Does multiple sites that relate to one company hurt seo

[empireelec]

I know this has been asked and answered but my situation is a little different.

I am a local electrical contractor.  I specialize in a service and not a product.  Competition is high in the local market due to the other electrical contractors that have well seasoned sites with very good DA/PA.  Although new to the web I am not new to the trade.  Throughout years almost back to the AOL dialup days I have been collecting domain names for this particular purpose.  Now I want to put them to good use.

Being an electrical contractor, there are many different facets of work and services we provide.

My primary site is empireelec.com

A second site I threw online overnight with minimal content is jacksonvillelightingrepair.com.  Although it is a fresh site, there is minimal content and I have put almost zero effort in to it.  It appears to be ranking for keywords a lot quicker.

That leads me to believe I should utilize my other domain jacksonvillefloridaelectrician.com and target just the keyword Jacksonville Florida Electrician.

It leads me to believe I should use jacksonvillebeachelectrician.com for targeting electricians in jacksonville beach. And again with jacksonvilleelectricianservice.com

I can provide a unique phone number for each site.

Am I going about this all wrong?  Everything I read says no,no,no but I feel my situation is a little more unique.

[MiriamEllis]

Thanks, Gabe! So nice of you to say. We've just had another good thread about EMDs going this past week, with a great response from Rand on it. You might like to read: https://moz.com/community/q/to-re-domain-or-not-re-domain-that-is-the-question#reply_376575

[Gabe_BlueGuru]

That was nearly two years ago, but that is an INCREDIBLE answer, Miriam. Going through these questions myself right now.

EMDs unfortunately still seem to be ranking higher, but maybe Google AI will start to pay off in 2018...

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Andrea!

I'm so happy this thread helped you! You wrote:

"From what I read, the best solution would be instead putting the blog on the main site and this discussion confirmed this."

YES! Absolutely.

Regarding what to do with the old domains, I go with choice #1 on that.

[Mainlab]

hello,
I ran into this thread while looking into a similar issue for one of our client. First of all thanks to Miriam for the great post.
I thought I'd follow up on this, to see if I'm taking away the right ideas.

This client has a corporate website on a medium-low competition B2B industry. DA is 22 and positioning is good on most of the relevant keywords is satisfactory, on the national market (Italy). There is no blog on this site: when we took the job, we adviced that they start one, but they weren't ready at the time. Now, they also have 3 other domains with static generic pages set up a few years ago by their former agency, which link back to the main site. None of them has any DA, nor inbound links and just one is bringing (very little) traffic to the corporate website. Last month they asked us to start a blog on one of those secondary domains, redirecting the other two to the one chosen to host the blog.

From what I read, the best solution would be instead putting the blog on the main site and this discussion confirmed this. Provided that I can convince the client to take that road, I am unsure of what to do with those other domains:

1. let them expire and buy beers
2. use them as landing pages for specific topics related to the keywords in each domain, linking back to main site (btw is this considered a spammy technique by google?)
   If I can't convince them, would linking back to the corporate site potentially hurt ranking? Should I nofollow those links?

Thank you in advance
Cheers
Andrea

[MiriamEllis]

So glad it helped, Rich, and hope no one drowned in that sea of words

[empireelec]

Miriam, I dont think you could have articulated that answer with any more detail.  That has cleared any doubts.  Thank you very much for taking the time to explain in the detail you have provided.

[EGOL]

Rich, you just received $5000 worth of consulting from Miriam.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Rich,

I know those EMDs can be so tempting to use, particularly because Google still appears to have a bias towards keywords in the domain after all these years, but I'm going to attempt to explain here why you are likely hearing 'no-no' on this.

Your topic is such a good one, that I'm going to break this response down into 4 different parts, looking at this from 4 different viewpoints.

1. You're an electrician physically located in Jacksonville. You install lighting, you install wiring, you do residential work, you do commercial work. You offer half a dozen or more different services, but they all fall under the general heading of electrical work. Because you have a single office you're working out of, you are only allowed to build a single Google My Business listing, based on your Jacksonville location and using the categories Electrician and Electrical Engineer. You set this up as a service area business in your GMB dashboard, because you serve a variety of towns around your Jacksonville location. You are not allowed to create additional GMB listings for each of your services nor for cities where you don't have a physical location. So, in sum, you've got one GMB listing, properly categorized and listing one business name, one address, one phone number and one website. This is the sum of the information you are sending directly to Google about your business, via the GMB dashboard.

2. Now, we need to step into the shoes of a Googlebot to picture what happens from here, once you've created that GMB listing. We (the Googlebot) have this info about ABC Electrical at 123 Main St in Jacksonville, phone number (904) 365-7777 and URL www.abcelectrical.com. We head out to the web to cross-check this data we have with every other piece of data that seems to relate to this. We run into confusion very quickly because we start to encounter:

• The same physical street address on 6 different websites

• A shared phone number on 2 websites

• Some duplicated content on 4 websites

• A shared or similar business name on 3 sites

We thought the electrician told us his business was ABC Electrical at X address, X phone number and X website URL. So what is all this stuff? How does ABC Electrical relate to ABC Electrical Jacksonville Beach, or ABC Electrical Palm Beach, or Enterprise Electrical Jacksonville? We aren't totally sure and we don't think we 'trust' our data about this business which seems confusing. We'd rather rank a business highly when we're positive that it's relevant to the searcher, and we just don't feel sure how relevant ABC is, given how their data is all over the place. In fact, there's a chance ABC could be trying to game us, trying to appear as if it is 6 businesses instead of 1 and in 6 locations instead of 1. Hmm, we don't really like that at all.

