A Branded Local Search Strategy utilizing Microsites?

[AaronHenry]

Howdy Moz,

Over and over we hear of folks using microsites in addition to their main brand for targeting keyword specific niches.  The main point of concern most folks have is either in duplicate content or being penalized by Google, which is also our concern.  However, in one of our niches we notice a lot of competitors have set up secondary websites to rank in addition to the main website (basically take up more room on the SERPS).  They are currently utilizing different domains, on different IPs, on different servers, etc.  We verified because we called and they all rang to the same competitors.

So our thought was why not take the fight to them (so to speak) but with a branding and content strategy.  The company has many good content pieces that we can utilize, like company mottos, missions statements, special projects, community outreach that can be turned into microsites with unique content.

Our strategy idea is the take a company called "ACME Plumbing" and brand for specific keywords with locations like sacramentoplumberwarranty.com where the site's content revolves around plumber warranty info, measures of a good warranty, plumbing warranty news (newsworthy issues), blogs, RCS - you get the idea...and send both referral traffic and link to the main site.

The ideal is to then repeat the process with another company aspect like napaplumbingprojects.com where the content of the site is focused on cool projects, images, RCS, etc. Again, referring traffic and link juice to the main site.

We realize that this adds the amount of RCS that needs to be done, but that's exactly why we're here.  Also, any thoughts of intentionally tying in the brand to the location so you get urls like acmeplumbingsacarmento.com?

[AaronHenry]

Another very helpful answer - thank you.  Moving forward, I still think the best approach is one website at the end of the day.  After all, the saying is that it is better to mine one mine deep than to mine several at the same time.

In this particular niche, service industries like plumbing have exact match domains with less notable content.  We're still working on the ability to offset this advantage they appear to have.

Thanks again!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Imedia,

So glad to help. A multi-location business model's most unique power is that it can have multiple, legitimate local listings in Google (unlike a service area business with only one location but many service cities). The multi-location business can have one listing per public-facing physical office and these listings can be tied to landing pages on the website. For instance, the Chicago office listing can link to acmeplumbing.com/chicago-plumbing-company (just an example).

As for subdomains, Google reps have stated that Google has no preference for these over subfolders. In other words:

acmeplumbing.com/chicago-plumbing-company

is not a better or worse alternative to:

chicago.acmeplumbing.com

So long as Google can crawl the architecture of the website, they don't care. I find subfolders to be easier to manage than subdomains, personally, so I tend to go that way with my own clients. And, I would consider either subfolders or subdomains to be preferable to microsites, even for a multi-location business.

Exceptions to this? Possibly for large franchises with multiple franchise owners, it could be good for each branch to have its own, fully-fleshed-out website. For example, Ace Hardware is a large hardware franchise where I live. If each Ace location in California wanted to have its own website, in addition to the Ace Corporate website, this might be doable, but I wouldn't think of these as microsites. They'd need to be full-fledged websites. And, I would only suggest such a thing under the rare circumstance that the parent company had very clear guidelines about content policy, management of Google+ Local pages and citations and a whole host of other things. It could be a big huge mess, but in some circumstances, with tech savvy franchise owners, it might work.

Hope this helps!

[AaronHenry]

I think these are great guidelines and recommendations.  Quick question though - what if a small business has multiple locations and a different phone number at each location?  Would it serve any purpose to have a microsite for these locations which are also branded accordingly?

Another strategy I see commonly used are subdomains under the main umbrella site.  Any thoughts on that one?  The client really wants to take up more space on the search results.  So I want to make sure that we do a legit and unique approach to this.  It may be that we instead create niche landing pages on the main site like:

acmeplumbing.com/sacramentoplumbingwarranty

Where this page is a specific section dedicated to plumbing warranties, faqs, warranty changes, newsworthy stories, etc.  That way we continue the size of the site and keep our efforts focused in 1 place.  One our main challenges is that competitors are finding ranking opportunities using keyword specific urls and different google voice phone numbers attached to the same business and location.

[LindaBuquet]

Great points all Miriam!

Many local businesses and SEOs have a Google strategy of divide and conquer.

With Google Local a better strategy is "United We Stand!"

The other important thing is that we need to be mindful of the S in NAPS (Name, address, phone, site) All need to tie together.

One well optimized site with location pages works better for a wide variety of reasons.

Here is a biggie that many don't realize. Let's say main site is optimized for all the plumbing KWs and Place page is linked to home page of main site.

Then you do a microsite for citywaterheaterrepairs.com. If NAP is on the site and other signals to help it rank locally, that tie it back to the main business, sometimes the algo will REPLACE THE URL on the main Place page with the microsite URL. What happens next? The ranking drops for the money KWs- city plumbers, city plumbing service etc, because the Place page is now linked to a site optimized for waterheaters.

I've had SEOs post in my forum about this problem and even post emails they have gotten from Google support saying they will not fix the URL. Support basically tells them the algo will connect whatever site it thinks is relevant and if you only want the algo to connect to your main site - then you should only have one main site.

So anyway that's just one potential issue that can come up.  Hope that helps and best of luck!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Imedia,

You've asked a smart question, and I'm hoping you get a variety of responses from the community. I'm going to weigh in here on why I am not a fan of microsites, specifically for local businesses. I'll break this into numbered points for easiest reading:

1. It's a core goal of every local business to be sure it is sending an absolutely clear NAP+W signal to Google. That's name, address, phone number + website. If Google connects the dots in any way between your microsites, you are posing the question to them, "What is the 'W' in 'NAP=W' here?" You don't want Google to have to ask this. You want them utterly convinced that acmeplumbing.com is your authoritative website. Not sacramentoacmeplumbing.com or sanjoseacmeplumbing.com or what have you.

2. The scenario you describe in which your competitors phone number/s are all ringing back to the same office is really concerning. If they are using the same phone number on multiple sites, this could seriously compound the issue described in point #1. Now Google is asking, "Does this phone number belong to Acme Plumbing or Sacramento Acme Plumbing?" The results of Google's confusing about this could lead to duplicate listings being created with erroneous details on them and ranking failures. Never cloud NAP if you can help it.

3. If the competitors are making the further mistake of putting any part of their physical address on the microsites, then they are really playing with fire. Google finding the same business name, phone number or address on more than one company website can be a recipe for disaster. Mis-matched NAP takes up three spots in the most negative ranking factors identified in the recent Local Search Ranking Factors 2013 survey (see: http://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors).

4. For a Service Area Business (SAB) model like a plumber, Google does understand that you have a single physical location and multiple service cities where you are not physically located, but restricts you to having a single listing reflective of physical locale. It makes sense to build out content for your service cities, but there is no reason this can't be on your authoritative website. Google is still a bit weak in carrying out EMD penalties in the Local sphere vs. the organic sphere, but the writing is on the wall that they are not a fan of the EMD strategy. It's still working for many businesses in Local, but who knows when that could end? Maybe tomorrow, right? I think it's simply safer to build out the content of your authoritative domain than to attempt to 'appear larger' with a host of geographically optimized EMDs.

5. For the local business owner, microsites can become a major headache. I've spoken with many business owners over the years who had these built by a previous firm, either because they thought it was a good idea or the marketer they'd hired thought it was a good idea. Then the relationship ended and the client may be confused about management of the sites or unable to access them, etc. Point being, why create a complex set of websites when a single one will do the job and everything you do on that authoritative site will enhance the company's true brand and visibility?

I hope my thoughts on this are helpful to you in your decision making process on this. You've asked an extremely good question!