Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Local SEO
    4. Local Listings
    5. Concerned about cannibalization for local SEO results. Should we move some of our location pages to a subdomain?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Concerned about cannibalization for local SEO results. Should we move some of our location pages to a subdomain?

    Local Listings
    3
    7
    2007
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • RosemaryB
      RosemaryB last edited by

      Currently we are providing local SEO recommendations for a well known pharmacy chain.  Like most major brands they enjoy multiple organic (not just 3 pack results) listings when people search for local phrases such as "Dallas pharmacy clinics'".

      The issue is that all these listings are coming from the same domain page.  We are seeing multiple listings both branded and non-branded search queries.

      Our concern is that Google will someday decide to choose one listing as the most authoritative and nix the rest of the local listings which will reduce their first page search engine saturation.  To maintain first page saturation we are considering recommending to the client that they move some of their location listings
      to a subdomain (different IP address) to avoid a Google "clean up".  Please note that our client is certainly not using any "doorway" pages but some of these are very scarce on content.  They do not have an issue with duplicate content either.

      By using subdomains could we help maintain our client's first page saturation?  Any links to articles would be much appreciated.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • MiriamEllis
        MiriamEllis Subject Expert last edited by

        Hi Rosemary,

        Thanks for the clarification. For a pharmacy chain (or any other franchise) here is what would typically be appropriate:

        1. You have a single website.This website has some basic pages like home, about, specials, contact and what have you.

        2. In addition to this, you build a unique page of high quality for each of your locations. I don't recommend subdomains. I recommend subfolders. So, this would look like: thepharmacy.com/sugar-land for your store in Sugar Land Texas, and thepharmacy.com/dallas, for your store in Dallas. If you have more than one location in a city like Dallas, your URLs might look like thepharmacy.com/dallas-deep-ellum and thepharmacy.com/dallas-highland-park. Put the complete contact info (NAP) at the top of each page and then create strong content to make the pages interesting, helpful and unique.

        3. From your Sugar Land citations, across the web, be sure you are linking to the landing page you've created on the site for Sugar Land, ditto for Dallas citations, etc.

        This would be considered a standard methodology for any multi-location business.

        How you then showcase these pages on the website needs to be dictated by the number of locations you have. You want them to be easy to find. You might check out a chain like REI.com. Look at how they are surfacing locations for their users and how they are making their pages unique. They do a good job!

        Hope this helps!

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
        • RosemaryB
          RosemaryB last edited by

          Thanks for the detailed response and questions Miriam.  Just to be clear I am not referring to "listings" but organic search results for individual store locations.  Would have just one additional subdomain with store listings (and different content of course) be appropriate for our client?    Our client does have local Google, Bing and Yahoo! business listings for each store location.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • MiriamEllis
            MiriamEllis Subject Expert last edited by

            Hey Rosemary,

            Sometimes, local lingo can be a bit of an obstacle in having a clear conversation. I want to be sure I understand what you are saying here when you are talking about 'listings'. To me, a listing is a citation - such as your Google+ Local listing, your Yelp listing, your Bing Places listing, etc. I believe you may be talking about city landing pages on your website, instead. Is this what you are describing:

            1. You have a multi-location business with physical offices in various locales?

            2. You do not have a strong page on the website for each of these offices? Instead, all of your search engine results, including local pack rankings and organic rankings, are pointing to your home page?

            3. You have a unique set of citations for each physical office? You have a Google+ Local page for each, a Bing listing for each, a Best of the Web listing for each, a Yelp listing for each, etc?

            Is this all correct? Please, provide as much detail as would be helpful.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • DmitriiK
              DmitriiK @RosemaryB last edited by

              Since you are talking about specific location-related results, my guess is that there is no much use in trying to have many local pages for the purpose of "flooding" Google results. If somebody searches for "Hyperlinks Media Houston", then Google will serve the results for Houston only and won't serve other locations pages. Therefore the placement of those pages doesn't really matter.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • RosemaryB
                RosemaryB @DmitriiK last edited by

                These are unique pages showing up in the subfolders.  However all of these listings are still from the same domain (same IP address).  Some of these extra listings are not that important, however they are nice to have for first page saturation reasons.  We were thinking of moving these lesser important pages to a subdomain since they are on a different IP address.

