Dental Office With Two Locations And Same Practice Name
-
Dentists buy other practices all the time. Sometimes they change the name of the practice and other times they keep the name.
I am working with a dentist on a new website because their old one is riddled with flash (and is ugly too) She has two practices but they have the same practice name. One of them caters to half English speaking and half Spanish speaking patients.
I'm thinking I should create a separate website for each practice mainly because we may want to design the graphics and text for the appropriate patient language probably with a English/Spanish translation button on the website?
For localization, wouldn't it be better to have a url for each physical site?
Suggestions?
-
Hi Bob,
I'm getting a 'server not found' page when I tried to access your demo site. I guess I don't know what theme you're using, but I would imagine you can create whatever kind of pages or you'd need to. If you're using something like the All-in-One SEO-Pack and permalinks, you could even make the 2 city landing pages as blog posts and just link to them from the main menu. But, I don't know what challenges you are facing with your theme, obviously.
Hope you can figure it out. I know it's sometimes tough when clients are on a tight budget. You've just got to let them know what you can do for their investment. The nice thing about websites is that they can always grow as budget becomes available. Good luck!
-
I'll have to figure out how to do this. I was planning on using Wordpress for this. Here is the demo site I have so far. dental1.datacomplete.com. I don't think this theme can be tweaked to allow for the landing pages as you described but I will give it a shot tomorrow. Unfortunately the dentists that I am working with are going through a rebuilding process and their funds are somewhat limited so I am trying to get something up for them with cost in mind and with something that they can edit the content themselves. Thanks again!
-
Hi Bob,
Thanks for answering my question. Given what you've described, I don't see the necessity for the complexity of subdomains, though others might see this differently. What I see is this:
-
She has one business. This logically equals one website.
-
She can create a city landing page for each of her offices on the site (mytoothdoctor.com/torrance and mytoothdoctor.com/wilmington). Yes, you can link to these from the homepage as well as from the main menu. Be sure that these pages are not simply duplicates of one another with the city name changed. They need to be unique, helpful pages of copy for the user, as well as being locally optimized.
-
She can optimize her contact page, footer and other areas of the site for both of her offices...it's not like you're dealing with 20 locations here. Only two of them.
-
She can offer a Spanish language version of the site as well. No problemo so long as you follow best practices on this.
-
She can claim a unique Google Place page for each location, plus other local business directory listings because of the distinct location data.
In your shoes, I would be looking for the easiest-to-manage plan for this client, and unless I'm really missing something, I don't see a need for subdomains in this scenario, and certainly not for multiple websites. Build a single, powerhouse site for the client and both you and she will find it easy to manage for the long haul.
Hope my suggestions help! Miriam
-
-
Thanks for the information.
Yes she has two locations operating under the same name and are 6 miles apart with different zip codes and different phone numbers.
I may want to try that "Chat Live Now" type of software for her practice and she may want to give different offers to different offices.
if i used something like mytoothdoctor.com for the main site and then displayed a box to choose a location would that be kinda goofy?
Then I would have mytoothdoctor.com as the main site and then torrance.mytoothdoctor.com and wilmington.mytoothdoctor.com
-
Hi Bob,
I want to be sure I understand this correctly. When you say the dentist bought a second practice, are you saying that she now has 2 physical offices with unique local are code phone numbers and street addresses, though they share the same business name? Is that right?
If they are in 2 distinct locations with unique phone/addresses, then it is up to the client whether she wants to be running 2 different businesses, or simply be a multi-location business.
If she wants that practices branded differently, then, yes, I would vote for 2 websites, with the proviso that nothing is duplicated from one site to the other. All content must be unique for each site if she really wants to be running 2 distinct practices.
If she wants to have a single practice with different branches, I vote for building one well-optimized website and utilizing Local SEO best practices to ensure that her geo information is being correctly featured for the two locations. Again, landing pages for the two offices will need to feature unique copy (hire a copywriter who knows Local) and the footer, contact page and other elements need to be appropriately optimized in accord with best local practices. Lots and lots of businesses have more than one location, so this would just be a typical Local SEO project. Get the dentist to consult with a Local SEO if this isn't your area so that the new design has the right stuff baked into it from step one.
Regarding duplicate content on multilingual site, this is not a major concern. I recommend reading this earlier Q&A thread on this topic:
http://www.seomoz.org/q/site-with-multiple-languages
Hope this helps!
Miriam
-
Hi Bob
I have dealt with a similar situation for one of my clients. They offered same service at 2 different states and also they had a 3rd site for their educational site.
They worked with a company that had over 20 domain names forwarding in each address and created confusion. So we basically build one site http://www.adaptivemobility.com/ and we forwarded the 2 existing domains to the interanl pages of the site http://www.adaptivemobility.com/indiana/ and http://www.adaptivemobility.com/florida/ .
This worked for our client and made it easy to promote as they usually send everyone now to their main site. But all other sites that linked to the old URls still link to the internal pages. I hoped the link will help you decide on what to do. I also agree with just having a translation option build in.
-
Hi Bob,
I would think you would need to be careful with this situation. I am unsure if duplicate content problems can arise if the content is in two different languages. I think you nailed it on the head when you said one website with a translation button.
For localization I think it would depend on how far away these locations are from each other and if both practices are doing business the same way.
It is possible to add more than one location to directories with a single URL.
Hope I helped....
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
-
Why not just use an alias if the only change is a different domain Name?
