Single sites per location as well as group site. Should we get rid of single sites & only keep group site.

[DCochrane]

Currently we have several single sites for each of our dealership locations as well as an automotive group site linking to each location(dealership) website. Currently there is no landing page for each location on the group site.

To save money we were looking into beefing up our group site and getting rid of our individual location sites. 301 redirecting them to location landing pages on the group site website.

Each site has about the same authority including the group site.

Each dealership location resides in the same province(state) but some locations are a 7hour drive apart so not all within the same vicinity.

I want to ensure we continue to rank well in each location. I won't be able to include all geographic locations in the title tag on the homepage of the group site due to the character restrictions.

What would you recommend? Keeping the individual websites per dealership location OR focusing solely on a group website. I need to ensure we continue to rank well in each city where each dealership resides.

Thanks for any recommendations! It's greatly appreciated.

Thanks for everyone's thoughts & opinions.

[DCochrane]

All great points. The individual sites are going to be re-designed as they are old designs and the content is a little thin. I will take all your points into consideration and make a decision.

Thanks for the great answer!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Samantha,

Good discussion going on here. I'll add my own thoughts.

For local businesses, a single site approach is generally preferred over a mutl-site approach for the following reasons:

1. Easier management for the company/webmaster

2. Reduced risk of duplicate content

3. All marketing activity goes toward building the authority of the brand and then this flows down to all locations listed on the site, instead of the authority being split up over multiple websites

4. Possible reduced risk of merges

5. Google has said a single site is a better approach. See: http://www.seroundtable.com/google-one-site-locations-15454.html

So, in general, if a client came to me and asked if they should start out with a single site or many sites, I'd say a single site 99% of the time. That being said, if the client was in your position with multiple sites already in place, I would help them assess:

1. How old these sites are

2. The quality of these sites (great content, unique content or thin/duplicate content)

3. The overall authority of these sites

4. The depth of citation building that has been done for these sites

5. The client's ability to keep multiple sites updated with fresh content on an on-going basis

6. Any problems the client is having with managing multiple sites.

Answers to these questions would help me understand how big of an asset or a liability the multi-sites are for the business. If they are spammy, low quality, low authority, few citations, it would be a no-brainer to suggest bringing everything together in a single site. But, if they are high quality with lots of citations, I would have to warn the client that some ranking drops could likely occur that would take time to recover from and that a great big citation editing job would be ahead of us to ensure that all references to the old sites had been corrected to reference the new landing pages on the single site.

So, it's going to be different in each case, and hopefully these thoughts will help you assess your own situation. Good luck! This is an important decision you are making.

[David-Kley]

There are so many ways to achieve what you want, I understand how it can be confusing. Dont feel bad! lol

Since you already have the other sites in place, take your time and optimize them all a bit at a time. You can use the smaller sites to optimize around individual locations, and then link back to your main site. Have the sites feed each other, and make them all come up at once. On the big site, create a page of basic info about the local site, and have a few links pointing out so the search engines find them. Keep it very specific, but dont over-optimize anything. We dont want this strategy to have the opposite effect, lol.

Make sure there is enough info on the local sites to support a link. If they are landing pages, I'm not sure if I would bother. If they are full sites, 10+ pages of good info, then go for it. Make sure to mark up the locations with schema rich snippets, so it is hyper-relevant to the location.

On the main site, look at a way that users can easily find the local pages. Having visitors spend longer amounts of time on all the sites can only help you. The end goal would be to get all sites seen as an authority.

If you want to combine all the sites under one roof, you can do that too, just move the sites into a subfolder under your main domain, and set up proper linking and structure. I'm only leaning towards the separate way because its already in place, and can help the local effort.

As the the amazon reference, I'm not sure that applies here. They have over a billion pages, and high brand recognition.

[DCochrane]

Also, Amazon is not a local company. Its a multinational company who does not need to rank on CITY Keyword`` searches.

[DCochrane]

Yes. There are certainly some positives and negatives to having one main larger authoritative site (with link juice from the other sites) Or individual sites with more room for geographic authority as well as a group site.

I cannot decide which strategy to go with.

[thebaron24]

Hello,

I just want to add one thing to what Marty said. If you were to combine all sites under the parent domain and do the steps he suggested, all the traffic would be concentrated under one domain and increase rankability overall. Just ask Amazon how having tons of traffic works out.

[DCochrane]

Yes. Those were my thoughts as well. We wouldn't be able to target as many geographic areas on the main site but can on the individual sites.

Thanks for the  great reply!

[mosquitohawk]

Greetings Samantha,

Combining all your sites into one has several advantages, for example-

• Cutting maintenance, programming and upkeep costs
• Allowing all new trust to flow to one site instead of X sites
• Giving your local dealership pages the trust strength of the main domain
• Brand cohesiveness

Having a main group site with individual locality pages within it is definitely doable from a local ranking perspective.  We have a franchise client who has over 50 brick and mortar locations in 3 states and we are able to rank them locally with the same amount of effort you would put into a separate site (from an SEO perspective).  You'll want to make sure, at a minimum, you do the following-

1. Each dealership has it's own locality page on your site
2. The address, phone number, etc. on your locality page exactly matches the same in your Google Places pages
3. Link your local Google Places pages to the matching locality page on your website.
4. Though not required, I would recommend 301ing your locality websites home, about, contact, etc. to their corresponding locality page (inventory can be 301d to it's appropriate page)

As for a recommendation, I would say do what fits best for you.  It seems from what you're saying there are some financial benefits to merging and there are no SEO hurdles to prevent you from doing so.  Good luck!

[David-Kley]

"Each site has about the same authority including the group site."

Since they are already setup and working/ranking, why do you want to get rid of them? I'm curious as to how that will help you save money. If the main site links out the the sub sites in a natural fashion, and helps the user find a location closer to them, I would leave it alone, especially if it is a driving factor of business.

Having the sub sites I think will work to your advantage, as you will be able to specifially optimize around that location and geographical area, including all sub towns and local areas.

I am guessing you are trying to increase the authority of the main site by combining them all into one? Perhaps the solution is to leave the sub sites as they are, begin to expand the main site, and link out to the others where it makes the most sense. There is nothing stopping you from expanding the main site just because the mini sites exist.

Another think to think of is the local factor of the mini sites. Each one can have its own LBL (local business listing) tied to it, and linking out or embedding that info on that site. Might help the mini sites have a bit more authority that you might lose be combining them all into one mega site.