Best way to help a city-centric service provider market in new nearby territories?

[PerfectPitchConcepts]

Our client recently acquired new county territories outside the main area city. We could create separate location pages under the primary domain, but are wondering if micro sites with unique content (and location-including url) that links back to the location pages would also be a good idea.

There is some traction for certain location-based keywords in those areas.

Better to focus on the one domain, or augment with separate websites in different parts of the state? I can come up with plausible reasons for and against either, but would love your thoughts.

Thank you for any insight!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Perfect Pitch Concepts,

Bede has pretty much said it all in his awesome response!

I'll only add, as you build out those new pages on your website, make maximum effort to make them totally unique and helpful to the user. Don't take the shortcut of publishing duplicate or thin pages. Find great things to write about regarding your client's involvement in his new service areas.

[PerfectPitchConcepts]

Thank you, Bede. We share your concerns and appreciate your articulating them so thoughtfully.

[BedeFahey]

I would go with one site that has location pages for the following reasons:

• You'll probably be starting with fresh domains for your micro sites. If you use the existing site, you'll have some DA built up, which will assist your subpages. You're basically going to be counting on the fact that the location including URL is going to be a big part of getting ranked, and I'm not sure how that would play out long-term, especially given the recent(ish) EMD changes.
• I'd imagine the micro sites won't be providing any value for your customer that you couldn't provide with the main site. Why make them change sites to learn about the company? When I'm searching for products or services and see this, I get just a little bit more suspicious about the company, which makes the sale harder.
• Even with your unique content, your microsites are probably going to be fairly light on content (e.g. just a few pages) if they're all linking back to the same place, it might seem like you're gaming the system for backlinks.
• You probably don't have an easy way of handling your NAP data on all of these different sites. Duplicate local listings suck if they get generated accidentally.
• And, probably the biggest one for me - if you stick with one site, and get your internal structure right, link building efforts for any of the location pages (or the main page) are going to benefit the other subpages as well, so you get more bang for your buck. That's more sustainable in the long run.