                DmitriiK 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • DmitriiK
                  DmitriiK last edited by

                  Hello, there.

                  _"The issue is that all these listings are coming from the same domain page" _- It is an issue, indeed. My recommendation would be to create unique pages (I wouldn't go with subdomains, I think that's just too much 🙂 for each location. At the same time make sure that you have all locations in local directories. This will help Google not to "nix" the results.

                  I'd say look how big companies do it - let's say Apple and do the same way.

                  About links - https://moz.com/learn/local - good guide.

                  Hope this helps.

                  RosemaryB 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • 1 / 1
                  • First post
                    Last post

                  Got a burning SEO question?

                  Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                  Start my free trial


                  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.

                  • See all categories

                  Related Questions

                  • brandonegroup

                    GMB images not appearing on SERP results?

                    Hi Guys, we uploaded images in our GMB dashboard but they are not appearing on the SERP results example: Any ideas on how to get them to show on search result page? See example:  https://cl.ly/8c5694604d17

                    Local Listings | | brandonegroup
                    2
                  • isenselogic

                    Local Recreational Marijuana Dispensaries Disappearing from Google Maps when Plurals used.

                    This is the second time I have posted this question and never got a satisfactory result. I have an SEO client in Tacoma Wa and when you type (Dispensaries Near Tacoma they are in the Top 3 snack pack and the Google maps shows 20 other similar businesses. However, when you search (Dispensary Near Tacoma) only 3 or 5 recreational marijuana shops show up and my client disappears. Someone earlier suggested it could be because of the categories selection, but that can't affect ALL the other shops and like I said it happens in other cities. for example Dispensary Near Olympia vs Dispensaries Near Olympia.  I have the full write up and pictures and diagrams on my blog. Please HELP! This could affect your future clients also. https://isenselogic.com/local-business-disappearing-on-google-maps-when-plurals-used/

                    Local Listings | | isenselogic
                    0
                  • TheKatzMeow

                    Google My Business pages for New Construction Communities

                    I have a number of builders of new homes as clients. Typically, they build out a whole neighborhood at once and give the neighborhood a fancy name. We were planning to create Google My Business pages for these communities but then ran into some potential challenges. As new communities, they are sometimes not on Google's radar yet Some of them have model homes where you might take a tour with a realtor that serves the community exclusively but many don't. So here come the questions... Is there a way to make Google speed up its process of recognizing new addresses? I have to choose an address to associate with the GMB page, probably the address of model home. Is this going to create annoying problems for a buyer who someday buys that model home? Since some communities don't have a model home, I could arbitrarily assign an address of one of the neighborhood homes to the GMB page, but this leads to the same question about creating a GMB page that will exist after the builder has sold all the houses in the community. Will it be weird to have the GMB referring to someone's private residence down the road? My assumption is that claiming a GMB page would help with local ranking if someone searches for something like "new homes" in addition to providing easy driving directions to someone who has done a bit of research and Googles the name of the new home community while out driving and searching for homes. These seem to be the main benefits, but are the challenges associated with questions 1-3 even worth the trouble of trying to claim listings for these communities?

                    Local Listings | | TheKatzMeow
                    0
                  • photoseo1

                    Local Ranking with No Physical Address in New Service Area - How to Rank?

                    OK, SO, I am a wedding company in Maui, Hawaii and have an established business on one island with a physical address. http://simplemauiwedding.net We have started a new team in Oahu, Hawaii http://simpleoahuwedding.com and we provide service there and have a full team in place. How can I rank for Local Search on that Island with no physical address? I would love to hear some proven strategies. Thank you 🙂

                    Local Listings | | photoseo1
                    0
                  • Patrick_at_Nebraska_Medicine

                    How do you fix a Google My Business Location Issue if the road doesn't yet exist on Google Maps?

