Single Site For Multiple Locations Or Multiple Sites?

[kirmeliux]

Hi,

Sorry if this rambles on. There's a few details that kind of convolute this issue so I'll try and be as clear as possible.

The site in question has been online for roughly 5 years. It's established with many local citations, does well in local SERPs (working on organic results currently), and represents a business with 2 locations in the same county. The domain is structured as location1brandname.com.

The site was recently upgraded from a 6-10 page static HTML site with loads of duplicate content and poor structure to a nice, clean WordPress layout. Again, Google is cool with it, everything was 301'd properly, and our rankings haven't dropped (some have improved).

Here's the tricky part: To properly optimize this site for our second location, I am basically building a second website within the original, but customized for our second location. It will be location1brandname.com/secondcity and the menu will be unique to second-city service pages, unique NAP on footer, etc. I will then update our local citations with this new URL and hopefully we'll start appearing higher in local SERPs for the second-city keywords that our main URL isn't currently optimized for.

The issue I have is that our root domain has our first city location in the domain and that this might have some negative effect on ranking for the second URL. Conversely, starting on a brand new domain (secondcitybrandname.com) requires building an entire new site and being brand new.

My hunch is that we'll be fine making root.com/secondcity that locations homepage and starting a new domain, while cleaner and compeltely separate from our other location, is too much work for not enough benefit. It seems like if they're the same company/brand, they should be on the same sitee. and we can use the root juice to help.

Thoughts?

[kirmeliux]

"My one suggestion is that you be sure that both cities' pages are accessible from the top level navigation. You mention building a second site within the site."

By second site within the site, I simply meant that once you're at the "home page" for the second location, virtually all of the menu links and content are unique to that location. For example, the root page links to Services > Service 1 which is optimized for Initial Location Services. On the Second Location home, they'd be unique URLs/Pages and would not show the initial locations NAP in the footer or anything.

"I'm not completely sure of what you are envisioning here, but did want to mention that I think it's important that the pages for both city a and city b are accessible from the main menu."

We will definitely have a link to our additional location in the main menu. The home page is a functional WordPress layout for the initial city (which is in the domain name), the menu/homepage will have a link to the additional city (which is the same layout as the main homepage, but with a unique menu and NAP). I definitely plan on having the homepage link to our second location so we can piggyback on the authority/juice of home page.

Wesley,

Thanks for the detailed and informative post. The only thing I'd like to point out is that I'm not referring to building out pages for service areas (although we will do that for a few of them), but an additional "home page" within the site for a city we actually have a location in.

So basically it's quite a bit different than building doorway pages when it's a legit "home page" for our actual location.

[Wesley-Barras]

Hello,

You asked a very good question. I have run up across this too, many times before. I know that I am going to get blasted by some but I tend to take the opposite approach as Matt and Miriam these days (no offense to those two at all). Let me explain....

In the past, I would do exactly what you are thinking about. I would optimize one domain for the largest city the company was doing business in and create sub pages for the other smaller cities. With some good, non duplicated content, it would always work out well.

I did this so many times I cannot remember and it always produced great results. A website got traffic from all cities within one giant metro area.

That technique does not work out well for me any longer and I rarely use it. There are several reasons.  Google has gotten better at recognizing which suburbs tend to go along with specific large cities. For instance, if you live in Portland, then Google will recognize that Beaverton, Hillsboro, Gresham and Tigard are all part of the same metropolitan area.  I have noticed that they let the domain names with the highest trust and authority automatically rank for the smaller cities in the area.

At the very least, I have found that if the domain is strong enough, then all I have to do is mention those cities on the home page or some other strong page within the website and they will rank well for everything.

Currently, the results have been dismal for me when I have attempted to make a whole bunch of subpages,optimized for several cities.

In fact, I am going through this exact problem with two local clients. I think Google is trying to get rid of clutter.  They are referred to by Google as doorway pages and Google is trying to get rid of them.

Now, according to them a page is only a doorway page IF it has "poor-quality content," but that is subjective. We all view our content as "high quality" but to Google those subpages does not give their users any value.

I am convinced that they frown on websites with several pages solely optimized to rank for all the smaller cities within a big metropolitan area. My suspicions were verified by Will Renolds in a Summit East 2013 video I just watched three days ago.

