Multiple Domain optimization
-
Hello all,
I'm a bit new to this, though I'd like to think I'm a fast learner when it comes to IT related stuff...as I've been doing it for long enough.
Here's my question. I have a non-profit corporation that covers a small region referred to as "Upper Cape" which covers four towns (mashpee, sandwich, falmouth, bourne). I have a direct competitor in each town who has a domain that contains the name of the town.
Being that I'd like to optimize across the four towns, I've decided to also purchase up 4 domain names that contain the towns. Rather than forward the domains to the upper cape domain, I've cloned instances of word press containing my data across 4 different sites that contain the towns.
As I got to thinking about this...I thought that it might actually hurt me...looking for insight and help as to how best to do this to optimize search (and be found) across these four towns. -
Hi IPIM!
Agree with the single domain vs. mult-domain approach, and you absolutely want to avoid duplicating content across multiple websites. I think you might find this article helpful:
-
if you have them (the domains) then your competitors don't...hang on to them and maybe something will come along one day that will warrent using them.
-
Again I appreciate you taking the time to respond and provide insight. I believe you answered my question, although I'm still not sure what to do about the other domains that we've registered.
-
its where do you draw the line, do you create a new site for every town? how unique would the content be across those domains? is that what the search engines really want in their search results, one brand buying multiple domains and dominating the results?
What your proposing above is not considered best practice, other people may disagree but its trying to game the results IMHO, and usually that will end in tears.
think about how you can target those towns within the confines of one domain.
www.yourdomain.co.uk/falmouth-jewelers
have that page contain a Google map with the location, contact details, offers and promotions unique to that location, maybe add a bit of local history, local client testimonials, local news.
Some good reading
https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/give-each-store-a-url/
http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2012/12/14/what-matt-cutts-says-about-local-search/
-
So is there little value in having domains that contain names that pertain to the industry / town?
I just watched a cool Moz video on watches...so using that as an industry so I can frame this in my mind correctly. If my company is Upper Cape Watch Company and I want to specifically target the towns of Falmouth, Mashpee, Sandwich and Bourne (where my competition might be Falmouth Jewelers, Mashpee Jewelers, Sandwich Jewelers and Bourne Jewelers) there's little value in having a domain for Falmouth Watch Company, Bourne Watch Company and so on?If I have 4 domains such as Falmouth/Mashpee etc. should I just forward them to the main site, forward with masking or without?
I am very grateful for your response and insight...I don't get paid for these efforts as it's a small non-profit...pretty much a labor of love that I'm tasked with since I work in the IT field.
-
Im not a fan of diluting authority across multiple domains, it just means having 4 x the effort and 4 x the budget.
I would go for www.yourdomain.com/town and then optimise each of those pages with highly relevant (unique), local and helpful information.
That way, all your outreach efforts are contained within the one domain and you authority flows across the 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
-
Does Google prioritise local domains?
I'm in Australia targeting Australian traffic. I often see US domains in the Google SERPS and wonder if that indicates an opportunity for local (Australian) domains to rank?
Local Listings | | Lazeh0 -
Managing Multiple Outdoor (unverifiable) Locations in GMB.
Hello Guys, I have a question about GMB best practice for a physical location, it actually applies to two sites I have. 1. A predominantly online fitness site but with two 'clinic' locations, which are rooms i hire and cannot claim the location. 2. An in-person fitness service, with no physical location, other than my actual home, and 10-20 location pages that have in the past (pre-GMB) ranked quite well. My question really is, what is best practice here, how to you deal with multiple locations when you cannot actually verify you own them, because they are just areas you work in, run classes or meet clients etc? Thank You!
Local Listings | | scott_laidler0 -
Multiple google places listing
can i submit few map listings in different address from my same user and on the same IP etc
Local Listings | | SEOLocal920 -
How does Google Local Insights report impressions for multiple mappack listings (same company) showing up for one query?
I had a client ask me a difficult question about impression reporting via Google Local Insights. Lets say a client is a popular ice cream chain and somebody does a local brand search for "San Francisco Exotic Tasty Ice" and three locations for the same company all show up in the Google Local Pack. Does each one of these locations receive their own impression via Google Local Insights? Or does Google just count this as one impression for one location altogether? Logically speaking I would think that each location would get its own impression in the insights report. However I'm wondering if there is anything to negate that. Any feedback is appreciated.
Local Listings | | RosemaryB0 -
Google My Business: Multiple businesses operating from same address
Hi guys, This seems to be quite common (especially now with "hotdesking" becoming increasingly popular), but I've never had to do local SEO for a business like this before so was just wondering on best practice for a business who shares the same brick-and-mortar location with multiple other businesses. For Google My Business verification, it does seem you just have to get there first. With Google unverifying the first account tied to that address if you attempt to verify another - I don't want to do this, due to the relationship between my client and the verified business in question. Any suggestions?
Local Listings | | Ria_1 -
Service for multiple loccations
Hi, OK so I have a page on my website which is 24 hour emergency electrician. Please take a look here https://www.otexelectrical.co.uk/windsor-24-hour-emergency-electrician Now I am ranking OK for Windsor emergency electrician however I would like to do the same for the multiple different locations I've I could create multiple URLs with different title and description meta information and submit using site map and web master tools however I'm aware that doing this I would be creating duplicate content. Would a canonical link for each location pointing to the same page be OK to go with and if so how do I go about doing this? Do I do this by linking each area listed to the same page using rel=canonical? Or if I'm thinking this all wrong how would you suggest I did this. I'm very new to local SEO so you will probably notice in google I did origonally create multiple pages of the same content with location changes in content, meta tags etc. I realise now this was the wrong way to go about doing this hence why I've deleted these and edited my .htaccess to 301 to the same page. The location links have dropped in the rankings. Any help would be very much appreciated. Cheers
Local Listings | | Peo19870 -
Local listing ranking higher than domain name
Hi everyone,I was wondering why on my ranking report there is a fluctuation between the local listing page and the domain name page. Is it a way to always get the domain name ranking higher than the local listing?Thanks for your support,RM
Local Listings | | skrauss0 -
Question about domains with 2 or 3 hyphens
I have a client who has 3 domains in the following format: keywordkeywordkeywordkeyword.co.uk keyword-keyword-keyword.co.uk keyword-keyword-keyword-london.co.uk And needs advice on the best one to use. The client is leaning towards the one with 3 hyphens because it has more keywords but I am a bit worried about using it at the risk of it looking too spammy because of the hyphens. So my question is will 3 hyphens as in the above example cause anything negative in terms of SEO? We will not be doing any black-hat seo tactics but even so will 3 hyphens cause any problems or is it safer to go with just two hyphens? And secondly the client asked if Google can understand different words or is it better to have hyphens so Google can understand that there are different words?
Local Listings | | impliweb0