3. Okay, so that was us being Googlebot. Kind of silly, I know, but I find it helps me to tell a story to myself like this to help me envision possible paths. Now, let's turn back into being you, the business owner. You have been in your industry for a long time, and have been building a brand called Empire Electric. You've had a single website you've been working to make the very best site on its topic in its geography. Likely, just doing this has represented a considerable investment of time and money. You've got a blog on this site, and it's challenging enough to find time every week to write something awesome on it, but you're doing it. You're making that time. You're dedicated to building that brand!

Now, suddenly, instead of concentrating all the spare time and budget you have on your one website, your one blog, you are considering splitting that up into 2, 3, 4, 5 different parts. Ask yourself seriously if you will have the time to develop totally unique, high quality content for each separate site, and to write not one blog post a week, but five, so that every site you run is equally good, equally the best of its kind in its city. Or, if not the time, the money to pay a really excellent copywriter and blogger to achieve all of this for you on an initial and then ongoing basis? Or, will trying to run all this and/or pay for all this just end up detracting from your original goal of making your company and main website the leader in its industry/geography? Will you end up with half a dozen poor quality websites instead of one powerhouse website?

4). Now, finally, let's be me - the Local SEO, or any of those other Local SEOs you've heard 'no-no' from on this. Why are you getting this response? It's because this is what we've seen with other businesses that went with a multi-site path instead of a single site one:

• NAP inconsistency across multiple websites, killing trust in the true data for the brand.

• Duplicate content

• Thin, weak content

• Neglected websites

• Owner burnout

• Efforts being spread too thin to have the effect we hoped for

• And, in extreme cases, filters, penalties and GMB takedowns!

So, that's what the no-no comes from. If you're hearing this, it's because this is what Local SEOs have seen so many times, they are worried that the same things will happen to you. To be totally honest, those you've heard this from likely feel doubtful that your business is going to be the exception that ensures that all guidelines are obeyed, no NAP is shared or convoluted, no content is thin, no content is duplicated,all sites are kept fresh and active at all times, and that there is absolutely ZERO footprint linking one website to another in any way. That is a really big list of requirements, and in fairness, it is actually possible to meet all of those requirements. It may be that you do have the time, the funding and the technical skills to meet every one of these requirements for a multi-site approach. If you do, then, yes, you could go this way.

But will it be worth it?

It's my personal opinion that it is almost always better to build the best darned authoritative website in your industry/geography, putting every bit of time and money into turning that site into a powerhouse for your brand, rather than spreading yourself thin over a bevy of websites. After all, at the end of the day, it's your brand that you want on the lips of your neighbors. You want them to know to call Empire Electric for all of the electrical needs. You don't want them to try to remember they saw some site called electricalservicesjacksonville.com. That's not a brand. It's just a bunch of keywords.

Moz is a good example we can look at. It offer a variety of products and services, all under the Moz roof. But, imagine if Moz instead had one site for this forum, another for Pro, another for Local, another for our blog, another for YouMoz, one for Seattle, another for our customers in Portland, and San Francisco, and Denver. Doesn't it make it easier for you, the community member, to know you just come to Moz for everything we offer? And wouldn't it be easier for your customers throughout Florida to know that they just come to Empire Electric for every service you offer in every city in which you serve?

Whew - long response, but it's scenarios like these that represent a major decision for a business like yours, and they deserve all the thought you can give them, taking into account how all paths might affect the future of your business. I'll just close by addressing the fact again that, yes, Google is still weighting EMDs in Local SEO. I see totally awful websites ranking because of keywords in their domains ... but I do not expect this to last. I predict that the continuous growth of Google's sophistication will one day result in a crackdown on these low quality sites. When that day comes, I'd certainly be glad I'd built a fortress at my single, branded domain and I'd sit back, and watch those EMD competitors who never deserved to rank well in the first place fall down the rankings. I'd be in pretty good shape

Hope this helps!

[empireelec]

I respect that. It was kind of what I was thinking I was going to hear.

I tried adwords in the past.  It made the phone ring, alot.  Too bad all of the calls were people telling me how they could get me first on Google.  I have to wonder two things, how many of them clicked and cost me money and how many legitimate calls did I miss having to field all the solicitations.

As for yellowpages, I dont want the 60-90 demographic.  With my previous company we spent upwards of 5K per month on print and our call accounting proved that was a huge loss hence the reason the phonebook has gone from 3inches think to 3/4 inches thick in the last 4 years.

As for content, I have one goal and that is to make them call me.  From there it is purely customer service.  Sometimes I think even a splash page with "are you looking for "blah,blah,blah" then call 555-1212 would serve its purpose.

[EGOL]

Let's say you start all of these new websites.  You spend a little work on this one, a little work on that one, a little work here....  then when your customers want to review you some will go to this site, some will go to that site, some will go to another site...

What do you have after that?  A collection of hotdog stands.  Nothing impressive.  You have a bunch of websites that are not much different from your weakest competitor who didn't work very hard.

When you enter competition in the SERPs you enter a melee.  You are being attacked from the front, side, behind, above and below.  The best way to win is to go in like a Rambo and start kicking ass.  If you go in without working hard, you lose.  If you go in with a bunch of hotdog stands you lose a bunch of times.

So, if I was you, I would focus all of my efforts on one website.  EmpireElec has a long way to go.  Put good informative useful content on there for each of your service activities.  What to do before you call the electrician for lots of your most common situations.  Be generous, inform people, save them money, weave yourself a huge white hat.  No time to do that? Then buy adwords, use the YellowPages.

About those domains... I would allow them to expire and buy beer with the savings.   You have one domain.  If you don't have the time or the engergy to make it kickass you are not going to do it with a dozen of them.