Local Rank & Branding Confusion - HELP
-
I am working with a client now that has two sites that serve two segments of a particular market segment. They have two different URLs which cater to these different target markets BUT the company is known in its local market as a their brand name (of course) which is different than their 2 domain names used on these 2 sites. Confusing eh? This has resulted in confusing Google and their rank has suffered a bit.
To provide more color + insight-
Let's just say this company is called AtlantaEventsInc and they offer event services for corporate events and let's say weddings. So let's say they have had atlantaeventscorporate.com for 20 years and then they add atlantaeventweddings.com about a year ago since their wedding business is expanding. So they promote their corporate events on one site and their wedding events on another. These 2 sites also currently share one blog, share one Facebook page, one Twitter and have two Google+ pages.
Should we keep these two sites totally separate? and even have separate blogs and separate social media accounts? OR since our rank has only suffered with the new wedding site (just a year old) should we retire that site? (i suppose we could still keep separate blogs though for each target market.
WOULD LOVE INSIGHT ON THIS! Thanks,
Chris
-
If you are still wondering about the directory url:
atlantaeventscorporate.com/weddings
to do this you could:
- Create a subdomain.
Forward atlantaeventweddings.com to the subdomain
Use htaccess rewrite to direct incoming traffic to atlantaeventcorporate.com/weddings/
or
Redirect weddings.atlantaeventcorporate.com to atlantaeventcorporate.com/weddings/ - Don't create a subdomain:
Just create the weddings folder in the root of your domain and build from there.
and then forward atlantaeventweddings.com to atlantaeventcorporate.com/weddings/
- Create a subdomain.
-
Christian,
I have separate phone #'s for local search purposes, but use a different unit #'s, but the same address.
I also definitely have separate social media accounts for each. You don't want to run into a situation where you do 10 events or 10 weddings in a row that you post on social media or your blog, because you will shun one side of your audience (wedding clients don't want to see only big event examples, if they really want to see weddings examples and vice-versa). One account for each business division.
-
Hi Christian,
If you're going with separate branding - no. Absolutely every asset must be separate to avoid confusion. You must approach this as two unrelated companies if you choose to run two companies instead of one.
-
Thank you very much! Is sharing a Facebook account ok?
-
Hi Christian,
You're receiving some great feedback here. I'll add my 2 cents.
-
If the businesses are operating out of the same physical location and share a phone number, than presenting this as a single business would be most appropriate. Once you've merged all of the content onto a single URL, do citation cleanup to be sure that your name, address, phone and website are all consistent across all mentions on the web.
-
The alternative is to get completely separate addresses and phone numbers for each business and run them without any connection between the two. Whether you go this route depends on whether you feel the market warrants it. Just remember, if you this way, there must be nothing shared between the 2 businesses - not contact data, content, links, etc. And, you'll want to be building out two totally separate sets of citations for each business, being sure the data isn't mixed up anywhere.
Hope this helps!
-
-
Thanks Steven! Curious, do you have separate addresses for each as well as phone #'s? and what about social media?
THanks!
Chris
-
I have been doing weddings and photography for years and understand just where you are at. I started out in photography then expanded to wedding planning. From being successful with Google keeping the #1 spots for my desired keywords even today, this is what I do.
I have a different website for each thing that I offer. Photography=website + blog. Wedding planning= website+blog. Weddings and photography go hand and hand, yes, but you won't be able to compete on both fronts for keywords unless you separate them out, as google just won't let you take down that many keywords with just one site like they used to. You aren't going to rank for weddings and event planning on the same site unless it is a long-tailed keyword like "wedding event planning". Also, you don't want to dilute your event planning site with weddings, because then you are just going to rank "ok" for each and not great for either.
It is much more work to keep the sites separate, but you don't want to confuse clients or turn them away by having them think you don't offer a service they need (because of your name) when you actually do offer that service as well. If you are confusing google, take it as a sign that you are confusing clients too, because you are. I would get another phone # for the other business and use unit #A & Unit B to denote a difference in address.
I also understand the subdomain idea, but it then causes the blog overlap which you don't want.
We just keep our sites separate. Then in blog posts credit the other site or blog as if it was a separate company that was the contractor you used for the event.
We have had excellent luck with this as it happened out of necessity and it seems nearly identical to your current scenario.
Good luck.
-
Thanks for the reply and good questions.
The phone numbers are the same (street addresses different) and the wedding site is flushed out with rich info & multiple pages. In regards to the blog, it is somewhat recent and hosted on the wedding site and mainly focused on weddings. Currently implementing a blog for the other site (corporate one) which used to link directly to the wedding site's blog. Basically the blog link in the menu bar on the homepage of the corp site links directly to the wedding site's blog.
