, each page about one of the services we provide like: Depression Counseling, Couples Therapy, Anger Management, Eating Disorder Treatment, Life Coaching, Child Therapy, and the list goes on and on.... Hence, for each location, we create a pile of URLS like: Thriveworks.com/knoxville-counseling/couples-therapy, ..../knoxville-counseling/depression-therapy, .../knoxville-counseling/anger-management... We do this to rank for medium-long-tail searches like "Knoxville Marriage Therapy." As we grow, this results in us writing lots and lots of original content for each location. Original, but somewhat redundant. We would much rather write one AMAZING article on depression counseling, than 25 'okay' ones for each office we open. So, my question (if you're still reading) is our current approach the right one? Should we continue the grind and for each location create a unique page for each service offered out of that office? Or is there a better way, where we can create One anger management page that would suffice for each of our local offices? Has anyone addressed this topic in an article? I Haven't found one... I look forward to your feedback, and thanks in advance!!
Local Website Optimization | | Thriveworks-Counseling0 -
HELP, My site have more than 40k visits by day and the server is down, I do not want all this visits...
Hello... I have a website for a local spa in ecuador, this website have a blog with some tips about health... and suddenly one of the articles goes viral on south america profiels on FB and I am receiving 40k visits by day from other countries that are not interested to me because my site is for a local bussines in ecuador... I already block some countries by IP , but Im still receiving visits from other south america countries, for this reason My hosting server company put down my website and I can not put it back online beacuse this thousands of visits use more than the 25% of the CPU of the server and the hosting company put down my website again... I really need to know what to do, I do not want to pay for a expensive special server because all this visits from other countries are not interesting to me .and as I said before my bussines is local.
Local Website Optimization | | lans27872