                    My core question is just: How do you fix a Google My Business Location Issue if the road doesn't yet exist on Google Maps? Do I have any other options other than to just wait on Google to catch up with reality? Here's the background: I work for a hospital. We just opened a clinic on a street that is real and has a U.S. Postal Address, but Google Maps doesn't recognize it, and redirects people to a house . This is our postal address: 8343 S 168th Ave Omaha NE 68136-1677 If a patient enters the following into google maps, 8343 S 168th Ave, the location the map autofills the wrong zip code, and sends them to a home that is on S 168th Ave. (where in theory a home would exist if it had that home number). The road does exist in that portion of town. If a patient enters 8343 S 168th Ave, Omaha NE 68136, google maps takes you to the correct location, but it automatically changes Ave to St. The verified Google My Business listing also lists it as Street, even though on the back end I've put in the word Avenue, and it shows up in the right place. If however someone just searches by name "Chalco Clinic" the right Google My Business comes up. This is the Google My Business page I'm referring to: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Nebraska+Medicine+-+Chalco/@41.1754796,-96.1787153,15z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0xf77aefb4e27f865!8m2!3d41.1754796!4d-96.1787153 And even though it says it's on a Street, on the back end of the claimed listing I've used "Avenue". In case it matters, this is the landing page for the location: https://www.nebraskamed.com/chalco

                    Local Listings | | Patrick_at_Nebraska_Medicine
                    0
                  • LaurenGT

                    Scoot local links

                    I've been approached from Scoot trying to sell me their local directory links. 
                    Its a one-off price of around £80 to be listed on all of their 500+ directories and £20 a month to be able to do any changes and to keep the web links active.
                    The list of the directories are here - http://submittrackz.scoot.co.uk/directories The question is, are the links of much benefit for local seo?
                    I was thinking of reselling this so the cost is not the problem so much, its just the quality of the links in question.
                    Thanks
                    Dave

                    Local Listings | | LaurenGT
                    0
                  • henya

                    1800 number for google local

                    Hi A client with a local business has a 1800 number on their google plus page and most citations. How important is it to use the local number and not a 1800 one for google local? Should we change the phone number to the local number and update all listings? Or should we just continue with the 1800 number and stay consistent? I have added the local number as a second number on the google plus page.

                    Local Listings | | henya
                    1
                  • RCDesign74

                    Citation building for multiple locations

                    Hey everyone, I think i've got a good handle on citations, but had a question regarding multiple locations. I'm going to be doing citation building for a local lawyer, and he's got 4 locations. I'd like to build citations for each of his locations, but I was wondering if the business name needs to change? Ie. If I am building citations for Town 2 and Town 3, should the business name be listed as "Company Name Town 1" for the first location, and "Company Name Town 2" for the second? Or is it fine to use the company name throughout all citations, and just change the location/phone number to the location based info? I'm just worried about Google seeing differing info, but the same company name, and possibly penalizing me for it. Thanks in advance!

                    Local Listings | | RCDesign74
                    0

                  Get started with Moz Pro!

                  Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                  Start my free trial
                  Products
                  • Moz Pro
                  • Moz Local
                  • Moz API
                  • Moz Data
                  • STAT
                  • Product Updates
                  Moz Solutions
                  • SMB Solutions
                  • Agency Solutions
                  • Enterprise Solutions
                  • Digital Marketers
                  Free SEO Tools
                  • Domain Authority Checker
                  • Link Explorer
                  • Keyword Explorer
                  • Competitive Research
                  • Brand Authority Checker
                  • Local Citation Checker
                  • MozBar Extension
                  • MozCast
                  Resources
                  • Blog
                  • SEO Learning Center
                  • Help Hub
                  • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                  • How-to Guides
                  • Moz Academy
                  • API Docs
                  About Moz
                  • About
                  • Team
                  • Careers
                  • Contact
                  Why Moz
                  • Case Studies
                  • Testimonials
                  Get Involved
                  • Become an Affiliate
                  • MozCon
                  • Webinars
                  • Practical Marketer Series
                  • MozPod
                  Connect with us

                  Contact the Help team

                  Join our newsletter
                  Moz logo
                  © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                  • Accessibility
                  • Terms of Use
                  • Privacy

                  Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.