Should I Combine 30 websites into one?
-
I have a Private health care company that I have just begun consulting for. Currently in addition to the main website serving the whole group, 30 individual sites which are for each of the hospitals in their group. Each has it's own domain.
Each site, has practically identical content: something that will be addressed in my initial audits. But should I suggest that they combine all the sites into one domain, providing individual category pages for each hosptial, or am I really going to suggest that each of the 30 sites, create unique content of their own.
This means thirty pages of content on "hip replacements" thirty different versions of "our treatement" etc, and bearing in mind they all run off the same CMS, even with different body text, the pages are going to be practically identical. It's a big call either way!
The reason they started out with all these sites, is that each hospital is it's own cost centre and whilst the web development team is a centralized resource. They each have their own sites to try and rank indivdually for local searches, naturally as they will each tend to get customers from their own local area.
Not every hospital provides the full range of treatments.
-
If the local hospitals are to have their own sites then I believe that an important part of those websites is the profiles of important physicians who serve there and the services that they deliver. These physicians and service staffs are the intellectual assets of each hospital. Their personalities and expertise these professionals are really what is being sold and thus what is marketable.
Patients really don't want a "hospital" they really want a medical team that can make them well.
In the small communities where I have lived anyone searching Google for a physician by name will very frequently encounter the large database publishing sites rather than the website of that physician's practice or the institution where he/she serves.
These database sites rank well because they have professional SEO yet some of them are close to professional spam.
That does not serve the searcher well at all, they don't need his/her name and address. Instead what they would hope to find is a page about this person and learn about his/her education, experience, expertise and personality - along with the connection to the hospital where service is rendered. If people are doing comparison shopping for a physician this is the information that they need to find.
-
Big conversations to be had this week it seems!
I think you've got it right there - deep content centralised and very sales oriented hospital sites which will rank well simply off the back of their hubs high authority.
The individual hospitals are kept independent as the central organisation is very hands off in telling them how to run things. Putting a sales "hat" on for a moment, I can see the opportunity to offer a complete new web site design to each of the hospitals too in that way.
Think I'm concerned that I don't have the silver bullet answer but as you say, it's going to be about understanding their philosophy and what they're hoping to achieve long term.
-
I agree with Theo. Merging the sites into one would clearly be the way to go based on your statement there is not enough unique content to support 30 sites.
Merge 30 sites into 1
If you merge all the sites together, I would recommend a single page focused on "hip replacements", and then a unique page for each local hospital focusing local SEO with terms such as "Manchester hip replacement".
You have the benefit of the current setup being decentralized presently. This should give you tremendous resources for contents. 30 different locations, each with their own departments. If you need content on hip replacement or any other topic for the main site, I would think the doctors and other staff would be willing to contribute or at least review your work. Anytime you need content it seems you could pick up the phone and have an overflowing well of information. I am quite jealous!
-
But should I suggest that they combine all the sites into one domain, providing individual category pages for each hosptial, or am I really going to suggest that each of the 30 sites, create unique content of their own.
I think that you should tell them the advantages and disadvantages of each of these two options.
Every answer has two sides. The SEO perspective and the business perspective. Maybe there are good reasons why they want each hospital to own a website to have its own identity. Some large companies want the individual hospitals to each have a very strong brand. Others want the main company to be the brand and the hospitals to be its points of local service. One of those profiles would want a single big site the other would want individual hospital sites.
I think that you need to gain an understanding of the client's philosophy.
There is another option... and that option is to have very deep and broad content on the main site with referral links out to appropriate hospitals. You also have the incomplete overlap of medical procedures with the geographic area served by these hospitals.
From a patient's perspective I could imagine these hospitals competing with one another for my business. If I need a knee replacement I might want to go to the closest or I might want to go to "the best". Are these hospitals so geographically close to one another that they are competitors?
I think that this is a good example of an SEO job where an understanding of the client is very important.
-
What you say is right for sure. It's my biggest concern about the uniqueness. But bare in mind, it's not just the hospitals but the treatments themselves we want to rank for local search. So we'd still need a page to rank for "breast enhancement in Liverpool" as well as "breast enhancement in Manchester" (I've not done the KW research yet mind)
The other (and nothing to do with SEO I know) thing is, its the difference between having 30 clients (as each hospital is it's own business cell paying for the SEO) and one client (if we told them to manage one site from head office) This is a huge company so budget isn't a massive concern for them.
My instincts are to have one site as you say but I'm not sure how we'd get round the problem any which way. Thankfully I'm not having to write any copy on this one! We've done all our quotes (and they've signed up) based on the separate site approach - but it's hit me like a smack in the face that this might not be the right approach.
I'll add onto this, to give some idea of the process that we're going through, that we're trialling this SEO on just 5 sites to start. This company were hoodwinked into SEO before which was just some BS link building service (low quality - waste of money) hence the trial. Classic snake oil stuff.
Their sites are a mess - every mistake possible has been made so it's a massive open goal for us as to hitting some big results on traffic uplift. If we meet their criteria for success (which we will) our service will be rolled out to the remaining hospitals but with them as individual clients.
-
Tough call.
I think the main point is how well these websites can manage to become unique, useful (and link worthy) on their own. Having to maintain 30 websites, of which neither one really has unique content, is both a burden their developers, editors and finances as it is virtually worthless to visitors.
