How to approach SEO for a national umbrella site that has multiple chapters in different locations that are different URLS

[timfrick]

We are currently working with a client who has one national site - let's call it CompanyName.net, and multiple, independent chapter sites listed under different URLs that are structured, for example, as CompanyNamechicago.org, and sometimes specific to neighborhoods, as in CompanyNamechicago.org/lakeview.org. The national site is .net, while all others are .orgs. These are not subdomains or subfolders, as far as we can tell. You can use a search function on the .net site to find a location near you and click to that specific local site.

They are looking for help optimizing and increasing traffic to certain landing pages on the .net site...but similar landing pages also exist on a local level, which appear to be competing with the national site. (Example: there is a landing page on the national .net umbrella site for a "dog safety" campaign they are doing, but also that campaign has led to a landing page created independently on the local CompanyNameChicago.org website, which seems to get higher ranking due to a user looking for this info while located in Chicago.

We are wondering if our hands are tied here since they appear to be competing for traffic with all their localized sites, or if there are best practices to handle a situation like this. Thanks!

[TheeDigital]

Start by consolidating everything. Get control of all of the local domains, move the content over and redirect the local domains to their corresponding pages on the main site.

[LauraSultan]

It's really going to depend on the search query. Some search queries are seen as having local intent regardless of whether or not a geo-modifier (i.e. "Chicago") is included in the search. Since your client's site is for the national organization, or the main website for the brand, you'll likely outperform for some queries based on brand strength, backlinks, domain authority, etc., than the localized websites.  On the other hand, if someone searches for "summer day camp," that searcher is likely looking for a local service provider.

Are you specifically searching for the query "dog safety" in Chicago for the example you provided? That seems like more of an informational query, so your site would need to be seen as a topical authority to perform well.

You say that your .net site uses a search function (zip code search?) to display the individual locations. Is the location info crawlable by the search engines, or is it hidden behind the search functionality?  If you want the .net site to perform for local searches, you'll need to work on optimizing local landing pages that can be easily found and indexed by search engines.