Best way to help a city-centric service provider market in new nearby territories?
-
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!
-
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.
-
Thank you, Bede. We share your concerns and appreciate your articulating them so thoughtfully.
-
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.
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
-
Difficulty with Indexing Pages - Desperate for Help!
I have a website with product pages that use the same URL, but load different data based on what's passed to them with GET. I am using a Wordpress website, but all of the page information is retrieved from a database using PHP and displayed with PHP. Somehow these pages are not being indexed by Google. I have done the following: 1. Created a site map pointing to each page. 2. Defined URL parameters in Search Console for these type of pages. 3. Created a product schema using schema.org, and tested it without errors. I have requested re-indexing repeatedly and these pages and images on the pages are still not being indexed! Does anybody have any suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jacleaves0 -
Redirecting main www. subdomain to new domain. Can you then create a new subdomain on the old domain?
Hi there, The scenario is this: We have been working on a rebrand and have changed the company name So, we want to redirect www.old-name.com to www.new-name.com However, the parent company is retaining the old brand name for corporate purposes So, in an ideal world, we'd be able to keep www.old-name.com active - but clearly that would sacrifice all of the authority built up over the years, so we do have to redirect the main www. subdomain in it's entirity. However - one suggested solution is to redirect www.old-domain.com to www.new-domain.com... but then create a new corporate subdomain: for example, business.old-domain.com business.old-domain.com will not be competing with the new site on any service/product related terms; it will only need to appear in SERPs for the company name I'd appreciate some thoughts on this, as I've not done this before or found any examples of anyone that has. Is that a massive risk in terms of sending a confusing message to Google? Thanks for your help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | edlondon0 -
New indepth page for content marketing - feedback?
I finally figured out that to EARN quality links I need some great content that I can share. Content that is valuable to people. So I created a (indepth?) article with some pretty sweet infographics. This is NEW to me. So I was hoping I could get some feedback on this before I attempt to promote it to media and industry publishers. Here is the link: http://www.titanium-jewelry.com/jewelry-insurance-info.html Would love your feedback and suggestions! Thanks ron
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yatesandcojewelers2 -
Please help with page
We used to use this page http://www.discountbannerprinting.co.uk/banners/vinyl-pvc-banners.html to rank for the words vinyl banner and PVC banner but we have tried to focus the page only on PVC banners and move the vinyl banners word to http://www.discountbannerprinting.co.uk/ yet for some reason even though they have both been spidered google has now chosen to rank this page http://www.discountbannerprinting.co.uk/stickers/vinyl-stickers.html for the vinyl banner words- how do I stop this from happening I thought the home page would be powerful enough to rank for the word with a title inclusion and a spread of the word on the page. Also if anyone can give their opinion on why they thinkhttp://www.discountbannerprinting.co.uk/banners/vinyl-pvc-banners.html does not rank very well I would be truly appreciative.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
What's the best way to manage content that is shared on two sites and keep both sites in search results?
I manage two sites that share some content. Currently we do not use a cross-domain canonical URL and allow both sites to be fully indexed. For business reasons, we want both sites to appear in results and need both to accumulate PR and other SEO/Social metrics. How can I manage the threat of duplicate content and still make sure business needs are met?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BostonWright0 -
Please I need some optimism for this (not provided)
Does anyone see this getting any better. It is getting absolutely ridiculous and almost to the point where it looks like soon analytics will be pointless! Can Rand pull some connects and tell Google - Hey Camon! This is ridiculous, we need to see at least a little bit more of these! notprovided.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | imageworks-2612900 -
Best free way to make our NAPs consistent - online software maybe?
Hello, What's the best free tool or method to making our local SEO citations consistent? We have more than one name and phone number out there and there are a lot of citations already.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
Website Siloing..best practice?
Hi all I am doing some research this week on the effects of siloing a Magento site. We have about 1,654 pages with approx 1,400 products. We want to silo the website in order to address the internal linking issues and to also focus the customer journey in a more organised way. I need to report all of the possible angles and effects that this will have on the site, prior to implementing it. Does anyone have info on best practice for siloing? I'd appreciate any help... Thanks Nick
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Total_Displays0