In regards to the site's rankings- The wedding site actually ranks very well considering its just shy of a year old (for wedding words) and lot of this is due to lots of fresh content. The corporate site is very static on the other hand but the corporate site has the advantage of being around for many years. The odd thing in regards to the local places rankings is that when users type in a query for say "wedding planner atlanta", their wedding site appears on page #1 but their corporate site actually appears in the local map results.
thanks,
Chris
-
The confusion potentially comes from the citations associated on the various accounts. You didn't mention phone number, but I am assuming that is the same for both businesses as well.
Having two separate sites, since they are focused on different segments makes sense. However, every detail should be treated as these being separate businesses if they are going to be represented as such.
When you talk about their rankings, are you talking about website rankings or local places rankings?
What is the purpose of the wedding site? Is it a single landing page or a full-on information rich site with multiple pages?
Also, you say that they are sharing a blog, how is this set up?
-
Thanks for your insight and i agree. So basically you are saying that since all of the rank issues commenced with the recent addition of the wedding site, just simply retire it? also, can you provide an example of a directory style url.
thx
-
If you merge the two sites say into atlantaeventscorporate.com and 301 all of atlantaeventweddings.com content to its new location at atlantaeventscorporate.com you will effectively be combining the page ranks and traffic scores of the two. Of course its not quite that simple and there are ways this could go wrong but I would look into that. Perhaps just turn wedding into a subdomain with a directory style url?
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
-
Are local business directories worth the effort? Eg. White pages, Yell.com, Local.com?
Hi Guys, Im new to Moz and very keen to do SEO right without upsetting Mr. Google too much. Are local business directories worth the effort? Its a laborious job, but happy to do it, if its effective and won't be considered spammy by Google? Thanks
Local Website Optimization | | Fetseun0 -
Is it deceptive to attempt to rank for a city you're located just outside of?
I live in Greenville, SC (who has a large "Greater Greenville" reach). I work for an agency with many clients who are located just outside of the city in smaller towns, sometimes technically in counties other than Greenville. Often, they provide services in the city of Greenville and aim to grow business there, so we'll use "Greenville, SC" throughout site copy, in titles, and in meta descriptions. Are there any negative implications to this? Any chance search engines think these clients are being deceptive? And is it possible these clients are hurting their ranking in their actual location by trying to appear to be a Greenville-based company? Thank you for any thoughts!
Local Website Optimization | | engeniusbrent1 -
Can I block blexhn30.webmeup.com. Or does it have anything to do with my Moz Local
I am getting alot of hits from blexhn30.webmeup.com. My web host says it could be a web service. Is this part of moz local activity? Otherwise I want to block it. Have you seen this before??
Local Website Optimization | | stephenfishman0 -
Multiple My Business pages affecting local SEO?
Hey Moz! We have a situation with a dentist firm with multiple doctors at the same address. They have two locations for their dental offices, and each of the dentists operate at both offices. The issue: Each doctor insists on having their own by business page for each location and i'm afraid this is hurting their local SEO. We've been tracking keywords by week and we've seen some big fluctuations in ratings and i'm looking into why this is happening. The office in location 1 has it's own Google My Business page and the three dentists have their own my business page set up at the exact same address. The office in location 2 has it's own Google My Business page as well and the three dentists have their own my business page there also. This leads the two addresses of the main offices having multiple My Business pages at the same address competing against eachother since they are all are registered with similar names and specialties. Could this be hurting our local SEO? Thanks! -Z
Local Website Optimization | | zacgarrison_700 -
Website ranking issues
Hi Moz, I have a question about one of our websites that has been ranking very poorly on it's current domain (fancydoorsedmonton.com) lately, but was ranked at #1 for the search term "Edmonton Doors" until last month. The main search terms we're targeting are "Edmonton Doors" and "Doors Edmonton". I made another post regarding the on-page SEO value and had some feedback from that, but there is another issue that seems more likely to cause an issue. There are 2 more domains set up to forward to their main domain: fancydoors.com was their old domain but was registered by someone else and had some questionable, X-rated content put on it. The domain has now been reacquired and redirected to their main domain. There isn't any more questionable content on there anymore. Would this domain's past affect it's current ranking? fancy-doors.com was another old domain of theirs now set up as a redirect. In the past they had another SEO provider work with this domain and did some bad SEO work for them with automated citations, etc. We changed the domain to fancydoorsedmonton.com to get away from that and also include Edmonton in the domain. If you have any ideas or feedback to provide based on this information it would definitely be a huge help to us. Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | Web3Marketing870 -
Local SEO case with two physical locations
I hope someone can help me make some decisions. I did read a lot about Local SEO lately but I’m not sure what way to go with this client. Client: Service provider with two physical locations (service is provided on the physical location). In the coming 12 month there will open 1-2 new physical locations in other cities. Has only one phone number. I will try to advise them to get a local phone number for both locations. But they prefer one (mobile) number to keep things simple. Clients are willing to travel for the service, since it’s a one day course they take. Current clients do come from a lot of different locations. The competition for around 5-6 big cities is pretty low since there aren’t a lot of service providers who deliver these courses. Questions: Should I put both addresses in the footer? It’s a best practice with only one location. I think it’s handy for users with two locations as well but I’m worried about how Google sees this. Also this will get confusing when the client passes 3-4 locations. If the client sticks with one mobile phone number, should I make a Google + local page for both physical locations? The Google guidelines clearly state they prefer a local number as much as possible. If I add “Our service areas “ to the top navigation and make a unique place page for every city (to rank organic aswell) is it wise to link those local Google + pages to the unique page about this service? Normaly I would go for yes, but I want to add places with and without a physical location under the same navigation. With just one location I would just focus on that city and add unique pages for the other pages. I’m getting a bit stuck between best practices since the client got opportunities with multiple strategies. I hope you guys (and girls 😉 ) can help!