Some websites, who have a high enough pagerank and are "grandfathered in," can still get away with it.  If you have been involved with SEO long enough you learn that just because another website is successful at doing something does not mean you will be as well. I would view myself as a gun slinger but lately I grown weary of playing the game of Russian Roulette with Google.

I have several websites that I firmly believe have lost rankings (they don't rank anymore for all the smaller cities and lost ranking for the bigger city) because of that. That might not have been the only reason but it appears that way to me. I am convinced that your overall relevance gets diluted when you do this.

Now, having said that, my official response depends on one thing: what is the main city you rank for now and what other city are you trying to rank for?

If the city is not that big, and your domain is strong, then I would just add the keyword of that city to the website you already have.

However, ff you are in a city like Dallas and you want to rank for Fort Worth, then I would start a whole new website for that city. Its a pain in the butt but I think that is the safe way to go.

These days I like optimizing a local client for just one major city. I do not like the idea of spreading a website too thin and end up, thereby making it seem less not entirely relevant for anything.  The result is me accomplishing nothing, I just have a site that ranks on page 3 for everything.

If you start another website, you can give it a link from your established website to give it a boost. Just make sure it is not a sitewide link (ie. sidebar, footer or header).

Don't break what is working. You dodged a bullet with that duplicate content issue so be thankful you didn't drop like like an anvil being thrown from a 20+ story building. I would not try to test my luck by watering down your current website in an effort to rank for another city. The chances of it being a success are not as strong as they once were.

[Travis_Bailey]

I would like to chime in here. It appears no one has mentioned links to domains. In my experience, multi-location efforts generally make for a bit of spam.

If I can't see the domains, I can't tell you it's an issue. Though it's generally better to make a page per location.

I would like to know more about the domains you own.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Kirmeliux,

I agree with your approach of keeping this all on one domain, as opposed to building a second, separate site.

Will the fact that that your first city name is in the URL harm your ability to rank for the second city? This is a good question, but I have never seen a professional study done side by side of a non geo domain vs. a geo domain, in the scenario you're describing of then having to build a second geo term into the site. I'm sure this is a common issue with SABs. For example a plumber with the domain name thedallasplumber.com would then typically want to rank for Fort Worth and other geo terms, as well. I suspect that if this causes any hitch for Google, it would be slight and could be overcome by the authority the other city landing pages achieve.

My one suggestion is that you be sure that both cities' pages are accessible from the top level navigation. You mention building a second site within the site. I'm not completely sure of what you are envisioning here, but did want to mention that I think it's important that the pages for both city a and city b are accessible from the main menu.

[Matt-Williamson]

I don't see why there would be an issue with 301 redirecting the second location domain and using it as a link on site, however I have actually not done it this when I have done this previously I have managed to gain links to domain.com/location2 and so on.

I also don't see your main logo linking back to the root even on the second city page as you are not going to be hiding the fact it is in a sub folder and not the main homepage/root. This was the case on the site I mentioned - navigation the same throughout the whole site.

[kirmeliux]

Hi Matt,

Thanks for the response. I'm thinking keeping the second location on the main site is the answer, although having the initial city in the root URL is kind of skewing my thoughts a bit.

Any opinions on registering the secondcitybrand.com and 301'ing it to the root.com/secondcity URL? It'd look a little cleaner on citation sites and 301's retain the majority of the link juice. I also don't see our company receiving too many "natural" links without us controlling it, so I think we'd be fine on that end (and even so, 301's would be in place). This is probably such a small issue that it doesn't matter either way.

**Also, **The main logo on the WordPress will still link back to the root even on the secondcity sub location. This isn't too problematic is it?

[Matt-Williamson]

Good question - I have experienced something similar and I would personally go with your second location in a sub-folder as you say you have already established this site and you will be able to benefit from the authority already gained. I would place relevant anchor text including the location possibly in the main homepage navigation pointing to this second location. When I worked on a similar site I had three locations from one site and I placed the relevant terms in the main navigation anchor text and obviously did the other basics such as keywords in URLs. Then I concentrated on building the authority of each locations homepage, including using competitions to get social interaction to each of these and building great local content that I then exposed to the relevant local audiences. Each one of the location pages then started to gain more natural links from local sources and I found they all ranked really well for their local terms.

Hope this helps..