A Branded Local Search Strategy utilizing Microsites?
-
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?
-
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!
-
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:
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!
-
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.
-
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!
-
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:
-
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.
-
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.
-
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).
-
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.
-
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!
-
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
-
My Brand new website shows 79% spam Score, what is the reason and how should I deal with this?
Hi, I have just launched my website 1 month before and I have used all paid images, Uniquely written contents, Everything is genuine for better SEO experience in the future. The actual problem is its showing spam by 79% in MOZ bar, I don't have a single link on my website also my content is unique, Images are unique. Why its showing so much spam on this brand new website? Can you please help me? I am very stressed due to this problem.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | rahat640 -
HELP!! We are losing search visibility fast and I don't know why?
We have recently moved from http to https - could this be a problem? https://www.thepresentfinder.co.uk As far as I'm aware we are doing everything by SEO best practice and have no manual penalties, all content is unique and we are not doing any link farming etc...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | The-Present-Finder0 -
Best Link Building Strategies in Modern SEO
Hello, In light of all the updates and also in guest blogging being only for nofollow links now, what's some of the best strategies for link building for ecommerce sites? We're in an industry where the content doesn't get linked to very much. Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Failed microsites that negatively affect main site: should I just redirect them all?
While they are great domain names, I suspect my 7 microsites are considered spammy and resulted in a filter on my main e-commerce site for the important keywords we now have a filter blocking from showing up in search. Should I consider it a sunk cost and redirect them all to my main e-commerce site, or is there any reason why that would make things worse? I've fixed just about everything I can thinking of in response to Panda and Penguin, before which we were on the first page for everything. That includes adding hundreds of pages of unique and relevant content, in the form of buyers guides and on e-commerce category pages -- resolving issues of thin content. Then I hid URL parameters in Ajax, sped up the site significantly, started generating new links... nothing... I have tons of new keywords for other categories, but I still clearly have that filter on those few important head keywords. The anchor text on the microsites leading to the main site are typically not exact match, so I don't think that's the issue. It has to be that the sites themselves are considered spammy. My bosses are not going to like the idea because they paid for those awesome domains, but would the best idea be to redirect them to the e-commerce site?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ElBo9130 -
Is it outside of Google's search quality guidelines to use rel=author on the homepage?
I have recently seen a few competitors using rel=author to markup their homepage. I don't want to follow suit if it is outside of Google's search quality guidelines. But I've seen very little on this topic, so any advice would be helpful. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | smilingbunny0 -
EMD with 3.3million broad match searches got hit hard by Panda/Penguin
k, so I run an ecommerce website with a kick ass domain name. 1 keyword (plural)
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SwissNinja
3.3 million broad match searches (local monthly)
3.2 million phrase match
100k exact match beginning of march I got a warning in GWT about unnatural links. I feel pretty certain its a result of an ex-employee using an ALN listing service to drip spun article links on splogs. This was done also for another site of mine, which received the same warning, except bounced back much sooner (from #3 for EMD w/ 100k broad, 60k phrase and 12k exact, singular keyword phrase) I did file reinclusion on the 2nd (smaller) domain. Received unnatural warning on 4/13 and sent reconsideration on 5/1 (tune of letter is "I have no clue what is up, I paid someone $50 and now Im banned) As of this morning, I am not ranking for any of my terms (had boucned back on main keyword to spot #30 after being pushed down from #4) now back to the interesting site....
this other domain was bouncing between 8-12 for main keyword (EMD) before we used ALN.
Once we got warning, we did nothing. Once rankings started to fall,we filed reinclusion request...rankings fell more, and filed another more robustly written request (got denials within 1 week after each request)until about 20 days ago when we fell off of the face of the earth. 1- should I take this as some sort of sandbox? We are still indexed, and are #1 for a search on our domain name. Also still #1 in bing (big deal) 2- I've done a detailed analysis of every link they provide in GWT. reached out to whatever splog people I could get in touch with asking them to remove articles. I was going to file another request if I didn't reappear after 31 days after I fell off completely. Am I wasting my time? there is no doubt that sabatoge could be committed by competition by blasting them with spam links (previously I believed these would just be ignored by google to prevent sabatoge from becoming part of the job for most SEOs) Laugh at me, gasp in horror with me, or offer some advice... I'm open to chat and would love someone to tell me about a legit solution to this prob if they got one thanks!0 -
Is my SEO strategy solid moving forward (post panda update) or am I doing risky things that might hurt my sites down the road?
Hey all, WIhen I first started doing SEO, I was encouraged by several supposed experts that it was a good idea to buy links from "respectable" sources and as well make use of SEO experimentation offered on Fiverr. I did that a lot for the clients I represented not knowing if this was going to hurt. But now after the latest Google shift, I am realizing that this was stupid and thus deserving of the ranking drops I have received. In the aftermath, I want to list out here what I am doing now to try to build better and stronger rankings for my sites using white hat techniques only... Below is a list of what I'm doing. Please let me know if any of these are bad choices and I will immediately dump them. Also, If i am not including some good options, please let me know that too. I am really embarrassed and humbled by this and could use whatever help you can offer. Thanks in advance for your help... What am I doing now? *Writing quality articles for external blogs with keyword links back to sites *Taking the above articles and spinning them at SEOLINKVINE to create several articles *Writing quality articles for every site's internal blog and using keywords to link out to other sites that are on different servers - All articles are original, varied and not duplicate content. *Writing quality, relevant articles and submitting them to places like Ezine *Signing clients up for Facebook, Yelp, Twitter, etc so they have a social presence *Working to fix mistakes with onsite issues (mirror sites, duplicate page titles, etc.) *Writing quality keyword-rich unique content on each page of each site *Submitting URL listings and descriptions to directories like JoeAnt, REALS and business.com (Any other good ones that people can recommend that give good link juice?) *Doing competitive research and going after highly authoritative links that our competitors have That is about it... HELP!!! Thanks again
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | creativeguy0 -
Competitors have local "mirror" sites
I have noticed that some of my competitors have set up "mirror" homepages set up for different counties, towns, or suburbs. In one case the mirror homepages are virtually identical escept for the title and in the other case about half of the content id duplicate and the other half is different. both of these competors have excellent rankings and traffic. I am surprised about these results, does anyone care to comment about it and is this a grey hat technique that is likely to be penalized eventually. thx Diogenes
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | diogenes0