Local Website Optimization | | Bob_van_Biezen1 -
Launching Hundreds of Local Pages At Once or Tiered? If Tiered, In What Intervals Would You Recommend?
Greeting Mozzers, This is a long question, so please bare with me 🙂 We are an IT and management training company that offers over 180 courses on a wide array of topics. We have multiple methods that our students can attend these courses, either in person or remotely via a technology called AnyWare. We've also opened AnyWare centers in which you can physically go a particular location near you, and log into a LIVE course that might be hosted in say, New York, even if you're in say, LA. You get all the in class benefits and interaction with all the students and the instructor as if you're in the classroom. Recently, we've opened 43 AnyWare centers giving way to excellent localization search opportunities to our website (e.g. think sharepoint training in new york or "whatever city we are located in). Each location has a physical address, phone number, and employee working there so we pass those standards for existence on Google Places (which I've set up). So, why all this background? Well, we'd like to start getting as much visibility for queries that follow the format of "course topic area that we offered" followed by "city we offer it in." We offer 22 course topic areas and, as I mentioned, 43 locations across the US. Our IS team has created custom pages for each city and course topic area using a UI. I won't get into detailed specifics, but doing some simple math (22 topic areas multiplied by 43 location) we get over 800 new pages that need to eventually be crawled and added to our site. As a test, we launched the pages 3 months ago for DC and New York and have experienced great increases in visibility. For example, here are the two pages for SharePoint training in DC and NY (total of 44 local pages live right now). http://www2.learningtree.com/htfu/usdc01/washington/sharepoint-training
Local Website Optimization | | CSawatzky
http://www2.learningtree.com/htfu/usny27/new-york/sharepoint-training So, now that we've seen the desired results, my next question is, how do we launch the rest of the hundreds of pages in a "white hat" manner? I'm a big fan of white hat techniques and not pissing off Google. Given the degree of the project, we also did our best to make the content unique as possible. Yes there are many similarities but courses do differ as well as addresses from location to location. After watching Matt Cutt's video here: http://searchengineland.com/google-adding-too-many-pages-too-quickly-may-flag-a-site-to-be-reviewed-manually-156058 about adding too man pages at once, I'd prefer to proceed cautiously, even if the example he uses in the video has to do with tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of pages. We truly aim to deliver the right content to those searching in their area, so I aim no black hat about it 🙂 But, still don't want to be reviewed manually lol. So, in what interval should we launch the remaining pages in a quick manner to raise any red flags? For example, should we launch 2 cities a week? 4 cities a month? I'm assuming the slower the better of course, but I have some antsy managers I'm accountable to and even with this type of warning and research, I need to proceed somehow the right way. Thanks again and sorry for the detailed message!0 -
HELP, My site have more than 40k visits by day and the server is down, I do not want all this visits...
Hello... I have a website for a local spa in ecuador, this website have a blog with some tips about health... and suddenly one of the articles goes viral on south america profiels on FB and I am receiving 40k visits by day from other countries that are not interested to me because my site is for a local bussines in ecuador... I already block some countries by IP , but Im still receiving visits from other south america countries, for this reason My hosting server company put down my website and I can not put it back online beacuse this thousands of visits use more than the 25% of the CPU of the server and the hosting company put down my website again... I really need to know what to do, I do not want to pay for a expensive special server because all this visits from other countries are not interesting to me .and as I said before my bussines is local.
Local Website Optimization | | lans27872