The ranking for local searches could be handled via a sub folder structure, where each 'branch' has their own sub website such as www.example.org/new-york and www.example.org/orlando which could be optimized for that given city. Having the (future) authority of the main domain behind it, ranking may actually be easier for those sub sites than it is now for the actual separated websites with thin content and (presumably just as thin) link profiles.
Conclusion based on the information available: merge.
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
-
I want to use a photo from an official website for my own website.IF YES HOW?
Lets suppose i downloaded a photo from a XYZ website and want to use it on my own website, and also i want to rank for same keyword, and would like to rank just below XYZ site, i know there could be copyright issue. what can be done to avoid this issue. Can i manipulate the picture in a such way that it is usable. if yes how? How can i use that official websites picture for my website, i mean, can i cite that website as a source? what is the best practice in this case? i dont want to use stock photo,i really like xyz sites pics.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sam09schulz0 -
If I have two brands and I market one in English (BrandA.com) and one in Spanish (BrandB.com), and the websites are identical but in different languages, would that have a negative impact on SEO due to duplicate content?
I have a client who wants a website in Spanish and one in English. Typically we would use a multi-language plugin for a single site (brandA.com/en or /es), but this client markets to their Spanish-speaking constituents under a different brand. So I am wondering if we have BrandA.com in English, and the exact same content in Spanish at BrandB.com if there will be negative SEO implications and/or if it will be recognized as duplicate content by search engines?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Designworks-SJ1 -
Website Snippet Update in Search Console?
I have a company that I started working with that has an outdated and inaccurate snippet coming up. See the link below. They changed their name from DK on Pittsburgh Sports to just DK Pittsburgh Sports several years ago, but the snippet is still putting the old info, including outdated and incorrect description. I'm not seeing that title or description anywhere on the site or a schema plugin. How can we get it updated? I have updated titles, etc. for the home page, and done a Fetch to get re-indexed. Does Snippet have a different type of refresh that I can submit or edit? Thanks in advance https://g.co/kgs/qZAnAC
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jeremyskillings0 -
Should my website be accessible by IP?
I have been doing some digging in to this today essentially triggered off by looking at the secure certificate on my site and comparing it to others as i have been seeing some security warnings on a random basis. I noticed that on all instances none of the other sites IP addresses re-direct to the website, whereas on my site it does. is re-directing the IP address to the website a big no-no?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WAWKA1 -
What are the Best SEO Website which you read daily
Hai Moz memebers, Can you pls suggest me some best seo websites that you people read articles everyday a part from MOZ
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEO_GB1 -
My websites position has dropped, any ideas why?
Hi, First off im new here, so hello to everyone. Now to the reason why I have joined. I am currently trying to rank for 2 terms: **UK Bank Holidays 2013 (Term 1) **and Bank Holidays 2013 (Term 2) The page which im trying to rank these terms on is: http://www.followuk.co.uk/bank-holidays Now some background history: On the 29th Dec 2013, term 1 was 5th and term 2 was 7th - rankings achieved through guest blogging. Last night I changed the h1 tag from 'Bank Holidays 2013' to 'UK Bank Holidays 2013'. Re-worded the meta description to try and increase the CTR. And removed the term 'Bank Holiday' from the end of each sub-heading - Ex: 'New Year's Day Bank Holiday' to 'New Year's Day' - I did this because I felt it was to much so in total 'Bank Holiday' term had been removed from 5 sub-headings. Ok, so I went into WMT and resubmitted for indexing, over night the page got reindexed - the term 'UK Bank Holidays 2013' stayed at the same position (5) BUT the 'Bank Holidays 2013' term dropped into hell at roughly position 250. I'm thinking of changing everything back and crossing my fingers that term which dropped comes back BUT maybe im being to rash and it might jump back as the page stands. I did a grade test using SEOMOZ and both terms generate a grade of 'A'. Has anyone got any ideas? Sorry if the thread is a bit messy im currently crying all over the keyboard as im typing. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | followuk0 -
One Website, Multiple Top-level Domains
I have two clients, both of which have a single website, with multiple top-level domains, many of which represent "subpages". For example, when you navigate to the home page, the URL is "[CompanyName].com". However, when you navigate to a subpage, the browser appears to remain at the same website, but in actuality (as you can tell from the URL bar) you've navigated to "SubPage.com". Client A is an insurance company that has multiple branded insurance products. Each product is independent of the other (it's unlikely that a single client would purchase multiple insurance products from different brands) and have their own brand. Thusly, each section of the site that represents a different brand has its own top-level domain. The website design/structure remains the same, with some light color changes and image swaps. Client B is a consultant and offers various services. None of these services are "branded" (a single client would hire the consultant for a wide range of available services). Each subpage on the site represents a different service and has its own top-level domain. Here are my questions: Are either Client A or B breaking guidelines set forth by major search engines? Are either Client A or B hurting their optimization with this trickery? My inclination is that Client A is doing it right, but Client B is not. Your insights would be appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PinckneyHugoGroup0 -
Redirect of just one internal page
If I have 2 domains with different content that are in same topic, and each one lives on its own IP-address, what could be the result if I do permanent redirect of just one internal page from one domain to counterpart page of another? What if I use rel=canonical instead of R301? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kolio_kolev0