Should I Combine 30 websites into one?

[Ultramod]

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.

[EGOL]

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.

[Ultramod]

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.

[RyanKent]

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!

[EGOL]

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.

[Ultramod]

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.

[Theo-NL]

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.