We are rebranding our store with a new name. We have purchased a NewDomainName. Can I just make the "Old Domain Name" an alias for the "NewDomainName"? The site will not change in any other way than having a new logo. This is an e-commerce site with over 100 categories of artisan made products. So once we move the site, the old domain will be empty. Thank you Stephen
Branding | | stephenfishman1 -
Domain Name Change
Hello fellow Mozzers! Quick question:
Branding | | David-Kley
We have been looking into changing our domain name into something a bit easier to read and recite. I think that we have found one, and it has a very long history. The issue is that the new domain name removes one of our keywords. Example, current domain name:
webdesignandcompany.com
We have built a lot of branding around this name. Example of domain we are considering:
BLANKdesign.com (blank is to protect the domain name we are considering) The new domain is over 20 years old, whereas ours is only around 7 years. I am wondering if we are shooting ourselves in the foot by removing the word "web" since that is a primary focus of our business. The issue is that the current domain and business name are not very catchy, and hard to say in a phone call and remember. Feels keyword heavy and generic, but it ranks well. Really well. We would be doing a 301 redirect if we decide to change it, and we have Yext and Moz to help clean up all the listings. My question is: Is it worth it to switch? Would the removal of the word web make it harder to rank number 1 or two, since people search for web design? Or since we would be leaving all the titles and meta the same, and that the domain is older than ours make that not an issue? THOUGHTS?0 -
What is the best SEO friendly way to combine two websites.
I have two websites, eg: widgets.com - sells expensive widgets as gifts everydaywidgets.com - sells cheap widgets for everyday use. I would like to combine them both under the widgets.com domain name, because its easier to run the SEO campaign for one rather than two. But i still want two different product collections, and two different sites. widgets.com is by far the larger of the two sites so my current thought is to have that the main landing site, and have a button at the top to take the user to widgets.com/everydaywidgets where they have a similar but different site, and different products. I can set this all up no problem with the correct 301 redirects from everydaywidgets.com, but is it SEO friendly? Does anyone know of a real world example of a business doing this? Cheers
Branding | | SEOhmygod0 -
Using keywords instead of brand name on G+ to rank for local terms.
I noticed something this morning, when performing a search on Google UK for "Intensive driving courses southend" the first position is awarded to a driving school that is using exact match keywords instead of brand name on their G+ page to rank for local terms. See this for yourself here: https://www.google.co.uk/#q=intensive+driving+courses+southend Until then, my site had held position 1 for this term for well over a year. Every gut instinct I have tells me that this will not work forever and its not something I should implement, however I'm interested to hear if anyone else is using this tactic, and how its working for them? How can I compete with this "grey hat" tactic?
Branding | | Silkstream0 -
Is there any downside to have a product name (branded keyword) that has a top keyword in it?
The company I work for recently purchased another company. We are currently re-branding their product into our solution offering and are working on coming up with a new product name, while keeping SEO in mind. The product names that we are thinking of also includes a non-branded keyword that we actively look to rank for. We currently rank relatively high for this keyword. Is there any negative to having a product name that has a non-branded keyword in it. My first thought is that it is great because that non-branded keyword will be used repeatedly on our site when we mention the product. Things that I don't know though are: will it appear we are keyword stuffing does Google recognize that its a branded keyword and doesn't rank us for the non-branded aspect Any feedback or ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! Vince
Branding | | IFSNA0 -
One physical location but we serve 7 counties
I am a new business and I have one physical location but we serve 7 counties in CA how should I plan to list it?
Branding | | avimoz0 -
Domain name with a hyphen
I am looking at starting a brand new website and purchasing a domain to see my hair product. My question is that domain i am wanting to purchase if a 2 word .com domain but it is not being currently used and it is up for auction for 10K. I am looking a purchasing a domain name that is the same 2 words but a has a hyphen between the 2 works. My assumption is that if I start building content, concentrating on seo (keywords, link building, etc) and brand building that I should not have any problems with my hyphen in the domain. I am looking for feedback and insight from the SEO professionals! Thank you guys in advance. UPDATED 1-29-13 Here is the scenario and I am looking on how you would handle it. **name = my brand name I am looking to purchase a domain within the year: namehair.com I currently am using: namehairbrand.com I have purchased: name-hair.com My concern is if I began my SEO efforts and the brand grows extensively then the person who owns "namehair.com" will raise the price even more than the current price of 10k. I plan on purchasing that domain name within the next 18 months or so and then direct the traffic to the domain "namehair.com". If I put all my efforts into "namehairbrand.com" and then submit to Google that I have changed domains - will I get my butt kicked by Google? Thank you guys - you are really helpful!
Branding | | dsmolinski0 -
Law Practice SEO with Multiple Lawyers
I am working with a friend of mine who is a lawyer. He has one partner and a couple of other lawyers at the firm. The attorneys each have their own Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin ,Youtube and other social media accounts. I am trying to create one brand, which is the name of the law firm. Question 1: It would make sense to me to create all social media accounts under the law firm name. Would you agree on this? I'm worried that users wouldn't use the company facebook page if they are used to communicating to the attorney through their personal accounts. Maybe I should put the social media links for the firm on the home page only and then put the individual social media links next to the attorney profile page? Question 2: The firm has been posting Youtube videos but under one of the attorney's names. I have 16 new videos they want posted and they asked me if they should be posted to a new company name channel (yet to be created) or post them under one of the attorneys accounts? I think that most attorneys might look out for themselves ahead of the Firm. If they ever change jobs, they don't have a built up social profile if everything is listed under the firm name. Maybe the way to go would be to help optimize both the attorneys personal profiles and then the firm? Thoughts?
Branding | | Czubmeister0