Creating a Wordpress Multi-site - Should I have separate Domains or use Subdirectories?
-
Hello,
I have a company building out a website and wanted to get the community opinion on how we should set-up the domain network (separate domains or subdirectories).
Our company has several locations across the country and really act as their own entity in those locations (Austin, Norman, College Station, etc.). Currently, we have all the locations under 1 domain like so... maindomain.com/our-locations/norman. This clearly isn't they way it should be set-up and it was done a long time ago, so we are changing to either:
- Separate Domains already purchased
- Subdirectories such as maindomain.com/norman
I would like to know what would be the best strategy for our communities in regards to SEO?
Thanks!
-
Hi Tyler
You would simply direct the traffic to each of the folders/cities so the cost of Adwords could easily be assigned to each separate office.
There is nothing else to worry about
Regards
Nigel
-
Hi Tyler,
Can you be more specific? What types of issues?
-
Thank you! That makes sense to me on the SEO side.
Any domain issues when it comes to AdWords tracking?
Thanks!
-
Hi Tyler,
I second Nigel's vote for the single domain approach. In a nutshell, it's nearly always better to build your brand on a single website than to try to spread your efforts across multiple websites. Local SEO best practice is to stick with a single domain on which you build out the necessary pages to reflect your various branches, linking to them from a high level menu or a combination of a store locator widget + an accessible html menu somewhere on the site so that you can be sure these pages get indexed.
-
Hi Tyler
You should go with the second option. It is by far the best for SEO. Have the main company information on the main site and then have the different locations as a first sub-directory as you have written it:
Make sure that the new city pages are rich with local information - drop in a photo of the city centre with an alt tag 'Norman' - talk about the main attractions of the town and flesh out the pages with contextually rich local information. Don't simply copy content from the main site as the duplicated content will drag the page down SERPS. If you do this correctly you will have a very good chance of ranking No.1 for your service + City in search.
Don't even think about setting up domains for each city - in fact, go and sell/delete them now!
I hope that helps - oh and don't forget to use Google my business to set up Googe local for all locales! and get plenty of local citations for each city. It should really rock if you do that!
Regards Nigel
Carousel Projects
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
-
How has the MOZ community used the new query data from Google My Business?
Our team has been diving into the wealth of knowledge that the Google My Business query functionality has created for us. In an effort to start the conversation on best practices, we're interested to hear how the MOZ community has used this data. Excited to hear how the community is using the data!
Local Listings | | ReunionMarketing1 -
Has anyone tried using AMP links in Google Business Listings?
We have a client with multiple locations, and Google Business listings for each location. We've also created AMP pages for each of those location landing pages, and they're ranking on page one of their main queries, just below the local pack. We're wondering if anyone has tried pointing a GMB website listing at an AMP page, or if there are considerations to keep in mind before testing it out. So far, we've discussed whether to use the AMP url (amp.domain.com) or the Google viewer url (google.com/amp/s/amp.domain.com), and potential concerns for desktop users.
Local Listings | | WompM0 -
Should add Schema markup to my sites Business Directory?
I'm adding a Business Directory to my ecom site to show where the product can be purchased/used. Some listings are stores where you can purchase others are restaurants, bars and spas the product can be used. My question is should I add relevant Schema markup for each listing? My thoughts are yes but wanted feedback from the community.
Local Listings | | ColeBField
Thanks0 -
Questions about On-site Location Content for Service Area Businesses
Hello all, I've got a couple tough questions about how to go about creating locations pages for my business, and I'm wondering if you can give me some much needed direction. I'm about to launch a professional house cleaning business which will serve Philadelphia and a couple surrounding counties. I plan on aggressively expanding to other large cities, and while I plan on building a Philly locations page, I'm unsure of how to rank organically for all the individual towns/municipalities in the surrounding counties in the middle without having a physical business location there. Should I even hope to rank for these smaller towns? Would a page where the county is in the h1 tag, and say the top 10 largest towns in that county listed underneath in h2 tags help me reach searchers in those top 10 largest towns? How about paying ~$100 for a physical street address in each county and submitting that NAP to local directories of the larger towns, as well as getting a Google My Business page and using the service radius option? Is there some other strategy that I'm missing? I'm just at a loss for how to compete without AdWords for the people searching in the smaller towns when my competition is businesses with NAP/citations and their main page dedicated solely to that smaller town. Google seems to have made it even harder with Pigeon coming out recently. I serve those areas just as readily as my competition, yet the customer will predominantly see them SOLELY due to the fact that most of my competition are incapable of serving or choose not to serve wide areas. I understand that these businesses are dedicating a lot of resources to those small towns, but it does seem a sad fact that it doesn't mean they're any higher quality of a company than mine, yet they get a leg up. ANY advice or direction would be greatly appreciated, and would come with a huge internet bear hug.
Local Listings | | PTHerrington0 -
Local SEO and Sites by Order of Opinion?
Okay, so we were just having a discussion about which sites/directories are the most important to be listed in for Local SEO. Ultimately we were looking to 'sort' these by order of importance for the typical local business. Google My Business Yelp Yahoo! Local Bing Local Foursquare YellowPages.com SuperPages.com CitySearch HotFrog How would you order them? Would you add anything to the list? Thanks!
Local Listings | | ClickMonsterIM1 -
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.
Local Listings | | UpperCapeSpartans
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.0 -
Can I use a fake email address for Moz Local submission? This is for a medical practice, that has been advised not to publish an email address due to HIPAA concerns.
I work with medical practices, who due to HIPAA do not want to publish an email address in listings. Would it cause a problem if I just submitted a non-working address (like noreply@client.com) that is not set up at all, so any email sent there would just bounce? Obviously, one option is to use a HIPAA compliant email account, but there are other considerations (timeliness of responses related to clinical issues, for example) that make it less than ideal for a many medical practices to publish a public email address of any sort. I'm interested in any options or solutions that could allow me to use Moz Local (which requires an email address) for businesses with HIPAA concerns. Ira
Local Listings | | irapasternack0 -
Local SEO: Creating a Second home-based business?
I'm in a bit of a pickle, here's the issue: I have a home-based business with a physical address. I plan on starting another home-based business at the same physical address. I only have one phone (cellphone). I plan on operating both businesses unless one completely eclipses the other. I can probably see your head spinning right now . . . how big of NAP issues are we looking at? I own my house, I could probably add a line to the new business address (like a suite # or something) I can afford a landline or secondary cellphone if necessary Any thoughts, ideas, criticisms, direction, hate-mail, or solutions?
Local Listings | | roachdesign0